How to Sell on Amazon Europe: Complete Step-by-Step Guide

If your brand is already on Amazon US (or another marketplace, such as India, Japan or Australia), choosing to sell on Amazon Europe may be the best decision you’ve ever made.

It’s a great way to increase your sales and diversify your business. You might even grow your brand to be recognized around the world. Best of all, it’s easier to launch on a European marketplace than you’d think.

Read on for a step-by-step guide on how to start selling on Amazon Europe.

How to Start Selling on Amazon’s European Marketplaces

A few administrative hurdles aside, selling on Amazon Europe is relatively straightforward, assuming you’re already selling on another Amazon marketplace.

There are four stages to expanding your products to European countries:

• Decide which marketplaces to sell on, which products to sell, and how to fulfill your products.
• Set up your Amazon Europe seller account, European business entity and clear all the legal hurdles.
• Set up product listings in the language of your target marketplace.
• Run a product launch in your new market.

Now let’s break it down step-by-step into a guide you can easily follow.

Choose your market(s)

First of all, figure out where you want to sell.

At the time of writing, Amazon has nine marketplaces across Europe:

• United Kingdom
• Germany
• Spain
• France
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Poland
• Sweden
• Turkey

From these marketplaces, you can reach customers in up to 28 countries across Europe (not only those in the country you list in).

You can start selling in all of these marketplaces straight away. However, the more marketplaces you launch on, the more complex and time-consuming it will be. It’s best to start with just one or two EU countries, and as you grow, you can expand to additional markets.

Germany is often recommended as a starting point (recommended by Amazon themselves), due to its number of English speakers and central location, which makes it easier to reach customers across Europe with just one listing.

The UK used to be a favorite for Amazon EU sellers as well, which is much easier to expand to as an English-speaking country. But with Brexit, it’s no longer possible to ship across Europe from an Amazon UK listing. So it’s recommended to make your “home marketplace” one that’s part of the European Union.

Check the rules, regulations and legal obligations for your chosen marketplace

As part of deciding where to start selling, you should do research into the legal requirements for selling in that country.

You’ll have to consider things like:

• Intellectual property laws
• Taxes, customs and import fees
• Accounting laws
• Consumer protection laws
• Packaging and packaging waste regulations
• Health and safety laws

The full scope of what’s required in terms of laws and regulations in the US is outside of our expertise, so you will be best served getting an expert to provide more insight here.

Amazon offers extensive content on European tax and regulatory considerations here – but you should reach out to a lawyer to ensure you’re covered on all fronts.

It’s best to do this research before you move too far in the process, just in case you run up against some issues that make it difficult or costly to launch your products in a particular marketplace.

Learn about VAT

This could be part of the previous step. But the topic of VAT in the EU is so daunting to so many sellers, it’s worth talking about on its own.

VAT (value-added tax) is the equivalent of sales tax in the US. It can be a complex topic, and differs in some ways to US sales tax, which some may find confusing.

Amazon provides some info on VAT, which will help introduce you to the subject. We’d advise also getting a professional to help in this area, to make sure you fully understand your obligations here.

Again, it’s vital you understand this before moving forward. VAT costs will influence your cost of goods sold, which will influence your profit margins. You don’t want to list your products and start selling, only to find out you’re not making a profit due to the cost of VAT.

Establish EU business concerns

Once you fully understand your legal requirements and obligations, you can set up all the business accounts that are necessary to start selling in Europe.

You don’t necessarily need to register a new business in Europe – if you have one registered in the US, you can use this business entity to sell in European countries as well. However, you will need to obtain a few things, such as:

• A VAT identification number
• An EORI (Economic Operator Registration and Identification) number
• A trademark for your brand in your new country (important if you want to take advantage of Brand Registry)

You can also use your US bank account to sell in Europe. This will mean using the Amazon Currency Converter when you get paid out though, which may cause you to lose money. Consider opening a new bank account in Europe to minimize costs to your business.

Set up an Amazon Europe seller account

Once you’ve decided where to sell, researched your legal obligations and set up the necessary business concerns, you can set up your Amazon seller account for the European market.

You can follow this link to set up an Amazon Seller Central Europe account. The good thing here is that you only need to set up one account, no matter how many European marketplaces you plan to sell on.

This is known as a European Unified Account. It lets you manage multiple EU marketplaces, all from a single account. You will need to ensure you satisfy all necessary laws and regulations for individual countries, though.

Create your product listing(s)

Now you can create your product listings for the new marketplace.

If your ASIN is already listed on the new marketplace, you can use the Build International Listings (BIL) tool to transfer your offer from the US (or your existing marketplace) to the new market.

If a listing doesn’t exist yet for the ASIN, you’ll need to set it up from scratch.

Here are some considerations you should have when setting up product listings in a new market:

• Your listings need to be translated into the native language of whichever marketplace you’re selling on (e.g. French for Amazon France). The BIL tool will automatically translate your listing, but this may not come out perfectly in the target language. Google translate, too, is a risky option. You’re best to hire a professional to translate your listings (Margin Business is a service we recommend for this).
• Put some time and effort into keyword research for the new market. Amazon SEO works just the same on Amazon European marketplaces, so it’s important to find the right keywords to maximize your visibility.
• Optimize your listing for both conversions and SEO, as you would on other marketplaces. It might pay to have a professional, fluent speaker of the language of your target marketplace to help get your copy on point.
• You may need to alter your pricing, taking into account costs related to fulfillment and VAT, and the cost of competing products on the marketplace.
• You might find that not all your products will do well in European marketplaces. There may be more competition for some, or less demand than there is in the US. Do some market research to see which of your products have the highest potential in the EU.

Related: Find out how to do a competitive analysis on Amazon to better understand your market.