Unlocking Amazon’s European Potential: Strategy and Success Stories

With a strong presence in both the UK and Greece , lazat supports brands across the globe in navigating complexities of the Amazon marketplace . Alex himself is an Amazon FBA seller and the founder of the Athens e-commerce meetup , bringing years of on-hands experience and insights into the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape .

Today , we're diving into the critical topic of managing Amazon accounts for global brands , the challenges that come with it and how companies can stay ahead of this dynamic environment .

You guys are helping us sell in Canada , in Mexico , but we want to break out because the markets in the UK , Germany and France and Japan are really big . So this is the perfect topic , which is a great place to grow , and Amazon kind of makes it easy .

So really , first , before we get into that , I want to know and I think everybody wants to know a little bit more about you , Lezzat , and what inspired you to start Lezzat .

So at the time I was laid off from a previous company and all things came together as such and I stumbled upon , basically , amazon and a friend of mine told me that he knows of a person that's selling Tupperware on Amazon US and making , I think , a bit over $6 million back then . So that intrigued me .

I did a course , I started learning about Amazon and started as an Amazon seller . Soon I realized that it's more difficult than you would expect to sell on Amazon , and that actually started the need to create Lezat , which essentially helps alleviate those problems and makes it easier for sellers to sell on Amazon and grow on Amazon . So that's the story .

Yeah , no , that's great .

Again , I think that most of the sellers not everybody , but most of the sellers that are selling are on the North American , or at least the US , platform today . Tell us about what's the key differences between managing Amazon accounts in the EU versus the US .

So you obviously have your german , which is german is the biggest amazon marketplace , and in europe , then followed by uk , and then obviously you move into France , spain and Italy , so all of those you need to have localized content . Now , it goes a bit beyond this because there's also some other complexities that come with it .

So it's also the regulatory and compliance which is a big issue for a lot of sellers . How you do your fulfillment is also a big issue , so how you need to be VAT registered but also use Amazon's warehouse , and also where you're going to ship your majority of your products to .

So there is a few complexities that are before selling on Amazon , while you're going to be selling , and obviously making sure that you know how to do it going forward , because managing PPC in all these languages , restock , et cetera can be more complex .

However , obviously the price is there for the grabs , as I say to our clients , because there's less competition and actually Amazon Europe is growing quite fast . Each year there's more markets added to it . Amazon Europe is growing quite fast . Each year there's more markets added to it .

It's a growing market and it's somewhere where we see a lot of demand for these sort of services expanding from US over to Europe .

You mentioned a couple of things like compliancy , regulatory , but I think the bat register report , like you , got to get that going right yeah yeah that from the last uh , from our last check , that's for germany it's at three months .

It used to be more , it used to be seven , so that's not very easy . So imagine having all the plans and all the work and everything ready , only to be told that you have to wait seven months for a bureaucratic thing .

So I guess the first step that people need to do is essentially they need to understand their total addressable market , the segmented addressable market that they're going for , so that they can understand . Okay , well , if I take my product , which Amazon marketplaces make sense ? Where do I start ? We usually recommend you start with one , whether it's Germany or UK .

Uk is the easiest one , so usually most people go for that , but also Germany is very lucrative because it opens the whole EU space . So you can find distributors of Amazon . You can use your D2C website and actually translate it and have a version of it in German language . So it's not just what I'd like listeners to understand .

It's not when we say we want to start selling on Amazon in Europe , we're actually saying we're opening a whole new chessboard in Europe and doing the fulfillment and everything right for Amazon means it's also applicable to other retailers offline , online and D2C . So first step is understanding where .

Learn who your competitors are in each one of those marketplaces , learn what price they're selling in . If you're able to have some tools , like the leading tools for searching data and market size , etc .

Use some of those to understand what's happening and then try and realistically see whether your product , with the reviews that it has , the USP that it has and the positioning it has as a brand , can actually stand there . That's something I think a lot of people can do , even without talking to a specialist agency or using some external help .

That's something any owner could do on their own . Just a tip for your audience Obviously , make sure you use a local postcode . So if you're in Amazon Germany , find a postcode in Berlin , for example , and use that so that you get the correct searches on Amazon and not just any searches .

So the easy way of explaining this and by all means it's not that I'm an accountant by trade as such , but this comes from my experience and seeing what my clients also do , and I'm also selling on Amazon Europe so the way it works is there's a threshold from which you can sell from Germany to Italy , for example , sell from Germany to Italy , for example , but

then if you exceed that threshold , then you need to start paying tax in Italy for those products . So there's a tool called One Stop Shop , the OSS , which is a quick way to actually get VAT registered and attribute your VAT to all those countries . So essentially , what's going to happen is the normal step .

The most common way that we see things happening is some people they just set up Amazon Germany . They have a warehouse outside of Amazon where they input the goods , then they drip feed Amazon FBA Germany . Once that is set up , then they activate the rest of the countries , which is Italy , france , spain , poland , belgium and Sweden .

It's not as big as the other ones . They're catching up , but not as big . So Italy , france , spain and Germany is what we call the EU4 . So once they activate those , some sales start to come in . Some sales start to come in .

If a product is very unique and there's a match out of Amazon , also a trend , et cetera , then usually the sales pick up a bit faster . When you hit that 10,000 euro threshold , then actually you need to be VAT registered in that specific country .

So it's always good to keep an eye on this , because regulatory compliance can actually come with fines and can actually be something quite annoying for sellers at the beginning . So it's something that you should know and take it as a positive thing , because the more you grow , the more you have to comply with the taxman , and it's one of those countries .

There's a program , essentially , so in other countries where Amazon doesn't have a marketplace , if you buy from Amazon Germany , the free delivery is up to 50 euros or over , so actually it's pretty economical really to even purchase from a country like Greece to buy from Amazon Germany your products and pretty good service in terms of delivery .

So , as such , what has happened is Amazon Germany has grown a lot . It's become the biggest one in Europe and continues to grow . So that's where people focus their effort and that's where we would recommend they focus it as well and then localize it in other countries .

Is that true or not ?

It's a very , very small detail and it's one of those things that gets slipped . But if you don't have an Amazon expert by your side or an e-commerce expert , it might happen . So they say , well , we have this product . Well , we're going to sell in Germany . Okay , well , we need new packaging . Okay , well , new packaging .

Okay , well , new packaging means use barcode , and that's where the issue becomes . So when they create that new barcode , then you cannot carry those reviews with you , so the barcode has to be the same so your UPC has to be the same right . Yes , that's the unique identifier of Amazon saying that this product is linked with this product .

You actually have a very good head start with those reviews going in , let alone some brand recognition , let alone also Amazon does . I don't know if you're aware of this , but Amazon also has incentives for US sellers , one that gets all over in Europe , and there's quite big incentives in terms of cash back and allowances , et . Etc .

That they offer , usually through approved agencies and such . But this is also a very clear winner , essentially , and a reason why people could come over .

Now you might want to have it in the Netherlands . A lot of people have it there because they can actually just arrive , it's quick to get your EORI number and your VAT number there and then while you apply for your german and so on , and also netherlands is a very , very good hub for custom clearance in europe , etc .

So the reason why this is happening is I'll just give you a real example of an actual case that happened to us last week . So we had an account came over and they had their account closed because a previous expert didn't know what they were doing . Anyhow , they put a lot of stock into Amazon . They had got a section three . We unblocked the account .

Oh well , then we see that there's a lot of stock that they sent . They had sent pallets and pallets for the first order , because Amazon as a new seller allows you to send as much as you want .

But then obviously it's a ticket time bomb , because now they have a lot of stock , now that client is not in a country , in Bulgaria , so they don't have a marketplace there . So we go into Amazon and say , well , remove some of that inventory right , send it back to the customer . You can't . Amazon says removal orders you can only do on an Amazon marketplace .

So Germany , france , italy , spain , netherlands , belgium , sweden , poland , give me an address there , okay . So that's a very common .

So finding offline distributors , finding et cetera . That way you can best utilize big shipments sending to Europe , your containers as such , and be able to move products much faster in this continent .

Is it going to translate it or am I going to have to redo the entire copy ?

This is exactly what's happening over this side of the Atlantic as well . So therefore , your German listing is not just a closed translation , it's not just going to cut it . You need those keywords , you need to speak the language of a consumer , you need to use the terminology that people use for the specific product , and so on .

That does include your A-plus content and your brand story and your video and infographics , so it's very crucial

. Another tip for your audience whenever you do design work whether it's with an agency or someone else , a third party or in-house make sure you keep those source files ready , because you never know when you need to reopen them and just change the English to French or Italian and so on . That's going to be very handy .

Maybe there are some changes in how people search on amazoncouk as opposed to dot com , but it's very small compared to , obviously , the other marketplaces . Um , so in germany , france , italy and spain you have to have local English is not going to cut it .

If you only have US , you need to do the EU one and if you are going to sell in UK , you need the UK one . So prices for those depend . Really , if you do it alone , most sellers can do them DIY . They can do them themselves . It's pretty self-executive and easy process to do and it can take anywhere .

Really , from my experience , anywhere between three , maybe four to five months . It depends .

In the US they have this program called IP Accelerator where you could use an approved lawyer , ip lawyer in the US and before you get the trademark completed , which could take a while , in a couple of weeks you're up on Amazon with brand registry . Does that exist ?

So it's one of those quick things that you want to look at together as you're doing your VAT and your EORI , which is your import code . As such , you want to look at that EU and UK IPO together .

So part of getting the VAT , you got to get brand registry sorted out if you want to have good content or you won't be able to bring over your A-plus content , I imagine Correct .

Right , whether you go with a specialist agency like us or anyone , a consultant or anything , you will need to do those things because you want to do them as professional as possible to give the best chances that you can to grow in those marketplaces .

And the first couple of months obviously is about setting , getting that data back from Amazon , advertising , ranking , all of those things . So realistic expectation is there's going to be a couple of months where you collect data before you actually start seeing those things .

So realistic expectation is there's going to be a couple of months where you collect data before you actually start seeing those results , very similar to when you launch a new product on Amazon . Really , you don't expect month one or month two to be high profit , high revenue no , but I'm hoping with the reviews .

Main image , which obviously applies for your sponsor product . Again , speed data testing , your main image for CTR and so on . Those experiments will still apply . So therefore , you can bring with you lessons learned , because an optimized Amazon image is the same in US and in Germany .

Now what you need to start learning a bit more is your other data , like your competitors , or maybe the category , or maybe the ASIN you're targeting or the keywords you're targeting , that sort of thing . But again , you're not starting from scratch .

Also , you will have a better understanding of how you're doing your upper funnel , mid funnel and lower funnel in US and how you're allocating budget to those different type of campaigns , so you can use a similar structure as well . So month one is going to look like this .

Month six , my setup , should be looking something like this and you can start to bring this in that methodology , bring it in into Europe as well , and from our experience , it's less competitive than US . Us budgets are much higher for PPC and there's a lot more competition in AI tools and agencies involved , whereas in Europe it's significantly less .

So we tend to see very , very good ROAS over here .

And we help find unauthorized sellers and find the source that they're getting it from and getting it off the platform to make it a cleaner channel on Amazon .

But I think , and you tell me , in some of the countries you can't have a minimum advertised price . Is that right ?

It's an offense . You can actually have very serious consequences with this . Similar versions of this applies to EU as well , to a different extent in its country . So the reason as such the enforcement of losing your buy box and the enforcement of maintaining a price is a very delicate process and something you need to manage .

Now , it really depends on the size of the clients .

Now we've seen clients that come over to Europe and say , well , spain and Italy have exclusivities , so we don't touch those , we just update the listings , update the content and obviously their distributors , their exclusive distributors in those countries , sell , and then other countries , like Germany , for example , is up for grabs , so in which case , they're the

exclusive seller . Now there are procedures in place . If someone , for example , is selling your product , how to go about it ? You buy one , you see if it's exact where they get it from . If need be , you can use transparency , although I wouldn't necessarily recommend that .

But you don't get this issue of what you see very often in the US with hijackers and also people selling a copycat of your product . It's easier done in the US than it is in the EU and one of the main reasons is there's a lot of paperwork involved when you're setting up firstly in the EU . So you're lucid .

Maybe you've heard of that which has to do with recycling and how you abide with recycling regulations and plastic regulations , etc . So all of these are very , very important and actually help make it difficult to enter , but also the people that are makes it a better room for them to grow professionally professionally , but it's the same story .

You're going to have the person who's selling , I don't know let's say water bottles , and then they're selling water bottles that are unique , et cetera , and they're doing I don't know something like 5 million on Amazon per year . They've never sold in Europe . They had one time a distributor in the UK didn't do much . Their product does not exist in Europe .

So those people , there's never going to be anyone that competes with them in Europe .

They have some of their product being sold at a ridiculously high price X5 , et cetera . So when they go into that market then actually that's like a cleanup process , because you've got the original , you've got the ownership , you've got the correct price , et cetera . If anyone's trying to use the design , et cetera , you can get those down .

So it's part of that process . It's a slow process , but the problem is not as big as it's part of that process . It's a slow process , but the problem is not as big as it's over in the US on similar cases .

Do you think I'm able to convert the price so I can make $10 or $20 more , or am I going to be probably on par with my US pricing ? Can you make more margin in Europe ?

You're in a very good position if you're one of the original inventors of something , and then you don't have a lot of competition . So therefore , you can justify why the price is more expensive in Europe rather than UK compared to your listings . So it's not a direct exchange rate conversion as such .

You're , you go into the amazon calculator , it tells you what the fba price is and that's your price , or is it ? Is it changing if somebody's buying it from poland , from germany , then germany to germany ?

And if I buy from Germany and I'm in Germany , it's obviously free , with prime over a certain threshold , or if I'm a member , and so on . It's very similar , I guess , to the sense of if you're in US and you buy from somewhere abroad , let's say somewhere in Latin America , for example , or you buy within the country in the US . That's how that goes .

Searches is on Amazon Germany per month , and then you've got something like 350 on UK , and then it goes 160 , 160 . So France and Italy is more or less the same , and then just a tiny bit less is Amazon Spain , and then all the other ones are . Then the gap is quite big . So Netherlands is about 20 , sweden is about 15 , poland 15 , belgium 11 .

And , just to give you an understanding , com is 2.2 billion . So if I add all those together , roughly you could say that the searches are about 60% of com is all of Europe . But then next year we've got Ireland coming up . So that's exciting because you've got a country that has quite a lot of spend online close to UK .

Many other things that can actually work well and it keeps on growing . Turkey came online last year and it's just continuing . There's more and more countries added , so that number is going to be growing higher and higher .

If your products are chemical , for example , you may need the MSDS or SDS as it's also called . You'll save the data sheets those need to be translated over to its language . But customer service is especially in FBA .

Most of the listeners , if they're selling on Amazon , they know they rarely , rarely have a message from someone on Amazon Very rarely , because 99.9% it's something like where's my shipment ? I haven't received it , it's damaged , I need a replacement . And this is where the beauty of FBA comes in .

So , no , you don't need people that speak the local language , you can just go about with the translation . It's fine . And should the same sort of questions arise again and again and again , let's say invoicing , et cetera you can just have a template and use that how they can self-service to get those .

So people think is I'm just going to throw my products into amazon germany and then I'm going to sell in amazon germany and I'm just going to activate france , italy , spain , etc . And then it's going to send that . Okay , what's the fees involved ? Because if you send from germany to france , they're big fees and they keep on increasing .

So really you're not going to do that . It's going to be very expensive . So if you just to give an understanding for something like normal size , like , let's say , mobile phone size thing , something that would be 380 in germany , sending it to france eight . So is it really worth it ?

You know , if you're selling something for 800 , yeah , okay , but if most people that sell something for like 15 , 20 , 25 , 30 , you need to consider this . So that's that's , that's a , that's something to consider when you're at the initial stages , and not that registered in france as well .

The other thing is for the bigger players that want to expand , when you get VAT registered in France , italy , spain , germany , so all of those countries together .

There's the benefit of what's called pan-European FBA , so that's like a very , very high level program of Amazon that unfortunately , was advertised as something easy that anyone can do , but really it's only for companies who are really big that can utilize it , because you want to be VAT-registered in France , italy , spain and Germany .

So then Amazon just moves the inventory around to just make sure you have enough for Prime .

The other thing that I would say is , again , depending on your size as a company , you want to start preparing and getting organized all your assets together , so videos that you have , ugc , contents that other people have created for you , maybe you can get source files of those You're in for graphics and A-plus content all nice and tight in one place , with source

files of those . Your infographics and A-plus content all nice and tight in one place with source files . So having everything neat is going to make the translation localization much quicker and actually very , very efficient . So that's very important .

Make sure you have very good understanding of the regulatory and compliance Use a very professional agency that does this and someone that knows what they're doing , and I think , finally , make sure that you have enough stock . I think you hear a lot of people that say this . It's the number one rule . It's probably the only thing that we ask of sellers .

Do not run out of stock . It's like building like your little bonfire and then if it just dies out , it's going to take a while to get it back up To start it again .

I'm happy to do an audit to just show them if eu is right fit for them so we can send them a personalized custom plan . You're going to see my face on that video , so it's not going to be one video for all . We're going to see my face on that video , so it's not going to be one video for all .

We're going to do it fully customized , to just make sure if EU is right for them Is the right size . Can it happen ? Is there anything to be aware of ? Maybe they just take some specific SKUs and not their entire catalog , what it would look like , so happy to offer that to anyone listening .

It's really , really important cool , cool , my pleasure .