V&D: marketplace guide
About this guide
This is a ChannelEngine guide on the Amsterdam-based marketplace V&D. Here you can find information on how to request a V&D account, how to configure this channel on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.
Table of contents
Channel-specific requirements and exceptions
Commercial information
| Founded | 2018 (the homonymous department store was founded in 1887) |
| Founders | Willem Vroom, Anton Dreesmann |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam, the Netherlands |
| Area served (orders) | The Netherlands |
| Revenue | circa USD 93 million (2020) |
| Number of monthly visits | circa 300,000 |
| Website | V&D |
| Setup cost | EUR 499.00 (excl. VAT) |
| Commission | circa 15%, depending on the category |
| Other costs | none |
| Payment | once or twice per month, within the first five business days after the 1st or 15th of each month |
| Product categories | clothing, shoes, accessories, home and garden, electronics, health and beauty, and more |
| Input language | Dutch |
| Input currency | EUR |
| Content creation | yes |
| Minimum number of SKUs | no |
| Advertisement options | no |
| Profile on ChannelEngine | V&D |
How to request an account
To start selling on V&D, contact them via email. There is no open registration form, and only selected merchants can become partners.
Associated costs
V&D does not charge a monthly fee, but it does charge a setup fee of EUR 499.00 (excl. VAT) and a commission of approximately 15% on every sale – depending on the category.
Channel features
| Supported | Not supported |
| Product offers (price/stock updates) | Repricing |
| Product content (products are unique, no EAN matching) | External fulfillment |
| Orders | Sales channels |
| Cancelations | |
| Returns (merchant) | |
| Shipments |
Settings and configuration
Setting up each channel on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, once you add the channel:
- Go through the Setup
- Create a Product selection
- Complete the Categorization
- Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers
- Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion
- Finish the Activation
- Check the Listed products overview
Because V&D uses ChannelEngine's Channel API, it requires the following credentials:
- Your channel API key - see the Setup section for more details.
- Company name - see the Setup section for more details.
- Domain - the domain of your ChannelEngine account (e.g.: https://myshop.channelengine.net)
Channel-specific requirements and exceptions
Setup
On ChannelEngine
V&D uses an FTP system where offer and content files are uploaded every x hours. This is done in a specific folder, using the name of the company entered under the Setup section on ChannelEngine.
- Company name - this is the company name you want to use on V&D. As explained above, once you have entered a name and the connection is fully active, please do not change it without discussing this with V&D. Do not change the name once the connection is active, unless agreed with V&D, as this breaks the updating of existing offers and content. V&D does not automatically acknowledge that the name has changed, continuing to check the original folder for updates.
- Use grandparent products - unlike most marketplaces, V&D groups different variants under a single parent product. E.g.: both 't-shirt awesome blue - XL' and 't-shirt awesome green - S' need to have the same parent, such as 't-shirt awesome red', to be grouped together. Second level variation is done by grandparents. E.g.: the different sizes of blue t-shirts are grouped under the parent 't-shirt awesome blue', yellow under 't-shirt awesome yellow', etc. These are grouped under 't-shirt awesome', which is the grandparent. If you enable this option, all products with a common grandparent are grouped by the first parent to have V&D group all variants together.
- Strip query string params for ImageURLs? - this is a hidden setting, therefore it can only be changed by a ChannelEngine employee. By default, V&D does not allow query string parameters in URLs. However, exceptions can be made via this setting. E.g.: https://www.channelengine.net/image/image1.png?width=1000&height=1000&qual=90. These query string parameters can be used to change sizes and quality, which is usually undesirable on V&D, but they can also be used as access tokens to images or for added security – making them available for external download.
Because V&D uses ChannelEngine's Channel API to connect with merchants, they need the specific V&D Channel API key from your account. Once you have added V&D as a channel, you can find the required API key under Channel API access in the Setup section.
Categorization
Categorization is mandatory to get products listed on V&D. If you have a new category or product type that is not currently in the category tree, V&D allows you to create new categories. As V&D currently only targets a Dutch audience, category names are in Dutch.
Mappings
Content
V&D does not have any category-specific required attributes, and only some attributes are mandatory:
Required
- Delivery time - it uses a delivery time code based on the number of days, for a complete list check out the V&D: delivery time codes article.
- Main image URL - the URL of the main product image.
- Brand - the brand or manufacturer of the product.
- Name - the title of the product. HTML is not supported.
- Size - the size of the product.
- Color - the main color of the product.
Optional
- Extra image URL 1-9 - the URLs of the additional product images.
- Extra Informatie (Extra information) 1-5
- Hoogte (Height) - the height of the product.
- Long description - HTML is supported.
- Material - the main material in the product.
- Retourneerbaar product (Returnable product) - indicates if the product can be returned or not.
- Short description - HTML is not supported.
- Stapelkorting (Bulk discount) - allows for discounts when a buyer buys two or more of the same item. Currently V&D does not take the data from this attribute into account, so if you want to set a bulk discount you need to contact them directly.
Parent-child relationships
As V&D is mainly focused on fashion items, parent-child relationships are important. Every product listed on V&D is grouped under a parent product, with a P followed by a number. If a product is a standalone, it is its own parent. However, if you have products that have variations (e.g.: size and/or color), it is important that the relationships are set up correctly.
There are no mappings to set up relationships on V&D, the relationship as is set on ChannelEngine is used for the export. If you have grandparents and enabled the Use grandparents products setting, bear in mind that the grandparent product is used as a parent – and all underlying variations are grouped under this product.
Offer
To use from/for pricing, map the Catalog/From price field under the Offer mappings tab to set the from price. Note that the Catalog/From price must be higher than the Price before(re)price rules or Sale/For price, otherwise it is not applied.
Carrier
V&D allows unregistered carriers, therefore carrier mapping is not required. V&D also accepts an empty shipment (i.e.: no carrier method or track-and-trace code), but that is not recommended as buyers have no way to know when the product is going to be delivered – resulting in a poor customer experience.
Pricing
Unless you use a different default currency than EUR, no currency conversion is needed. There is no restriction on the usage of price rules on V&D.
Listed products
ChannelEngine does not receive any feedback regarding the status of your products, this is due to the fact that updates are first loaded into a staging environment on V&D. Therefore, the status of products under the Listed products on ChannelEngine is always None.
FAQs
Why are my updates not immediately visible?
V&D uses a strict uploading scheme, with product data updated every three hours and product offers updated hourly. Updates are first loaded into a staging environment before they are transferred to the live website every night.
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