Selling on Amazon across Europe: a guide to getting started

Growing and improving your business means constantly taking on new challenges. Your next challenge could be selling on Amazon across Europe to drastically increase your customer base; in this article, we explain how to do it.

Amazon provides great opportunities to expand your business market. One of these is the possibility of managing sales on Amazon channels in other European Union countries from your Italian marketplace.

The European Union countries where a marketplace exists, besides Italy, are: France, Germany, and Spain, along with the recent additions of the Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland. Obviously, since there isn't a dedicated marketplace for every nation, consumers from countries not listed will use the MP of another country; this must be taken into account to understand the audience you are targeting.

By offering products in these markets, you can significantly increase the pool of potential buyers. Let's understand what the limits are and what measures to take to make the most of this opportunity.

1. To sell in a country you must be in that country 2. Logistics and taxes 3. SEO

1. To sell in a country you must be in that country

To ensure your products are available on the various marketplaces, simply upload a product to the e-commerce site of each chosen country, using the same SKU every time.

Example: once product Y is uploaded to the Italian marketplace with SKU 123456, you will need to repeat the same operation in another marketplace of your choice; however, the product detail page must be filled out for each country.

This initial work is certainly long and tedious, but very important both because without it you cannot access the European market, and because SEO optimization will be essential to sell in a new country. If the workload seems like too much or too complex, in Italy there are many agencies that handle Amazon Marketplace management on behalf of companies (for example, us...).

2. Logistics and taxes

When talking about selling through Amazon in different countries, logistics and taxation are inevitably linked for various reasons. However, let's go in order and first understand the logistics alternatives to choose from.

• Self-shipping from Italy;

• Using Amazon FBA logistics from Italy;

• Using Amazon FBA logistics in one or more European countries other than Italy;

• Using Amazon FBA Pan-European logistics.

By shipping yourself from Italy, you do not face any local taxation as long as you stay below a specific annual turnover threshold. The downside in this case is staying outside the Prime circuit and thus being less attractive to customers who can choose products that will arrive at their homes much faster.

Using Amazon FBA logistics (which we explained very well here) from Italy involves the same tax logic as self-shipping; the main advantages are access to the Prime service (which provides a huge boost in terms of positioning) and the convenience, both economic and for reducing workload, of shipping large quantities of products at once instead of shipping to the customer every time.

If, instead, you choose to use Amazon FBA logistics in one or more European countries besides Italy, the tax issue becomes more complex. For every nation where an Amazon warehouse containing your goods is located, you will be required to register a VAT number in that country, which can be both an economic and bureaucratic problem.

The same happens when using Pan-European FBA logistics (in this case, you cannot choose which countries to be in, in exchange for lower logistics costs). The advantage here is significant if there are one or more countries where your presence is consolidated and turnover exceeds the threshold mentioned earlier (in which case you would have to open one or more new VAT positions anyway). The benefit is reducing logistics costs and thus increasing profits.

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3. SEO

When products are uploaded in multiple countries with the same SKU, the inventory data for each product will update automatically across all countries. Regarding the listing appearance, Amazon requires using the same photos in every country; texts, however, must be translated into the language of the marketplace.

Photos and images, as you have surely already read here, are very important for positioning in the Amazon search engine, so close attention must be paid to these factors.

Images, since they cannot be changed, must be "universal". Avoid writing important information on the photos, or if you do, the advice is to do it either in English or using formulas understandable everywhere (for example, instead of writing "misure", you can use arrows).

For texts, however, there are more options. You can choose to have them translated automatically by Amazon—minimum effort, but with the risk of incomprehensible descriptions and giving up the ability to choose the most suitable keywords.

Obviously, you can also choose to leave everything as is because you might think it's not worth the effort or when you are in a testing phase to understand how it works. But if your goal is to concretely expand your business, care and study will be needed.

There will certainly be a need for targeted market analysis for each country you decide to enter, to understand who your competitors are and how they work. Once certain dynamics are understood, the most suitable products for each country must be selected and a positioning strategy—both organic and paid—must be studied. As we have said many times, when taking the first steps on Amazon, it is essential to use advertising tools to gain better visibility and not be crushed by established sellers.

Especially at the beginning, and this applies to every marketplace, making some sales—even just a few—will be fundamental, as Amazon tends to prioritize sellers who have more completed sales, more experience, and more reviews; you will have to compete against them, and to win, you will need all available weapons.

For texts, keyword analysis will be crucial and also complicated given the language barriers. In this case, too, it could involve a major commitment to hire new collaborators or outsource the work to a specialized agency (we are always here).

Conclusions

To conclude, expanding your business to the European Union (just like doing so for the United States) is a very interesting opportunity to grow a business. Like anything, you need to prepare before jumping headlong into this new adventure, by researching and seeking advice from specialized agencies.