Pieter Zwart, owner of the company once had a dream: to become a multimillionaire. In 1999 he founded a company called Coolblue. Now, years later, he is listed on Quote’s top 100 of young entrepreneurs. Estimated capital? 165 million euros.
How did he manage to grow his company to the only webshop out of the 40,000 webshops on the Dutch market that has an annual turnover of over one billion euros? According to Mr. Zwart, it is all about customer centric entrepreneurship: a business culture where the customer is at the centre of everything you do.
His business model is based on two themes: EBITDA and Customer Happiness. While the first is not particularly striking, the second one stands out more. Coolblue’s mission related to this theme: put a smile on the face of every customer.
By trying to achieve this, Coolblue has some valuable and unique features for their 321 webshops. They, for example, never charge shipment costs, have a same day delivery, even on Sundays. Besides, their typical blue delivery boxes contain little jokes, clients receive handwritten postcards with an ‘enjoy your new product’ wish or invite you at one of their physical stores for a cup of coffee.
The interesting measure behind these ideas is the Net Promoter Score. While a positive NPS is, generally speaking, considered to be good, it is rather interesting to make a comparison with the industry. “NPS is about competition. If you are able to outperform you competitors in NPS, you are able to outperform them in growth and profitability”, as stated by Pieter Zwart.
With a NPS score of 63, Coolblue has the highest score in the Netherlands. Their aim is to create an even larger distance between Coolblue and the competition. Next to that, their most recent study in customer satisfaction showed 96 percent points. During a guest lecture at the Erasmus University, Pieter Zwart indicated that that is something to be proud of. Nevertheless, he wants to reach a 100% score on customers satisfaction. These two examples clearly indicate his greediness and persistence to keep improving.
That greediness, together with customer-centric entrepreneurship, the service of Coolblue and its playful marketing ideas, were the main success factors contributing the realization the( over-)ambitious dream of Pieter Zwart.
