Advice on best way to approach Amazon EU

We’ve been doing Amazon in the US for 4 years now, and on Amazon UK for just over a year. It’s not easy, but it’s paying it’s own way, and now that the US has scaled up a little bit the profitability is starting to make sense.

Amazon UK has been a slow start, but there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like we have things somewhat under control, and the toughest hurdle was probably VAT, which is now handled.

We’re now looking at Amazon EU and it seems things are markedly more complicated.

1) VAT – We’re told you need to register for VAT in every country where we warehouse product. Not a problem, but some suggest multiple VAT registrations so that shipping is faster, while others say stick with your single biggest addressable market and go from there.

2) Compliance – we’re somewhat lucky here, all of our products are EU compliant and we even have packaging in French, complete with Triman (recyclability) symbology. We’ve heard that’s only the beginning, would appreciate any input here from experienced sellers.

3) Amazon marketing firms – we’ve spoken with a few but the conversation drops off because the firms with experience say we’re not yet big enough for them, and everyone else doesn’t seem trustworthy enough to be in charge of a brand like ours.

Some disclosure – We are in the health/beauty space and have been in business for 17 years with our brand and line of unique products (all protected through Amazon’s brand registry).

It appears that we are currently getting orders from the EU that Amazon is fulfilling from the UK. Not exactly sure how that works, honestly seems like a little bit of black box but no complaints on the incremental sales.

Anyone have some helpful advice on breaking into Amazon EU?