About PURISH
PURISH is a Berlin-based beauty retailer and distributor bringing international beauty brands to European consumers. The business grew through PURISH.com, distribution partnerships, and marketplaces. Amazon Germany marked the start of its marketplace journey, but as the company expanded, the team began looking for its next European opportunity.
For PURISH, the Netherlands stood out for two reasons: strong growth in the beauty category and high acceptance of international brands. Bol offered a direct route to reach that demand through an established local marketplace. But entering another market also meant dealing with new operational and local requirements.
The challenge: Entering a new market without adding more complexity
Amazon came first, followed by Shopify and additional marketplace technology. Each new marketplace or geography brought another set of integrations, requirements, and processes.
The complexity went far beyond product listings. Finance needed visibility into orders and cash flow. Logistics needed accurate inventory and fulfillment information. The marketplace team needed to manage product data, pricing, content, and performance across channels.
A new country added another layer. PURISH needed to manage compliance while adapting its content to a different language, search behavior, shopping preferences, and customer expectations.
After spending several months trying different integration options, the team realized it needed a solution that could support its longer-term multichannel expansion plans.
"We spent around eight months looking at different options. What we learned is that if you want to expand to more marketplaces or geographies, you need an established integrator that can support that growth."
- Ge Wang, Marketplace Director, PURISH
Building the right foundation for expansion
That search led PURISH to ChannelEngine.
Instead of adding another isolated marketplace connection, PURISH could manage product information, inventory, pricing, and orders through a setup connected to its wider ecommerce operation. When another marketplace became relevant, the team could build on processes already in place rather than starting again with a separate integration.
"We needed more than a marketplace connection. Finance needed to track cash flow and orders, logistics needed visibility, and we needed a setup that could support more marketplaces. That's what we found with ChannelEngine."
- Ge Wang, Marketplace Director, PURISH
ChannelEngine's established bol integration also gave PURISH a direct way to connect the marketplace with its existing operation.
With that foundation in place, the focus could shift from getting connected to making the Dutch opportunity work commercially.
Getting the Dutch market right
PURISH's marketplace experience in Germany gave the team a strong starting point for expansion. The Netherlands offered an attractive opportunity for its international beauty portfolio, and bol, as the country's leading local marketplace, gave PURISH a direct way to reach that audience.
But being present on the right marketplace was only the starting point. Reaching Dutch consumers effectively still required a local approach.
Localization was one of the first priorities. Dutch product content was essential, but translation alone would not be enough. Search behavior and shopping preferences also shaped how the team structured and continued to improve its listings.
"Localization isn't only about translating the language. You need to understand how people search and shop in the market and adapt your listings to that."
- Ge Wang, Marketplace Director, PURISH
Fast delivery was just as important. Experience on Amazon had already shown PURISH the impact of fulfillment on the customer experience, and feedback on bol reinforced that lesson. Stock availability mattered too.
"It doesn't matter how good your pricing or marketing strategy is. If you're out of stock, you're out of the game."
- Ge Wang, Marketplace Director, PURISH
Patricia Lay, Lead International Partnerships at bol, saw this focus on the fundamentals as one of the strengths of PURISH's launch.
"PURISH had a very strong start because they understood the fundamentals from the beginning: strong content, fast delivery, and a clear commercial approach."
- Patricia Lay, Lead International Partnerships, bol
The bol opportunity
bol gives brands access to a substantial ecommerce audience across the Netherlands and Belgium, with 14 million active customers, an average of 26 million active users per month, and more than 43,000 selling partners on the platform. For international brands looking to reach Dutch consumers, that scale makes bol an important marketplace to consider as part of their expansion strategy.
Optimizing the offer with bundles and data
Once the fundamentals were in place, PURISH started looking for ways to improve its commercial offer.
Beauty products gave the team an opportunity to encourage customers to purchase multiple items together. Through ChannelEngine, PURISH could create bundles and volume discounts for bol.
"We can create bundles directly in ChannelEngine and test different discounts when customers buy more. It's a useful way for us to adapt the offer and see what works for the market."
- Ge Wang, Marketplace Director, PURISH
The team is also exploring advertising and promotional opportunities on bol.
Performance data helps decide where to focus. Insights from bol and ChannelEngine allow PURISH to look across SKUs, brands, categories, and marketplaces, identify stronger-performing products, and decide where more investment or a smaller long tail makes sense.
"If someone comes with an idea, we don't want the answer to be, 'I think this will work.' Everything should be based on data. We want to know which products have potential and where we should invest more."
- Ge Wang, Marketplace Director, PURISH
Early traction with room to grow
Within just a few months on bol, PURISH was already seeing evidence that the opportunity it had identified in the Netherlands was translating into customer demand.
The team had entered a new country while keeping the core marketplace processes connected to its wider operation. At the same time, it could adapt content, fulfillment, promotions, and assortment specifically for the Dutch market.
"We've only been on bol for around five months, and we've already seen encouraging monthly revenue with very few SKUs. We're happy with the start, and we also see that there's still a lot of potential."
- Ge Wang, Marketplace Director, PURISH
What comes next
PURISH plans to keep improving listings, refining forecasts, testing advertising and promotions, and using performance data to decide which products and brands deserve more attention.
With the integration foundation already in place, future marketplace opportunities do not need to start with rebuilding the technical setup. The team can focus earlier on the questions that matter locally: what to sell, how customers shop, how to fulfill efficiently, and where to invest.
"Entering a new market is not only about getting your products listed. You need the right marketplace, strong local execution, and an operation that can support what comes next. PURISH put those pieces together on bol."
- Mitchell Dröge, Alliance Manager, ChannelEngine
For PURISH, bol provided the route into the Dutch market. ChannelEngine gave the team a way to manage the operations behind that growth while building on the same foundation for future channels.
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