Ecommerce flourished in Sweden in 2020

Source: market.se

Online retailers had a great year in Sweden in 2020. The revenues of the 200 biggest ecommerce players grew by a healthy 25% compared to 2019. More significant was the growth in profits in one year: +530%.

Sweden has now 18 online retailers with revenues over 100M€. Last year saw two pure play online retailers break through 400M€ barrier. The leader in the market.se list, Dustin, is not a traditional N2C online retailer. Their revenue is 97% based from B2B sales and 60% of that is coming from online.

The biggest “traditional” online retailer in Sweden is fashion retailer Boost followed closely by the online pharmacy chain Apotea. It would not be a surprise if this year Apotea would surpass Boost and become the biggest online retailer in Sweden. It’s growth has had such a spectacular growth run over the last 10 years.

In 2011 Per Svärdson acquired Apotea in 2011. Svärdsson had prior experience of ecommerce as the founder of Adlibris, currently 5th biggest B2C online retailer in Sweden. Since Svärdsson acquired Apotea, it has grown from 12,1 million SEK in revenue 4 125 MSEK, growth of 33 990% in 10 years!

Third biggest B2C online retailer in Sweden is online grocer Mathem. Contrary to the other two big online retailers, Mathem is not profitable yet. Apotea and Boost both were able to double their profits during the last year and achieve a healthy 5,2% and 4,2% profit margin respectively.