Retail channels for Amazon brands
Europe is the market where the choice between running the marketplace yourself and selling to a distributor is least about margin and most about obligation. The European Union places a set of legal duties on whoever puts a product on the market there, and if you are the seller of record those duties are yours, in every member state you sell into, permanently.
A distributor takes almost all of it. That is worth more in Europe than anywhere else, and it is the reason many brands that happily run their own marketplace in other countries choose a partner here.
What the two routes look like in Europe
Running it yourself means registering for VAT, holding inventory in European fulfilment centres, listing in multiple languages, and taking on the compliance role for every product you place on the market. You keep the retail margin and you own the customer relationship.
Selling to a distributor means shipping pallets to one importer who becomes the entity placing the goods on the market. They register, they comply, they sell to European retailers and often to European marketplaces too. You invoice in bulk at an export price and your obligations largely end at the port.
The margin difference is the same as anywhere: full retail less marketplace fees versus roughly a third of retail. What differs in Europe is how much administrative weight sits on the first option.
The obligations that come with being the seller
These are the ones that surprise American brands, and none of them are optional.
VAT. You need a VAT registration in the countries where you store goods, and you charge VAT at local rates on local sales. Holding inventory in several countries under a pan-European fulfilment arrangement multiplies the registrations and the filing calendar. Getting this wrong accrues interest and penalties in each jurisdiction separately.
Extended producer responsibility. Packaging, and in some categories electrical goods and batteries, carry a registration and an annual fee based on what you place on the market. These are country-by-country schemes with their own registration numbers, and marketplaces will ask you for those numbers before allowing you to sell.
A responsible person inside the EU. For a broad range of consumer goods, there must be an economic operator established in the Union who holds the technical documentation and can be contacted by authorities. Their name and address go on the product or the packaging. A brand with no European entity has to appoint and pay someone for this role.
Product conformity. Depending on the category: conformity marking, technical files, declarations of conformity, safety testing to European standards. Cosmetics have their own notification regime with a safety assessment. Food and supplements have national rules on top of the European ones.
Language. Consumer information generally has to be in the language of the country where the product is sold, which for a pan-European approach means a multilingual label or several label versions.
Each of these is manageable. Together they are a part-time job that does not end, and that is the honest thing to weigh against the extra margin.
What a European distributor absorbs
The distributor, as the importer, becomes the operator placing the goods on the market. They hold the compliance role, they register for the packaging schemes on their own account, they handle VAT on their sales, and they usually know precisely which national quirks apply to your category because they deal with them every week.
They also solve the thing a marketplace cannot: European physical retail. Grocery, pharmacy, drugstore chains, independent retail and the large regional buying groups are not reachable from a listing. They are reachable through the companies that already deliver to them.
| Pan-European marketplace | One EU distributor | |
|---|---|---|
| VAT registrations | One per storage country | Theirs |
| Packaging scheme fees | Yours, per country | Theirs |
| Responsible person | You must appoint one | They are the operator |
| Label versions | Multilingual, at your cost | Often their requirement, sometimes their cost |
| Physical retail access | None | The reason to do it |
| Revenue per unit | Full retail less fees | Around a third of retail |
The margin arithmetic in euros
Take the same product: twenty-four dollars domestic retail, six dollars landed cost.
In Europe the shelf price is typically higher than the American one once duty, VAT and local costs are in, so call it a thirty-euro equivalent. A retailer buys at fifteen. The distributor buys from you at nine, pays freight and duty to land it near eleven, and sells at fifteen.
Your contribution at nine dollars against six dollars of cost, plus packing, is under three dollars a unit. Running the marketplace yourself on the same product, you would receive the local retail price less marketplace fees, which is far more per unit, minus local advertising, minus VAT you collect and remit, minus the compliance overhead spread across your volume.
The crossover is mostly about volume. At low volume the compliance overhead per unit on the self-run route is brutal, because the cost is fixed and the units are few. At high volume it amortises and the self-run route wins on margin, but by then you probably want both: your own listings for direct demand and a distributor for the shelves.
Brexit made the UK a separate decision
The United Kingdom is outside the European Union, which means it is a separate market with its own VAT registration, its own conformity marking regime, its own responsible person requirement and its own customs border with the EU.
Practically, that has two consequences. A European distributor does not automatically cover the UK, and a UK distributor does not cover Europe. And stock moving between the two crosses a customs border with duty and paperwork, so a partner who tells you they will serve both from one warehouse is describing extra cost you will eventually pay.
Treat them as two entries with two decisions. The UK specifics are in amazon seller to uk retailers.
Which countries to enter first
Europe is not one market and entering it as though it were is the expensive mistake. Consumer expectations, retail structure, price levels and regulatory enforcement all differ by country.
Use your own evidence. If you already sell on a European marketplace, your unit velocity by country is the best signal available. Failing that, the practical starting points are the largest consumer markets, where a single distributor relationship reaches enough retail to justify the label work.
Then consider retail structure. Some markets are dominated by a few grocery and drugstore chains, which means one successful listing decision is transformative and one rejection closes the market for a year. Others have a deep independent retail base, which is slower but far more forgiving for a new brand. A distributor will tell you which shape their market has, and it should influence what you expect from the first year.
Keeping your pricing intact across the single market
Goods move freely inside the European Union, which is the point of it and also your pricing problem. A distributor buying at nine dollars for a market with a thirty-euro shelf price can sell profitably into a neighbouring market with a lower shelf price, and stock can find its way onto marketplaces in countries you did not intend.
You cannot restrict where a European buyer resells as freely as you might assume, so the practical controls are commercial rather than absolute. Set a consistent export price across European accounts so there is no arbitrage to exploit. Lot code by shipment so you can identify which account a diverted case came from. Use a written policy on online listings that applies equally to everyone. And consider a European-specific pack that makes a diverted unit visible.
The general mechanics are covered in amazon anti diversion, and the pricing policy foundations in minimum advertised price amazon.
A realistic first year
Pick one country. Appoint or agree the responsible person, get the label version done properly in that country's language, and get the conformity documentation into a folder you can send in an hour.
Find three distributors who already deliver to the retailers you want in that country, and qualify them on which accounts they actually sell to, how many people they have on the road, and whether they carry a directly competing line. Offer a one-year territory grant for that country, conditional on a volume commitment, excluding any marketplace you intend to run yourself.
Ship a pallet, not a container, and see what the reorder looks like. A distributor who reorders inside a quarter has real demand; one who does not has a warehouse with your product in it.
If you want to see which European distributors and retail buyer types plausibly carry products in your category before you book a trade show, paste your Amazon listing into WholesalePilot and the preview maps your product to its buyers.
Questions sellers ask about Europe
Do I need a European company to sell there? Not necessarily, but you need a responsible person established in the Union for many product categories, and the practical alternatives are paying a service provider or using a distributor who already fills the role.
Can one distributor cover all of Europe? A few genuinely can. Most cover one or two countries well and claim more. Ask which retailers they invoice, by name, in each country they list.
Is pan-European fulfilment worth it? It lowers delivery cost and improves the customer experience, and it multiplies your VAT registrations. The trade is volume-dependent, which is the same crossover as the rest of this decision.
Should I open the marketplace before finding a distributor? Usually yes. Three months of local sales data makes the distributor conversation concrete, as argued in amazon global selling vs international distributors.