In terms of Europe, there are five key Amazon marketplaces: the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. And a report has been examining how sellers in those 5, sell amongst themselves.
It will hardly be a surprise to learn that the UK is the most popular market, and the biggest, when it comes to sellers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The result is, by percentage, the Brits are the least enthusiastic exporters by comparison. 66% of Spanish retailers on Amazon sell to the UK. But only 21% of Brits sell to Spain. The UK is the most popular with 60893 active sellers
And most European sellers are selling their products on Amazon UK. In Spain for example, two thirds of Amazon sellers also sell their products in the UK. There are only 6,600 sellers in Europe who sell their stuff on all five European Amazon marketplaces.
You can take a look at the report from Marketplace Pulse here.
Amazon FBA, Fulfilment by Amazon does take a great deal of stress out of selling overseas but there are boring details. VAT, in particular, can be a genuine concern for online sellers in the EU.
7 Responses
Thats because the Spanish are hard work! Hardly worth selling to them, they need babysitting constantly and expect the world from you.
It is because Amazon expects you to have a local return address when you sell on any of these markets outside of the UK. The cost and hassle are not worth it.
I agree. And most of our “lost-in-transit” parcels are somewhere in Spain… 🙁
We used Amazon PRIME services overseas, the FEES are that high on some products we have to go 40% over the source Marketplace in the UK to make anything. Far too expensive, customers see that also and look elsewhere.
Italy has been our best site, Germany you are not allowed to actually list anything we have like 20% of our product.
The UK has a better postal network. Shipping to UK buyers from Spain is much easier than shipping to Spanish buyers from the UK. We have to deal with lost rates that are crazily high or add the cost of expensive tracking. Result – either good sales but worrying metrics or terrible sales.
France and Germany are fine though.
That’s because UK based suppliers listing on the Amazon European sites have to either provide a local return address in that European country or you have to pay for the return to the UK – the customer takes no responsibility for their decision to purchase. UK exporters become uncompetitive …. I wonder what the European competition lawyers think of this new Amazon policy!
Hi
We have stopped selling via any of the Amazon Europe sites, and even pulled all our European FBA stock back to the UK.
Italy and Spain orders just went missing, and Amazon just automatically awarded the AtoZ claims to the buyer. Their postage system is shockingly bad, but they must have the best dressed postman wearing all our products!!!
Germany had a 70% return rate on clothing, and they expected us to pay, so the 30% who kept the items had to pay for the returns- Not worth it.
France is just too much hassle and fed up of rude messages blaming us.
Final straw was Amazon insisting on Return address in each country, and we also pulled all our Amazon FBA stock back from European warehouse because we found out that we were responsible for the VAT and had to be registered in each country where the goods were stored, but we never found that out until after the sale was made.
Not worth the hassle, rudeness, cost and grief prefer to sell to the Rest of The World!