5 proven eCommerce strategies from top platform leaders
This fall, Mirakl Meet Ups in Amsterdam, Warsaw and Stockholm convened Europe’s top platform leaders to share proven strategies and their vision for the future of commerce.
From mainstage keynotes to intimate roundtables, the message was clear: the platform model is no longer a future "if" but the strategic core of modern retail, driving growth, agility and customer centricity.
Executives from H&M, Decathlon, Kruidvat and more shared how they are moving beyond simply launching a marketplace to deeply integrating platform strategies into their core business operations.
This approach has helped leading brands build curated, profitable and resilient ecosystems that reinforce their unique brand identity.
Here are the five critical strategies setting these leaders apart.
1. Prioritize curation to reinforce your brand
The Mirakl Meet Ups’ sessions challenged a core retail misconception: the "endless aisle" is not the ultimate goal.
Today's leaders are winning with strategic curation that reinforces brand identity and builds customer trust.
Dutch drugstore chain Kruidvat showcased this shift perfectly, achieving 200% year-over-year growth with a highly curated selection of 71 partners to maintain its core brand identity.
Similarly, global fashion retailer H&M Group chose a dropship model specifically to retain control over customer-facing pricing, promotions and campaigns.
As their team stated at the Stockholm Meet Up, the goal is not to become another Amazon, but to enhance the core H&M experience with a selection of third-party brands.
Super-Pharm also operates its premium health and beauty marketplace as a one credit platform, taking full responsibility for the customer-facing experience to maintain its expert-led, premium positioning.
2. Leverage your platform as an innovation laboratory
The most agile retailers are using their platforms as a low-risk, high-speed laboratory to test new categories, respond to trends and gather real-time data.
For example, H&M Group utilizes its third-party business as a strategic avenue for experimentation.
Instead of committing to years of private-label development, this approach allowed them to immediately test and launch complex categories like furniture and flowers.
This testing mindset also applies to product details.
The data-first approach transformed Swedish fashion brand Dr. Denim's business from slow, intuition-based design cycles to a data-rich operation, allowing them to test pricing and product images weekly.
Kruidvat also demonstrated this speed by launching COVID masks in just one day and offering emergency kits within days of a crisis advisory — impossible with traditional sourcing timelines.
3. Align your organization, not just your technology
A recurring theme from leaders at H&M, Leroy Merlin and Kruidvat was that the biggest implementation hurdle isn't technology — it's organizational alignment.
As H&M's implementation partner CGI noted, launching a marketplace isn't just a technical project but a core business strategy that requires full organizational buy-in.
Leroy Merlin, which employs 13,000 people in Poland, invested heavily in this, ensuring employees would be "ambassadors" for the new model.
Kruidvat overcame internal resistance by proving the marketplace was a win-win. Their data showed that every €1 in marketplace sales generated an additional €1 in first-party revenue.
4. Turn physical stores into an omnichannel differentiator
Instead of viewing stores as a legacy burden, leading retailers are integrating their physical footprint as their single greatest marketplace advantage.
Consumer electronics giant MediaMarkt Poland is a prime example, leveraging its store network as a core part of its platform. Their plan includes turning physical locations into fulfillment and service hubs for marketplace orders, offering in-store pickup, returns and even trade-in services.
This "O+O" (online-plus-offline) approach is also central to Kruidvat’s strategy, which uses the marketplace to create a seamless customer experience across all channels.
Decathlon enables this seamless omnichannel experience at an organizational level. By having its first-party and third-party responsibilities managed by the same commercial teams, it eliminates internal silos and ensures the customer journey is unified from online discovery to their in-store experience.
5. Unlock new growth in customers, profits and markets
The platform model is a powerful engine for new, sustainable growth.
Leaders are leveraging it to acquire entirely new customer segments. Home improvement retailer Maxeda DIY Group found that 30% of its marketplace customers were new to the brand, and Kruidvat saw 40% new online buyers.
The model is also driving significant profitability. Maxeda DIY Group not only grew between 250% and 300% year-over-year, but its average order value also skyrocketed from €38 in-store to €110 online.
Platforms are also unlocking new markets. Dr Denim used marketplaces to successfully penetrate the U.S. market after years of wholesale attempts, while Leroy Merlin is now enabling its Polish sellers to expand across Europe.
The platform advantage
The insights from European leaders paint a clear picture. The platform model is not just a technology project; it's a strategic transformation from a store into a true platform.
As MediaMarkt Poland's Marketplace Director, Pawel Ptasznik, shared in Warsaw, the goal is "making the media market not only a store, but a platform that not only offers the products, but also the service.”
This approach is key to building a more agile, resilient and customer-focused business.
Dive deeper into the strategies and data transforming retail by downloading the 2025 Mirakl Marketplace & Dropship Index.
