Top 5 strategies to accelerate your eCommerce growth in 2025
The annual Summit World Tour officially kicked off in Munich on March 25, bringing together more than 300 business leaders.
At the center of discussion was the impact of the platform economy on eCommerce strategies. With 67% of online sales now occurring on marketplaces and dropship platforms, this shift is reshaping commerce at an unprecedented pace.
The event featured an exceptional line-up of speakers including MediaMarkt, Zooplus, Autodoc, Decathlon, Galeria, ANWB, OBI and Douglas, to share how they're unlocking new opportunities for business growth.
These are the top five strategies leading eCommerce businesses unveiled during the Mirakl Summit in Munich.
1. Embrace the new eCommerce flywheel by leveraging retail media
The traditional eCommerce flywheel focused primarily on selection, driving traffic and growth. Today's market requires a new model centered on growth and profitability.
This new eCommerce flywheel considers the impact a growing marketplace has on the customer experience, combining the power of marketplaces and retail media.
Pierre-Yves Delforge, VP of marketplace at Zooplus, an online retailer focused on pet supplies, discussed in a session that the new flywheel leverages seller competition to drive retail media revenue, boosting profit margins by 2 to 3%.
Philip Kehela, co-founder and CEO of Mokebo, an online furniture brand, emphasized the importance of balancing commission structures: "If you start retail media, think about ways to get the transaction costs down to allow the advertisers and sellers to spend more on retail media. In the end, everyone will benefit way more from it."
Key takeaway: Start by building a critical mass of sellers in your marketplace to ensure enough competition for advertising placements and maximize revenue potential.
2. Develop a clear omnichannel strategy
The distinction between online and offline retail continues to blur. Leading retailers are now creating seamless experiences across all channels.
Jan Nientiedt, director of global partner program at Douglas, a major beauty retailer, highlighted their eCommerce approach: "The customer journey is very much consistent," with only a discrete "Douglas Partner" badge to indicate marketplace products.
Additionally, Douglas maintains strict service-level agreements for partners to ensure consistent branding across packaging, invoices and customer communications.
For sporting goods retailer Decathlon, their omnichannel strategy is to develop click-and-collect for marketplace items and testing showroom concepts for marketplace products in physical stores.
Joanna Kusmierczyk, head of marketplace at Decathlon Poland, explained: "Our main parameter, when expanding our offer, is to operate on this idea of one Decathlon offer, not 1P offer and 3P offer that exist next to each other."
Key takeaway: Focus on creating consistent, unified customer experiences across channels, and develop clear visual guidelines for marketplace products that maintain brand consistency.
3. Capitalize on data to drive agility and decision-making
The key to staying competitive in today’s eCommerce world is the ability to adapt quickly and innovate strategically.
As Joanna Kusmierczyk from Decathlon Poland said, "There is no agility without data." In fact, Decathlon has developed an internal index combining 12 performance indicators to effectively track marketplace success.
Douglas focuses particularly on traffic analysis, examining how adjacent categories drive traffic to their core assortment, and identifying cross-selling opportunities between categories.
Key takeaway: Invest in robust analytics capabilities that can track cross-category customer behavior. Establish regular review cycles to analyze performance data and make rapid adjustments to marketplace strategy.
4. Balance marketplace and retail offerings
Finding the right balance between first-party (1P) and third-party (3P) offerings emerged as a crucial factor for marketplace success.
Christian Kollesch, MediaMarkt VP and CEO of marketplace, shared their approach: "It's a complementary marketplace. It's not a competitive marketplace. We want to be smart and agile, and leverage opportunities the marketplace is giving us. It's bringing us so much more product variations in every kind of vertical, some we are acting in and others we are not.”
Frenkel Denie, chief commercial officer of ANWB, advised: "Focus on growth, not cannibalization." After six months of operating their marketplace, ANWB achieved a 20% growth in new clients and saw an increase in average basket size, all while maintaining low cannibalization rates.
Key takeaway: Develop clear guidelines for category management that specify which products should be 1P, 3P or both. Create regular review processes to evaluate performance and adjust the balance as needed.
5. Leverage your marketplace to test new categories with lower risks
The marketplace model enables rapid testing of new categories and brands, with significantly lower risk than traditional expansion.
Frenkel Denie from ANWB, says it best: "Think big, but start small."
ANWB used its marketplace to move from expanding product categories, to adding services and offering bundled solutions. Their long-term strategy is to create value through bundling that no other marketplace can provide.
Zooplus achieved rapid assortment expansion, with Pierre-Yves Delforge explaining: "I wanted us to list 25,000 SKUs within the next five years. We are five months after launch and we have 19,000 SKUs live, so we achieved a five year objective in five months."
Key takeaway: Establish a clear framework for testing new categories that includes specific KPIs and timeline milestones. Closely monitor metrics to quickly identify promising opportunities.
Thriving through acceleration: key insights from leaders
The Munich Summit 2025 delivered a clear message: for retailers, brands and B2B companies to achieve sustainable growth, they must adapt to this new era of eCommerce.
As Laure Le Gall, CRO of Mirakl, puts it, "It is never really about who the strongest, fastest, tallest or biggest is. It is about acceleration, thriving in a world where we see unprecedented speed of change."
Industry leaders have embraced this shift, leveraging marketplace strategies to broaden their product range, explore new categories, elevate the customer experience and boost profitability through retail media.
"Opportunities don't happen, you create them," Joanna Kusmierczyk from Decathlon said.
The retailers who create these opportunities through innovative platform strategies will be the ones leading eCommerce growth in 2025 and beyond.
