Sell ​​throughout Europe

One important factor to keep in mind is that expanding to multiple marketplaces always involves additional costs. There’s no shame in deciding to stay focused on your home marketplace a bit longer, ensuring you can comfortably cover the expenses associated with using multiple marketplaces.
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There are multiple things you need to keep in mind when expanding your business to different countries. By default, Amazon provides two major methods for FBA sellers to do that: EFN (European Fulfillment Network) and PanEU. EFN basically means that your stock is stored in the country of your main marketplace and then being sent to other countries when an order is being placed. With PanEU on the other hand, Amazon distributes your stock through multiple countries depending on the expected demand for your items. As PanEU requires multiple sophysticated and costly bookkeeping measures, we concentrate on EFN today.
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There are 4 things you need to keep in mind when starting out with EFN:

The topic of packaging licenses, in particular, strongly depends on the marketplace you want to add. Each country in the EU has different requirements and costs can vary significantly. Thats one of the main reasons we recommend to add one marketplace at a time nd ensuring everything is set up correctly before expanding to more marketplaces.
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Shipping products to multiple countries requires some important changes to your bookkeeping. We highly recommend working with an experienced tax advisor to make this process as smooth and error-free as possible. A few years ago, you would have had to file a VAT declaration in every single country where you sold products, and make individual payments to each country's tax office. However, this process has become much simpler with the introduction of OSS (One-Stop-Shop). With OSS, you only need to register once and declare your sales and VAT for all countries in a single consolidated report. Additionally, there is only one tax payment to be made, which greatly simplifies things for sellers. All you need to do is register for OSS, no matter how many countries you plan to sell in.

There's also a threshold of €10,000 net (this may vary depending on your home country) before you're required to register for OSS. Until you reach this threshold, you can continue invoicing with your home country’s VAT, even for cross-border sales. Please be very careful to not exceed this threshold though. Once exceeded, you cannot retroactively register for OSS, which means you’d have to return to the old system, declaring taxes in each country individually. This can lead to significant costs and administrative headaches, so it’s best to avoid this scenario. You can register for OSS to take effect at the beginning of each upcoming quarter.
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You're already familiar with legal texts, as they are required for your home marketplace. However, it's important to note that you will need legal texts for each marketplace individually. If not, competitors may issue legal warnings, which can lead to unnecessary costs and trouble.

In most cases, the service providers you already use to obtain legal texts for your home country offer subscription upgrades that include texts for multiple marketplaces, usually for just a few extra bucks.
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As mentioned earlier, it’s difficult to provide general advice on packaging licenses since the requirements vary significantly depending on the country you plan to sell in. Some countries have strict regulations, while others have minimal requirements. A great way to get an overview is by visiting the following website: Verpackungslizenz24

For beginners, it’s advisable to start with countries that either don’t require any packaging licenses for foreign sellers or have a relatively high threshold of packaging waste allowed before a license is required. Notable examples include Italy and the Netherlands.

Also, Amazon is offering an „EPR Service“ for France and Spain. This program makes selling to these countries a lot easier as Amazon is basically doing everything required in regards to packaging licenses for you. Its important to keep in mind this service is not free but costs are related to the amount of products you are selling to each country as well as the amount of different product categories you’re selling. From our personal experiences, the prices are absolutely moderate while requiring substantially less work than registering for these countries by yourself. More information in regards to the EPR services can be found here: France, Spain
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Enabling EFN is quite straightforward. When creating an FBA listing, you can also offer a product on additional marketplaces by enabling them at the bottom of the listing setup screen and setting a price for each specific marketplace. Since the items will be shipped from your home marketplace, keep in mind that shipping fees to other countries will be significantly higher, so it's important to set higher prices on these marketplaces.

To accurately calculate the costs and potential profits for EFN, you can use the Amazon revenue calculator. Simply select "European Fulfillment Network" under „Select Option“ in the middle of the right-hand side to ensure you're factoring in the correct fees.

With EU-wide sales, you can significantly increase your revenue. And with ProfitPath, you can expand to up to 4 new marketplaces! Here, we’ll show you how: Europe-wide Search.