Partnerships · Amazon
Sell on Amazon in Europe the way you sell at home.
You already know how to win on Amazon. What changes in the UK and Europe is everything underneath the listing: a separate tax registration in each market, packaging and product obligations Amazon checks before it lets you trade, and stock that needs to sit on the right side of a customs border. Expandly is a recommended E2E Expansion Partner for Amazon, and we handle the Amazon work and the compliance and logistics work as one job.
Where we stand with Amazon
Recommended E2E Expansion Partner
Amazon points US sellers who want to trade in the UK and Europe toward partners who can take the whole route, not one leg of it. That is the work we were built to do.
Amazon Selling Partner Network member
You add us to Seller Central as an Authorised Partner rather than a secondary user. Cleaner to manage, easier to revoke, and it lets our compliance team pull the reports your filings depend on.
17 years, 2,000+ brands
Amazon has been the first European channel for most of them. The sequence, the documents and the lead times are known quantities here.
The opportunity
Europe is where Amazon is still worth being early in.
UK marketplace sales reached £34.1bn in 2025, up 3.7%, and Amazon.co.uk leads it. In Germany, marketplaces carry more than half of all online spending and Amazon.de alone did €52bn of marketplace GMV in 2024, up 4.2%. Add the Netherlands and you have roughly 145 million online shoppers across the three markets in our base package, in economies where Prime behaviour is already established and your category almost certainly has a search volume you can look up today.
British shoppers buying from abroad are unusually marketplace-led. 80% prefer a platform such as Amazon or Etsy for a cross-border purchase, the highest rate in any major Western market, and 18% go direct to a brand’s own site. That tells you the order of operations. Amazon gets you trading, gets you data on which SKUs travel, and pays for the infrastructure your own European store will later sit on top of.
The reason this is still worth being early in is the bit brands find unglamorous. Amazon will happily let you create a listing in Germany. It will not let you keep trading there without a German VAT number, a LUCID packaging registration and product information in German. Those are queues, not tasks, and the German VAT queue alone runs 16 to 20 weeks after a complete submission. Whoever starts them first is selling first.
£34.1bn
UK marketplace GMV in 2025, up 3.7%, around a third of all online retail spending
€52bn
Amazon.de marketplace GMV in 2024, up 4.2%
80%
Of UK cross-border shoppers prefer to buy through a marketplace
The whole job
Seven things stand between your US account and a European one
This is the sequence we run, and the order matters more than the effort. Two of these seven are queues measured in months, and both of them gate everything downstream. Starting them in week one is the single biggest lever on your launch date.
1
Account structure and marketplace access
Which European marketplaces you open, how your account is structured across them, and Expandly added in Seller Central as an Authorised Partner so our team can work directly with your reports. Where your category is gated, un-gating is part of the same conversation rather than a surprise after launch.
Owner: Expandly, with you · Typical: first two weeks
2
VAT registration in every market you touch
You need a registration in each country where you sell and each country where your stock sits, and those are two different tests. Lead times are not comparable: the Netherlands runs three to four weeks, the UK around eleven, Germany 16 to 20 after a complete and verified submission. Each follow-up request from the German authority restarts its clock, which is why we build the document set once, properly, with certified translations included.
Owner: Expandly · Start this first
3
Packaging and producer responsibility
Germany’s packaging rules bite from your first sale with no volume threshold, so LUCID registration and dual system membership have to be live before you trade. Amazon verifies it. Where your range includes electricals, batteries or textiles, those schemes apply from day one too, and the Netherlands adds a weight threshold for packaging with single-use plastics counted from the first unit.
Owner: Expandly · Runs alongside step 2
4
Labels, and a named person in region
Your labels are reviewed against the requirements of each market before anything is printed at volume, because relabelling a container is a cost you can avoid by six weeks of planning. Products that need a Responsible Person get one, and the UK and the EU need separate appointments with separate addresses since Brexit.
Owner: Expandly · Label review gates Responsible Person
5
Stock into the region
Your inventory ships from your US facility to our Netherlands warehouse for EU demand and to our UK warehouses for UK demand, which keeps the two customs regimes cleanly apart. From there it can go into Amazon as FBA, ship direct to customers as FBM, or do both from the same pool.
Owner: Expandly · Container or pallet, your call
6
Catalogue, translation and listings
Titles, descriptions and bullet points translated for German and Dutch shoppers rather than run through a dictionary, then pushed live across your European marketplaces from one catalogue. Prices, stock and content are changed once and land everywhere.
Owner: Expandly · Can run during step 2
7
Trading, and filing on time every month
Once your numbers are issued, the returns have to go in on schedule and they are built from Amazon’s own settlement data. We import those reports automatically and file from them, so a deadline never depends on somebody remembering to download a spreadsheet.
Owner: Expandly · Ongoing
Fulfilment
FBA or FBM, and why it is a per-product decision
These are two different operating models with different economics, and the choice is usually made per product rather than per brand. We support both from the same in-region stock, so the decision stays reversible.
Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM)
Who holds the stock
Amazon, in its fulfilment centres, once you have shipped it in
You do, in our UK and Netherlands warehouses
Delivery promise
Prime, with the placement and speed that comes with it
Ships locally from in-region stock, at the speeds your seller metrics are measured against
Prep work
Amazon expects the seller to complete it. FNSKU labelling unit by unit, polybagging, bundling, fragile protection and palletised inbound built to specification
Standard pick and pack, plus whatever your product needs on the way out
What we do
All the prep, as part of goods-in, so stock arrives ready to be received rather than queuing for a second handling stage. Removals come back to us, get assessed and re-enter sellable stock
Pick, pack, dispatch and returns from the same building your other channels ship from
Returns
Amazon handles the customer, we handle what comes back to you
Returns come to a local address, get assessed on arrival, and are restocked or reworked in region
Tax consequence
Storing stock in a country creates a VAT obligation there. With Pan-EU, Amazon decides which countries those are
Your stock sits where you put it, so your registration footprint is a decision rather than an outcome
Best suited to
Ranked lines with steady velocity where Prime placement is doing commercial work
Bulky, slow-moving, high-value or seasonal lines, and anything you also sell off Amazon
Both models draw on the same inventory in our system, and stock positions stay separate and correct across them, which is what keeps an FBA sale from quietly deducting an FBM listing. Amazon’s own requirements move from time to time, so anything category-specific gets confirmed during onboarding and written into your working instructions before the first shipment moves.
Read this before you enrol in Pan-EU
Amazon decides where your stock lives. The tax bill follows the stock.
Pan-European FBA is the reason a lot of brands look at Europe at all. Amazon spreads your inventory across fulfilment centres in several countries, customers get local delivery speeds, and you pay local fulfilment fees instead of cross-border ones. Amazon handles the redistribution once you are enrolled, at no extra cost.
Here is the mechanism underneath it. Holding goods in a country creates a VAT registration obligation in that country, and the obligation starts the moment the stock arrives rather than when you make your first sale there. Under Pan-EU you do not choose the countries, Amazon does, and it can move inventory without notice. A single redistribution can put your stock in a country you hold no registration in.
Amazon also publishes its Pan-EU country list as one it may add to or remove from, so the answer to “which countries am I exposed to” is a live question rather than a fixed list. We register the VAT and hold the stock, which means we can see both sides of that question at once.
Get the registrations in place first and Pan-EU becomes a commercial decision. Do it the other way round and it becomes a disclosure.
What we handle
One partner across the whole route, and one contract to sign
The usual way to do this is to stack suppliers. A tax agent, a freight forwarder, a compliance consultant, a prep centre and a listings agency. Five suppliers across three countries is fifteen relationships and nobody accountable for the join.
Your Amazon accounts, set up to trade
European marketplace setup, category un-gating where it applies, catalogue and ASIN work, translated listings, and Brand Registry programmes such as Transparency supported at the warehouse with unit-level label application.
Tax and product obligations, registered and filed
VAT registration and ongoing filing in every market you trade or store in, producer responsibility registrations, label review, and Responsible Person appointment for the EU and separately for the UK. Filed from Amazon’s settlement data inside the platform.
Stock in region, prepped to Amazon's standard
Our Netherlands warehouse serves EU demand and our UK warehouses serve the UK, so both customs regimes stay clean. FBA prep happens at goods-in. FBM ships from the same pool. Returns and reworks are handled in market.
One view once you are trading
Orders, inventory and performance across your European channels sit alongside the US channels you already run, so you compare markets instead of reconciling tools. Filing deadlines, stock events and trading milestones raise alerts before they become problems.
What Amazon opens
Build the foundation once. Every channel after Amazon is cheaper.
A VAT number, a producer responsibility registration and stock in a European warehouse are not Amazon assets. They are market access. Once they exist, adding your next channel is a listings exercise rather than a project, and the shelf in front of you is wider than most US brands expect.
Amazon UK & EU
The largest European marketplace demand, and where the compliance foundation gets built.
bol.com
The Netherlands and Belgium leader, with 78% household penetration. Amazon does not lead this market.
Otto
Germany’s strong second. A curated partner base of roughly 6,200 rather than an open catalogue, and a quality-led customer.
eBay
A genuine second channel in the UK, and the fastest listing route for ranges Amazon gates.
TikTok Shop
Zalando
Fashion – The route into European fashion and apparel, with its own onboarding and content standards.
Your own store
Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce and more connect to the same stock and orders.
Retail and B2B
Trade orders draw on the same inventory pool, picked and packed to the buyer’s requirements.
Multi-channel from FBA
Orders from your other channels can be sent to Amazon’s fulfilment network where that is the cheaper route.
Which of these earn a place depends on your category, your margin after fulfilment and your bandwidth, and that is a conversation rather than a checklist. Your own European store is usually the highest-margin channel on this list and the last one to be ready, because it needs the delivery promise and the returns address that in-region stock gives you.
Integrations
Amazon inside the platform, not bolted onto the side
The commercial argument for one partner falls apart if the systems still need reconciling by hand. Your Amazon accounts connect into Expandly alongside every other channel you run.
Inventory
FBA and FBM held apart on purpose
Stock levels update across every listing as orders land, with FBA and FBM positions kept distinct so a sale in one never quietly deducts the other. Overselling on Amazon is usually a data problem rather than a warehouse one.
Tax
Settlement reports feeding your filings
Amazon settlement reports import automatically and the VAT returns are prepared from them. That removes the download-and-email step where filing deadlines usually go wrong.
Orders
Rules that route work without asking
Set conditions on channel, country, value, weight or product and the platform acts on them at import: pick lists built, labels generated, orders sent to the warehouse or to Amazon’s network, statuses pushed back to the marketplace.
Shipping
Labels and tracking, both directions
Amazon Buy Shipping and our carrier integrations generate labels in the platform, then shipped status and tracking numbers go back to Amazon automatically. Your seller metrics update without a second system.
Reporting
Country by country, channel by channel
Build the report you actually need across orders, inventory and customers, with cost price in it so you are looking at contribution rather than revenue. Export on a schedule or into your accounting package.
Accounting
Straight into Xero
Orders, returns as credit notes, purchase orders and Amazon settlements post into Xero on the mapping you choose, per channel, per currency, per payment method. CSV export covers other packages.
Alongside your own store
Where this sits alongside your DTC expansion
Amazon is open to a US company, which puts it among the more accessible European channels. What it does gate is category: restricted ranges need un-gating, and a listing needs its catalogue identifiers in place before it can trade. Those are approvals on somebody else’s timetable, however reasonable the process.
Your own store has no such step. It can be live in a market as soon as your registrations are through and your stock has landed, which means it can be trading through the entire period an un-gating request or a category approval is pending. The registrations, the European stock and the compliance file are the same ones Amazon needs, so nothing you build for the store is wasted when the Amazon route opens.
Run both, and start with the one nobody has to approve.
Global Expansion Pathway™
Where Amazon sits in your expansion
Amazon is a channel decision, and channel decisions come fourth for a reason.
The Global Expansion Pathway™ is Andy Hooper’s six-stage method, built over 17 years and more than 2,000 brands. Amazon lives in the Omni-Channel stage, delivered as the E-commerce Expansion Multiplier™, and it is deliberately downstream of Compliance and Logistics. The reason is practical rather than doctrinal: a listing you cannot legally fulfil is a liability, and a Prime badge on stock sitting in New Jersey is a delivery promise you will not keep. Get the three stages before it right and Amazon Europe is a switch you throw. Get them wrong and it is a suspension you appeal.
The bigger picture
The demand was never the hard part. Getting permission to sell is.
Any US brand can see European search volume for its category inside an afternoon. What separates the brands trading there from the brands thinking about it is not insight, it is a set of registrations, a warehouse on the right side of a border and a document pack that survives a German tax office reading it closely. That work is slow, sequential and unforgiving of a missed step, which is exactly why the shelf is not already full.
We have taken more than 2,000 brands through this, and Amazon has been the first European channel for most of them. The pattern is not that the winners spend more on advertising. It is that they finished the foundation before they turned the traffic on.
Germany VAT queue
Time after a complete, verified submission. Every follow-up request restarts it, so the document set matters more than the filing date.
16–20wk
Allow 2.5 to 5 months in practice
Fastest route in
Netherlands VAT registration, and our warehouse is already there. Brands who want to be live this quarter usually start here.
3–4wk
Netherlands
Marketplace share
UK marketplace GMV in 2025, roughly a third of all UK online retail spending, with Amazon.co.uk leading it.
£34.1bn
Up 3.7% year on year
How we work together
Choose your level of support
Every tier gets the same platform, the same onboarding sequence and the same three base markets. What changes is how much of the work sits with you.
Expandly Self-Serve
With Email Support
£1,150 /month
Platform-led, with support when you need it.
- ✓Full platform, UK, Netherlands and Germany, complete onboarding
- ✓Wizards and knowledgebase to work each market yourself
- ✓Email support when you get stuck
- ✓Additional markets from £600 a month
Most Chosen
Expandly Guided
With Account Manager Support
£3,000 /month
A dedicated expert alongside you through every stage.
- ✓Dedicated onboarding manager, then a named success manager
- ✓Quarterly business review and an annual compliance audit
- ✓Warehouse tech fee included, preferential 3PL rates
- ✓Additional markets from £400 a month
Expandly VIP
With VIP Consultant Support
£5,000 /month
Your own consultant. Senior, accountable, and in it with you.
- ✓VIP onboarding consultant, then a VIP success consultant
- ✓Monthly business reviews and an annual consultant visit
- ✓Listings management and a tailored shipping plan
- ✓Additional markets from £200 a month
Brands opening several Amazon marketplaces at once tend to choose Guided or VIP, because three concurrent registrations in three regulatory regimes is the point where working from documentation costs more time than it saves.
All tiers: 36-month term. Base package includes the UK, Netherlands and Germany. Enterprise pricing is bespoke for high-volume, multi-market operators.
Questions
What US sellers ask us first
Can I use my Amazon US account in Europe?
No, Europe runs on its own account structure, and how you set it up affects your tax footprint and your listing work later. We do that setup with you at step one, and you add us in Seller Central as an Authorised Partner so our compliance team can work from your reports directly.
How long before I am trading?
The registrations set the pace. Netherlands VAT runs three to four weeks, the UK around eleven, Germany 16 to 20 after a complete submission. Producer responsibility and label work run in parallel, and stock can be in transit while they do. Brands who want to be selling this quarter usually start in the Netherlands and bring Germany up behind it.
Does FBA remove my compliance obligations?
It changes them rather than removing them. Amazon acts as the deemed supplier for many B2C sales by non-EU sellers, which means it collects and remits that VAT. Your registration obligations still follow your stock, and Amazon’s own account checks still ask for your packaging and product numbers. The two things are separate and both apply.
Do I have to choose between FBA and FBM?
No, and per product is usually the better question than per brand. Both models draw on the same in-region stock in our warehouses, so the split can move with velocity, seasonality or a fee change without a migration project.
What about the rest of my channels?
They connect to the same platform and draw on the same stock. bol.com, Otto, eBay, TikTok Shop, your own store and your trade orders all sit alongside Amazon, and orders from those channels can be fulfilled from Amazon’s network where that is the cheaper route.
We already have a tax agent and a freight forwarder. Can you work with them?
Tell us what you already have in place and we will look at it with you. The value of a single route is that nobody hands the problem back and forth at the joins, and where you have a supplier you are happy with, that is worth a specific conversation rather than a general answer.
Find out what your Amazon Europe launch actually looks like
Thirty minutes with someone who has done it. We will map your categories, your markets and your registration lead times, and tell you what your realistic first trading date is.
This page is general guidance and not advice on your brand’s specific position. Market figures carry the year and scope they were measured on. Amazon changes its programmes, country coverage and seller requirements regularly, so confirm anything programme-specific in Seller Central or with us before you act on it. Tax, product and producer responsibility rules differ by market and change, so talk to our compliance team about how they apply to you before you make a filing, a registration or a launch decision.