Skechers is building a roughly 230,000 square metre automated distribution centre in Liège, Belgium, with capacity for more than 3.3 million storage locations and up to 10 million pairs of shoes processed a month. It replaces an at-capacity facility in Milmort. Operations start at the end of 2028, with phased completion by mid-2030.

The numbers are not the lesson. Almost no brand reading this will build 230,000 square metres of anything, and the site will not be operating for more than two years. What is worth noting is where a large footwear brand chooses to put its European inventory, and why it commits capital at this scale to do it.

Liège sits inside the EU customs area, close to the Dutch and German consumer markets and on the road and air freight networks that serve them. Stock held there reaches most of Western Europe as a domestic delivery. Stock held outside the bloc reaches the same customers as an import, with a customs entry, a duty calculation and a slower, less predictable last mile attached. Skechers is not buying warehouse space. It is buying the difference between those two outcomes at scale.

A brand doing a few million dollars of European revenue reaches the same outcome by renting the capability instead of building it. The operating model is identical: inventory inside the customs area, orders shipped locally, returns handled in-market. What changes is whether the fixed cost sits on your balance sheet or someone else's. Large brands build. Everyone else should be doing the same thing without the capital commitment.

If the largest players in your category are moving inventory into Europe, that is a signal about where the economics point, not an invitation to match their spending.

• Read this as evidence about where European inventory should sit, not as a benchmark for warehouse size.
• Compare your current European delivery times against a competitor shipping from inside the customs area.
• Work out what share of your European orders currently clear customs individually.
• Note the timeline: operations begin at the end of 2028, so this changes nothing about competitive conditions today.

Expandly gives brands EU-local fulfilment from our Netherlands warehouse without the capital cost of building it.