Comment by ricardobeat
15 hours ago
It's funny that the Netherlands seems to still live in the dotcom boom to this day. Want to adopt a pet? verhuisdieren.nl. Want to buy wall art? wall-art.nl. Need cat5 cable? kabelshop.nl. 8/10 times there is a (legit) online store for whatever you need, to the point where one of the local e-commerce giants (Coolblue) buys this type of domain and aliases them to their main site.
This is still the case in the US, too. I don't know why people are talking like it stopped happening. amazon.com, amazon.com, amazon.com, amazon.com
All these things are still e-tail here, too. We didn't go back to B&M.
I was making commentary about the niche/independent nature of these online retailers (another example: graszaaddirect.nl, specialized in grass seeds), not that e-commerce itself survived the bubble.
Having a dense country where you reach any opposite end in <3 hours is probably a major factor. You don't really care where it's coming from (sometimes it's Germany) as delivery time is the same. That would not be the case for the US, you'd require a web of distributors.
Pretty funny, looks like it works in France too! animaux.fr redirects to a pet adoption service, cable.fr looks like a cable-selling shop. artmural.fr exists but looks like a personal blog from a wall artist, rather than a shop.