Why should you expand your selling activities into the EU? There are four major Amazon marketplaces located in the European Union: Germany, Spain, France and Italy. Using those fulfilment centres as inventory bases, Amazon fulfils orders to 26 countries within the EU. This creates a market with an incredible 500 million potential customers.
But even though those figures make it tempting to tap into the European market right away, careful planning in advance is crucial for a successful establishment of your market presence overseas. More importantly, rushing to action and neglecting compliance issues can have costly consequences for you and your business.
The European Union is not joking when it comes to their laws and regulations regarding consumer protection. Non-compliance is being penalised with high fines and other legal measures.
We recommend working through the following 5-step checklist before engaging in any trade activities. If your answer to each of the following statements is “YES!”, congratulations: you are ready for Amazon FBA in the European market.
Before you start selling your products to the EU, make sure you comply with any EU regulations that the authorities impose on sellers, such as GPSR. In any case, the importer is fully liable for product safety and conformity, not the manufacturer. Please note that there are national, as well as supranational, standards sellers have to meet. But there is no need to worry. Professional laboratory testing and product inspection services are available to help you verify your compliance with any given norm.
Here is a list of EU policy areas of product legislation that apply to all products that are imported into the EU:
Policy Areas of Product Legislation:
Product Groups:
Dealing with taxes is the unpleasant, onerous part of doing business, but it has to be done. Every state’s government wants a piece of your revenue cake, and so do the European ones. It can be exhausting and time-consuming to gain an overview of new laws in different languages, especially when you want to enter a multi-state market like the EU. But it is absolutely crucial and inevitable to take care of your tax management. Not drawing enough attention to detail or, even worse, neglecting tax responsibility, can result in business failure due to staggeringly high penalty payments.
One way to handle all this red tape is to participate in professional webinars and workshops on a regular basis or, more conveniently, to hire a professional financial services provider. The main benefit of hiring a professional firm is that they know exactly what documents are required and are likely to have an established network for a fast and easy processing of your requests.
Pocket Knowledge VAT:
Once you've made sure that your products meet all the requirements set by the European authorities, it’s time to think about the packaging & labelling.
The packaging used for your products has to meet all requirements that were established for protecting the environment and the consumer.
Please note that there can be additional, country-specific regulations imposed by individual EU member states. We recommend consulting an expert, as they can quickly and professionally determine if your packaging meets all national and supranational standards and if all possible license fees have been paid. We recommend assigning all tasks related to those highly complex issues to a consultant firm specialised in Amazon FBA EU, as they are experienced and have topic-specific knowledge.
Every product that belongs to any of the categories listed below and is sold within the EU must have a label containing the most important product information and the address of an authorised representative/importer from the EU. These guidelines ensure that customers receive all relevant facts about the product before making their purchase decision.
Product categories:
Before offering your products, make sure that your listings and legal texts are available in the languages of all countries where your products will be available for purchase. If you decide to enter the five biggest markets of the EU, then your listings should be available in English, German, Spanish, French and Italian. It is absolutely crucial for your sales success that the translation is thoroughly flawless. The reason is that possible customers are likely to decide against the purchase of a product if its listing, product description or legal text is sloppily translated. In that case, they will consider the listing as dubious and therefore not trustworthy. So if you want to serve any EU market besides the UK, it makes sense to invest in a professional Amazon Listing Translation Service. That way, you can be sure that your listings are proofread and won’t contain spelling or grammar errors that could impair your sales prospects.
The last (but no less important) task on your checklist is working out different SEO strategies for your products. Yes, you've read that correctly: strategies, not strategy. One huge mistake sellers make is to assume that one SEO strategy will work for every country. This is not the case; it is not sufficient to develop a single strategy and just translate it to other languages, because search patterns vary from state to state. This even applies to countries in which the same language is spoken, as is the case with Germany and Austria. Culture, dialect and emphasis on different product attributes are only a few examples of factors influencing search behaviour. But developing many different keyword strategies, optimising your product listings and texts, as well as monitoring and steadily working on your ranking, will take a lot of your time. Therefore, it is advisable to take advantage of a professional Amazon SEO strategy service to help you outperform your competition and boost your sales.
