Dropwinkel.eu

Whenever Roberto Varisco went down to Italy to visit family, he was always asked to bring liquorice from home with him. And with each visit, the requested quantities kept growing. This got Varisco thinking. There must be more people out there who are dying to get their hands on tasty Dutch liquorice. It’s a typical Dutch product that you can’t find in other countries. And so, in 2001, Roberto started a webshop in liquorice and other delicious sweets.

Wide range of products

The company started from home with a couple of shelves for stock, but this quickly developed into something more. Today, those shelves have been moved to an external warehouse that now stores 600 different items. Besides liquorice, you can order wine gums, ‘hakhoning’ (chopped honey) and sugar-free sweets. Soon after the shop was opened, orders quickly started coming in from across the globe. Varisco: ‘We have received orders from all corners of the Earth. You can see from the names that they’re often Dutch people living abroad. Traditional Dutch sweets are immensely popular among expats, and given the high freight cost, the average order size is large. We ship out orders to the most unusual destinations such as Mexico, Brazil, Japan, or even more exotic: the Cayman Islands.’

Although many of their orders are placed overseas, about 85% of their orders come from the Netherlands. Sweets are also sold at supermarkets, but the assortment at Dropwinkel.eu is much more extensive and Dutch people are getting more comfortable with online shopping. Most of the sales go to individuals, but during the holidays, many companies place their orders at Dropwinkel.eu. ‘Our tool-shaped liquorice and wine gums are immensely popular with technical companies,’ Varisco explains.

Varisco devotes much of his time and energy to online marketing. He was the first business to sell sweets to the Dutch and Belgian market via the Dutch online megastore, Bol.com, and that has proven to be a big success. Over the years, reviews from both Bol.com and other sites have consistently rated Dropwinkel.eu with a rating higher than 9/10. The first steps have also been taken to sell products on Amazon.

The future

Revenues skyrocketed in 2020 and 2021 (65% and 82% respectively). If this growth continues, a larger warehouse and extra staff will be needed to ship the additional orders on time.

Export countries Dozens of countries on all continents of the world.