Our partnership with you
Own your European expansion. Nobody has to approve it.
Every marketplace in Europe has a gatekeeper. Some want a European company, some admit sellers by application in small numbers, some gate whole categories behind approval. Your own store has none of that, which makes it the one channel you can commit to on your own timetable. What it asks in return is that you actually feel local: the payment method a German expects, the delivery date a Dutch shopper believes, the return address a French customer can post to. That is the work we do with you, from stock held in Europe and a compliance position built once and used everywhere.
How this partnership works
Your brand, your customer, your data
We never sit between you and the person buying. The storefront stays yours, the customer relationship stays yours, and the margin a marketplace would have taken stays with you too.
Our infrastructure underneath it
Registrations in your name, stock in our European warehouses, orders picked and shipped locally, returns handled in region, and one system holding your channels together.
17 years of doing this, applied to you
More than 2,000 brands taken into new markets. The sequence, the lead times and the local detail are known quantities here rather than things you discover in production.
Why this comes first
The channel you own is the channel you can start
Most European expansion plans open with a marketplace, and there is good logic to that. Existing demand, no audience to build, and a fast read on which of your products travel. What the plan often does not account for is that marketplace access is somebody else’s decision, and the timetable belongs to them.
Your own store answers to nobody. It can be live in a market the moment your registrations are in place and your stock has landed, which means it can be trading through the whole period an approval is pending. If the approval comes, you have a second channel and the foundations already built. If it does not, you still have a business in that market.
It is also the better economics. A marketplace sale rents you a customer and takes a cut for the introduction. A sale on your own store keeps the margin, keeps the data and gives you a second purchase to aim at. The reason brands do not start there is that a European storefront asks for more localisation than a marketplace listing does, and that is precisely the part we take on.
~145m
Online shoppers across the UK, Germany and the Netherlands
+18%
Growth in UK and EU online purchases, Q2 2025
2,000+
Brands taken into new markets with Expandly
The gatekeeper problem
Who decides whether you can sell, channel by channel
This is the comparison nobody publishes, and it is the reason your own store deserves to be the first strand of a European plan rather than the last. Positions below are current as at August 2026 and set by those companies, not by us.
Channel
Who decides
What stands in the way
Otto
Hard gate
Admits only companies with a registered office and a national legal form in Germany, the Netherlands or Poland, with further countries in pilot. A US company cannot apply, and no provider can hold an entity on your behalf.
bol.com
Application only
Sellers based outside Europe apply rather than register, through a programme opened deliberately slowly with quality screening. Acceptance is bol’s decision and its timing.
TikTok Shop
Category gates
Supplements and pre-packaged foods need onboarding approval rather than paperwork. Beauty and electronics need documentation before listing. Registration also requires a physical in-market return address.
Amazon
Category gates
Open to a US entity, and gated by category. Restricted ranges need un-gating, and listings depend on catalogue identifiers being in place before you can trade.
eBay
Open
No entity requirement. Listing is a field-completion and content exercise rather than an approval.
Your own store
No gatekeeper
Nobody approves it, nobody can suspend it, and nobody sets your timetable. What it needs is your VAT registrations, stock in region and a storefront that feels local, all of which are inside your control and ours.
Read the last row against the first two. A brand that builds only for marketplaces is a brand whose European revenue depends on decisions made by other companies. A brand that builds its own store first has somewhere for the demand to go while those decisions are pending, and somewhere for it to stay if they never arrive.
Localisation
What "local" means, market by market
Europe is not one market and a European storefront is not one build. This is the practical shape of it across the markets US brands ask us about most. The UK, Netherlands and Germany are in the base package, and the rest are added as you want them.
Market
Checkout essentials
Language
Currency
Delivery and returns
United Kingdom
Base
Debit cards lead at 53%, with PayPal and rising buy-now-pay-later
English
GBP
Royal Mail, then Evri, DPD and Yodel. Shipping cost is the biggest cause of abandonment, and fashion and footwear return rates are among Europe’s highest
Germany
Base
PayPal 28.5%, invoice payment 25.8%, direct debit 17.3%, cards 12.3% combined
German
EUR
DHL dominant, with around a quarter of returns coming back through Packstation lockers. Returns are the highest in Europe and can pass 50% in fashion
Netherlands
Base
iDEAL carries 71% of online payments, account-to-account 64% overall
Dutch
EUR
PostNL dominant. Sinterklaas on 5 December is the gifting peak and it is distinct from Christmas
France
Cards, notably Cartes Bancaires, alongside PayPal
French
EUR
Carrier mix confirmed per market at onboarding
Spain
Cards and PayPal, with Bizum widely used
Spanish
EUR
Carrier mix confirmed per market at onboarding
Italy
Cards and PayPal, with local wallets growing
Italian
EUR
Carrier mix confirmed per market at onboarding
Belgium
Bancontact is the domestic scheme
Dutch and French
EUR
Two languages rather than one, so a heavier content job than its size suggests
Poland
BLIK and Przelewy24
Polish
PLN
Outside the euro, so real currency handling rather than a display conversion
Sweden
Swish, and invoice payment through Klarna
Swedish
SEK
Outside the euro. Invoice payment is culturally normal here as in Germany
Ireland
Cards and PayPal
English
EUR
A separate market from the UK, under EU rather than UK rules
Payment shares for the UK, Germany and the Netherlands come from our Country Data Hub entries. For the remaining markets the dominant methods are named without shares, and we will give you the current figures for any market you are seriously considering. The single most expensive mistake on this table is treating the payment column as optional polish: 82% of German shoppers regularly abandon an order when their preferred method is not offered, and 74% of UK shoppers abandon over unexpected shipping costs.
Shipping and returns
Europe's delivery norms, and why they need local stock
Two halves of the same problem. What a European customer expects on the way out, and what happens when the parcel comes back.
On the way out
What a delivery promise has to be worth
- Next-day and two-day delivery are normal expectations in these markets, not premium options, and they are only credible from stock held in region
- Shipping cost is the single biggest cause of cart abandonment in the UK, so what you charge and how you present it is a conversion decision
- A customs charge collected at the door is worse than a high shipping price at checkout, because it arrives after the customer has decided. In-region stock removes the customs event entirely
- Carrier choice is per order rather than per brand. A light repeat line and a heavy high-value one should not ship the same way or cost the same
- The UK and the EU are separate customs territories, so stock for each sits on its own side of the border rather than crossing it per order
On the way back
Returns are structural here, not an exception
- EU consumers have a statutory 14 day right to withdraw from an online purchase, and German shoppers expect returns to be free on top of that right
- German return rates are the highest in Europe and can exceed 50% in fashion, so reverse logistics belongs in your model rather than in a footnote
- A return address in the customer's own country is what makes a return cheap enough to be worth processing. A return crossing the Atlantic usually costs more than the item recovers
- Returned stock is assessed on arrival and put back into sellable inventory, reworked, or routed to a channel that sells second-life goods properly
- Around a quarter of German returns come back through DHL Packstation lockers, which is a fulfilment integration rather than a policy choice
The reason these two sit together is that both are solved by the same decision. Stock held at our Netherlands warehouse for EU demand and our UK warehouses for UK demand makes the outbound promise credible and the inbound economics survivable, from one piece of infrastructure.
The storefront itself
Five things a European storefront has to get right
None of these are design problems, which is why they tend to arrive late in a build. Each one is either a conversion lever or a legal requirement, and several are both.
Payments
The methods people actually use, in local currency
See the market table above. The pattern worth internalising is that card-first checkouts are a US assumption rather than a European one, and invoice payment in Germany and Sweden means the customer receives the goods before you have the money.
Local currency pricing sits alongside it, and two of the markets brands most often want next are outside the euro.
Pricing
How a discount has to be displayed
EU price indication rules measure a promotional price against the lowest price you charged in the previous 30 days. A standard compare-at or list-price field on a storefront anchors against something different, so a US-style permanent strike-through does not show the saving the rule recognises.
The fix is a promotions calendar that knows what your reference price is at any moment. It is a merchandising habit rather than a plugin, and it is worth setting up before your first European sale rather than after.
Accessibility
Your shop is in scope in Germany
Since 28 June 2025 the BFSG has required online shops serving German consumers to meet EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and to publish an accessibility statement in German. The micro-enterprise exemption covers businesses with fewer than 10 staff and turnover of at most €2m, so brands at the scale we work with are inside the scope.
This one lands on the theme and the checkout, so it belongs in a build conversation early. We scope it with you and whoever maintains your site rather than leaving it to be discovered.
Product pages
Information that has to sit with the product
European product safety rules require certain trader and product details to appear with the listing rather than on a policy page elsewhere on the site. Your labels and your product pages also have to agree with each other, which is why label review sits upstream of listing work in our sequence.
Language belongs here too. Dutch shoppers understand English perfectly well and still convert better in Dutch.
Tax
On your own store, the VAT is yours
This is the difference from marketplace selling that catches brands out. A marketplace often collects and remits the VAT on a consumer sale itself. Sell direct and that falls to your own registrations, in every market you sell into and every market you hold stock in.
We hold those registrations in your name and file from your order data, which is what turns the single biggest objection to direct selling into an administrative task.
What we handle
The work behind a European store
The same work whether you enter one market or five. What changes is the volume of it, and none of it lands on your team.
Registered and filing, in your name
VAT registration and ongoing filing in every market you sell or hold stock in. Producer responsibility registrations, label review before anything prints at volume, and Responsible Person appointment for the EU and separately for the UK. Netherlands VAT runs three to four weeks, the UK around eleven, Germany 16 to 20 after a complete submission, which is why the sequence matters more than the effort.
Stock in region, both sides of the border
Your inventory at our Netherlands warehouse for EU demand and our UK warehouses for UK demand, keeping the two customs regimes cleanly apart. Orders picked, packed and dispatched locally, with carrier selected per order against the promise you made at checkout.
Returns and reworks in market
Returns to a local address, assessed on arrival, then restocked, reworked or routed onward. Relabelling, re-boxing and repacking happen in region rather than crossing the Atlantic twice, which is what keeps a European returns policy affordable enough to advertise.
Content that reads as local
Titles, descriptions and bullet points translated for German, Dutch and the other markets you enter, published from one catalogue to your store and to any marketplace you add later. A price or content change is made once.
One system across everything
Your store, your marketplaces and your trade orders drawing on the same stock, with levels corrected centrally as orders land anywhere. Order rules route work without being asked, and filing deadlines and stock events raise alerts before they bite.
Numbers by market, not blended
Performance market by market and channel by channel, with cost price in the report so you read contribution rather than revenue. That is the evidence that tells you which market deserves the next tranche of stock and spend.
Global Expansion Pathway™
Platform first, and this is what platform first means
Channel strategy sits in the Omni-Channel stage of the Global Expansion Pathway™, delivered as the E-commerce Expansion Multiplier™, and the sequence inside that stage is platform first, marketplaces layered deliberately, social activated strategically. Your own store is the platform layer. It comes first because it is the only channel whose timetable you control, and because the catalogue, the stock position and the compliance file you build for it are the same ones every marketplace afterwards draws on. Nothing is wasted if an approval is slow, and nothing is stranded if one never arrives. Andy Hooper’s framing is that international does not fix a business, it amplifies it. The platform layer is where you find out what is being amplified.
Explore
Compliance
Logistics
Omni-Channel
Growth
Strategy
The bigger picture
A marketplace lends you a market.
Your own store is one you keep.
There is a version of European expansion that looks successful and owns nothing. Revenue arriving through three marketplaces, each one able to change its fees, suppress a listing or decline an application, and none of them handing over the customer. It works until it does not, and the brand has no independent position to fall back on. The alternative is not to avoid marketplaces, which would be daft given where the demand is. It is to make sure the channel you control is the one carrying your foundation.
- Registrations held in your name, so they move with you rather than with a channel
- Stock in region serving every channel, so a new one is a listings exercise
- Local payment methods live, because iDEAL and invoice payment are not optional in their markets
- Returns processed locally, so a European returns policy is affordable enough to advertise
- Customer data and repeat purchase staying with you rather than with a platform
- A trading position that survives an approval being slow, or never coming
We have taken more than 2,000 brands into new markets. The ones with the most durable European businesses are not the ones who picked the best marketplace. They are the ones who owned their foundation.
The German checkout
Share of German shoppers who regularly abandon an order when their preferred payment method is not offered.
82%
Not a slice of the market, most of it
Returns reality
Statutory right to withdraw on every EU online consumer sale, before the free-returns expectation German shoppers bring with them.
14 days
Plus the highest return rates in Europe
Fastest route in
Netherlands VAT registration, with our warehouse already there. Germany runs 16 to 20 weeks after a complete submission.
3–4wk
Netherlands
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
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 brands ask us about selling direct
Should we do this instead of marketplaces, or as well?
As well, in almost every case. Marketplaces are where the existing demand is and they tell you quickly which of your lines travel. The argument on this page is about order rather than exclusion: build the channel you control first, because it carries the foundation the others draw on and it cannot be declined.
One store or a separate one per market?
Both patterns work, and the answer depends on your pricing strategy, how different your European range is and who maintains the site. It is worth deciding early because it affects your catalogue structure and your tax reporting rather than just your domains.
Do we have to replatform?
No. We connect to Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce and other platforms as they are, and the European work runs behind the store rather than inside it.
How much of the localisation is on us?
The parts that live in your theme and your checkout, chiefly your payment gateway configuration, your currency handling and the accessibility work. Everything registration, stock, returns, translation and reporting sits with us. We go through the split line by line on the review call so there is no gap in the middle.
Which market should we start with?
It depends on your category and your margin after landed cost. The Netherlands has the shortest registration queue and our warehouse is already there, Germany is the largest continental market and the longest queue, and the UK is the most familiar and a separate regime from the EU. All three base markets are included from the start, so the order you enter them in is a commercial decision rather than a compliance one.
What happens if a marketplace application is refused?
Your store keeps trading, your registrations stay in your name and your stock stays where it is. That is the whole argument for sequencing it this way, and it is why we would rather have this conversation before you have committed a launch plan to one channel.
Find out what your European store needs
Thirty minutes on your markets, your categories and your current setup. You will leave knowing what has to be true before you can trade properly in the UK and Europe, which parts are ours, and how long each piece takes.
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. Marketplace entry requirements are set by those companies and change, so confirm any specific position with them or with us. Payment, consumer, accessibility and product safety requirements differ by market and change, so talk to our compliance team about how they apply to your products and markets before you make a filing, a registration or a launch decision.