We were built to answer one question properly
US brands kept asking the same thing. Europe wants to buy from us, so what does it actually take to sell there without losing money on tax, stranded stock and blocked listings? Nobody could give them the whole answer in one place. So we built the business that could. Nine years later, more than 2,000 brands have gone through it.
Expandly is a UK-headquartered expansion partner for ecommerce brands moving into the UK and Europe. We handle tax and compliance, product and label requirements, warehousing and fulfilment, and marketplace operations, and we run all of it through one platform with one team behind it.
- Trading since 2017
- 2,000+ brands expanded
- Warehouses in the UK, Netherlands and US
- ISO 9001 certified operation
The gap was never advice. It was the wiring underneath it
Plenty of consultants will tell a US brand that Europe is a good idea. Very few will register the VAT number, review the label, clear the product, move the pallet and then keep the listings live once the launch is done. That was the gap Andy Hooper set out to close in 2017. Brands were being handed a strategy and left to find eight separate suppliers to deliver it, and the joins between those suppliers are exactly where expansion projects die.
The early business did the unglamorous half first. Tax registrations, compliance files, a warehouse in the Netherlands, customs paperwork. Software came next, because once you have run the same process for a few hundred brands you can see which parts should never be done by hand again. That software became the platform our customers log into today, and the process behind it became the Global Expansion Pathway (GEP™).
Since then the group has brought an international shipping business inside the same structure, so freight is not a third party we hand you off to. It is us. That matters more than it sounds. When compliance, logistics and channel operations sit in one company, nobody gets to say the delay was someone else’s fault.
We are not a strategy firm with a software product bolted on. We are an operating business that happens to have built the software it needed.
Year we started
Brands taken into UK and EU markets
Years of expansion experience behind the method
Disciplines delivered in-house, not subcontracted
Nine years, one direction of travel
Each step added a piece the previous one had exposed as missing. None of it was a pivot.
Andy Hooper starts the business, built around compliance and fulfilment for US sellers entering the UK and EU.
Riki Hooker joins to run operations, with teams and partners across the UK, Netherlands, Germany and the US.
An international shipping business comes inside the group. Freight stops being someone else’s problem.
The platform is brought fully into the group, so the software and the service are run by the same people.
Riki Hooker appointed Chief Operating Officer. Compliance, logistics and fulfilment consolidate under one owner.
One platform, warehousing on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Global Expansion Pathway running underneath every account.
Four disciplines, each one deep enough to stand alone
Most providers are strong in one of these and thin in the other three. Expansion punishes thin. Here is what sits behind each part of your account.
Tax and VAT
VAT is a tax on the sale, charged in the country your customer sits in, and you generally need to be registered before your first shipment rather than after it. Our own advisers handle the registrations, the filings and the awkward country-specific rules, so your products keep moving and your marketplace accounts stay live. Timelines run from around three weeks to the better part of a year depending on the country, which is why this starts on day one.
Product and label compliance
This is the discipline that quietly decides which market you can enter first. A cosmetic needs a safety file and a legally appointed Responsible Person inside the EU. An electrical product needs certification and recycling registration. A supplement can be blocked outright on an ingredient that is perfectly legal at home. We review the product, fix the label, appoint the Responsible Person and register the schemes before you commit stock.
Logistics and fulfilment
Your stock sits close to your customers instead of crossing an ocean for every order. We run the warehouses, the freight and the customs paperwork, then deliver locally, process the returns and rework the ones that can go back out. European delivery expectations are set by local retailers, not by what is reasonable for a parcel travelling from Ohio, so this is usually the difference between a market that works and one that only looks like it does.
Marketplace and channel operations
Getting listed is the easy part. Staying listed across several countries, in several languages, with accurate stock and pricing on each one, is the work. We import and build the listings, translate them, connect your existing store, then keep orders and inventory in step across every channel you sell on. Your tech stack connects to us without a rebuild.
Why having all four in one place changes the outcome
This is the part that is hard to see from the outside, and it is the main reason brands move to us from a stack of separate suppliers.
Your VAT agent does not know your warehouse is holding stock it cannot legally sell yet. Your compliance consultant finishes the label review and emails it to you, and nobody tells the freight forwarder. Your listings go live in Germany before the packaging registration completes. Each supplier has done their job correctly. The expansion still stalls, because the joins between them were never anybody’s responsibility.
You end up as the project manager for your own launch, chasing four inboxes across two time zones.
The compliance review, the tax registration, the stock movement and the listing go live in a sequence, and the sequence is ours to get right. When something slips, one team knows about it and one person tells you. That is also why the onboarding order never changes: tax and compliance start immediately because they are the slowest, logistics builds while they run, channels go live once the first two are safe.
You get a launch date you can plan a marketing budget around.
The two people accountable for your expansion
Both have sold physical product into other people’s countries themselves. That is not a given in this industry, and it changes the advice you get.
Andy Hooper
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Andy founded the business in 2017 after the same conversation kept repeating. Brands had European demand, a home warehouse and no idea what the real sequence of work was. He came at it as an operator rather than an adviser, having built and later sold a consumer sports business of his own, so the questions he asks a founder tend to be about margin and stock rather than ambition.
The Global Expansion Pathway (GEP™) is his. It came out of watching more than 2,000 brands either get the order of work right or get it expensively wrong, and it is the reason our onboarding looks the same whether you sell supplements or sailing dinghies. Andy now also invests in and scales ecommerce service providers and third party logistics businesses, which keeps him close to the fulfilment end of the problem. He hosts two podcasts on expansion and speaks regularly on international trade.
One pathway, one system, one team, one dashboard, one roadmap.
Riki Hooker
Chief Operating Officer
Riki spent twenty years selling a physical product into international markets before he came near ecommerce software. He joined RS Sailing as a sales manager in 2000 and left as Sales Director in 2020, by which point the company was the world’s leading small sailboat brand. Two decades of distributors, freight, customs and local market expectations, on a product that is bulky, seasonal and regulated. It is the same problem our customers bring us, in a different shape.
He joined in 2020 to run operations, working across Southampton, London, Amsterdam, Hamburg and New York, and became Chief Operating Officer in December 2024. Compliance, logistics and fulfilment report to him. When a brand asks whether something can actually be delivered by a given date, his answer is the one that counts.
Growing online businesses by opening up new markets, with the operations to back it up.
Specialists, not generalists with a shared inbox
Depth is the whole argument, so it is worth being specific about who does the work. Every account draws on the same functions. What changes between our support levels is how much of their time is dedicated to you and how proactive they are.
VAT and tax advisers
Registrations, filings and correspondence with tax offices in each country you sell in.
Compliance specialists
Label reviews, product safety documentation, EPR schemes and Responsible Person duties.
Warehouse and fulfilment operations
Goods in, picking, packing, local delivery, returns processing and rework, run from our own sites.
Shipping and customs
Freight planning, carrier selection and the paperwork that stops shipments sitting at a border.
Onboarding and success managers
Your named contact through setup and afterwards, working the pathway with you stage by stage.
Platform and integration engineers
Channel connections, bespoke API work and the reporting you run the operation from.
Ask any provider how many of these functions they employ directly rather than subcontract. The answer tells you who will be accountable when a deadline moves.
A Real Operation,
Expansion is a physical business. Somebody has to hold the stock, appear on the compliance registration as the point of contact, and answer for the delivery that did not arrive. We do those things ourselves, from our own sites, which is why our footprint is worth being specific about rather than describing as global reach.
United Kingdom
Head office and warehousing. UK VAT, packaging and electronics EPR, and UK Responsible Person duties handled here.
Netherlands
Our EU warehouse and the usual first landing point for stock entering the single market.
United States
Warehousing on your side of the Atlantic, so the handover happens close to home.
Germany and beyond
Included in the base package alongside the UK and Netherlands, with further markets added as you grow.
Additional sites are planned in the US and further afield, including Dubai, Australia, India and Japan. We will name them here when they open, not before.
Every part of our process was built from an actual launch, not a whitepaper.
brands taken into UK and EU markets
UK and EU online purchases grew 18% in Q2 2025, with a 25% spike in June. Your customers are already there.
Q2 2025 growth, UK and EU
The UK, Netherlands and Germany come as standard, covering the majority of first-launch demand.
markets included from day one
The same sequence, every brand, every market
We do not improvise a plan for each customer. The Global Expansion Pathway (GEP™) is a six-stage sequence, and it exists because each stage answers a question the next one cannot be attempted safely without. Choose the market on evidence. Get structurally compliant. Build the supply chain. Layer the channels. Then scale, and tie the whole thing into an operating plan you could hand to a buyer.
What changes between customers is how much of it you drive and how much we drive alongside you. Everyone gets the same platform and the same onboarding. Our support levels differ in the amount of expert time sitting next to you while you use them.
See how the Global Expansion Pathway works, or read what it has looked like for brands who have been through it in our case studies.
Start with a straight answer about your own brand
Five questions, then a personalised snapshot: which markets fit your product, what compliance you are facing, and what to do first.
This page is general guidance, not advice on your brand’s specific circumstances. Tax, compliance and logistics requirements vary by country, product category and sales channel. Talk to our team about your own situation.