How To Make The Most Of Your EU Expansion Strategy

Well, hello and welcome to the e-commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson, a show that is all about helping you deliver e-commerce.
Wow. Now I am excited as always with today's guest.
I am chatting with the legend. Uh, Andy Hooper from global e-commerce experts.
Uh, we're going to get into conversations about basically how to do international expansion for your e-commerce business because no
man is an island and no e-commerce business should just be in its own.
Probably, if you are looking for some international expansion, then do carry
on listening, because this is a great conversation with Andy, but before I get into it, one of the things I love to do now, I've been doing this for a few weeks.
Yeah. It's just giving a shout out to past guests and episodes, uh, that are
related to the topic that we're talking about, which is how to make the most of your, your expansion strategy.
So today here are a couple of episodes that are worth listening to if you're new to the podcast and haven't heard them yet or ready,
uh, the first one is Jesse Wraggs. Should you sell on multiple online marketplaces and for the keen eared
amongst you, you will know that's quite a recent episode . Oh, yes!, so you may well have heard that one, but have you heard, uh, how the perfect
warehouse could save you time and money and make your life easier? My interview with Justin Smith, that one is definitely also worth checking
out but man I've never met anyone with as much knowledge on how to set up a warehouse and sort of as this guy.
So do check out my conversation with Justin. Now this episode is brought to you by the e-commerce cohort, which helps you
deliver e-commerce well to your customers. If you don't know what cohort is, stay tuned.
Cause I'm about to tell you. Yes, it, eCommerce cohort is a lightweight, uh, monthly
guided coaching program. It's it's it's awesome. Uh, it's basically for those who have been in e-commerce for a little while,
and those who are just starting out. Right? Uh it's like I say, it's a lightweight membership, it's a monthly thing.
And we cycle through all the key areas of e-commerce the sole purpose of what.
It's to provide you with clear, actionable jobs to be done. So you'll know what to work on.
And more importantly, you'll have the support to get it done. So whether, like I say, you're starting out or whether like me
you've been around for awhile. Can I encourage you to check out e-commerce cohort.com?
If you are in econ. At all. Uh, it's just definitely worth checking out. Let me tell you it's gearing up for its founding member launch.
Uh, so do check out the incredible offers they've got going on there at the moment. And if you've got any questions about it, do email me directly
at Matt@ecommercepodcast.net with any questions before. Out of all the things that we've done, this is the one I'm most proud of.
We've done online courses. We've done all kinds of stuff in the past, and we've taken all of that learning
and put it together in the cohorts. Yes. So looking forward to this thing, do come and join us in it.
Intro to Andy Hooper
Andy, is an e-commerce guru. He's been successfully expanding, uh, e-commerce brands into new markets
for over years, which in e-commerce terms is a very, very long time.
And he has worked with companies around the world to provide comprehensive gateways and slowly.
To new markets. Andy started his career from the ground up in a sense, carved out
a niche, uh, inspired by his own experience and success in growing an organization's profits through e-commerce with an infectious energy.
And that actually sums Andy up very well, infectious, infectious energy. Uh, he leads a team of professionals in all aspects of e-commerce.
His global e-commerce team provides. , I don't know what happened is, but they provided, uh, and also hassle-free end to
end solutions that have helped thousands of sellers capitalize on the multi-billion
dollar, UK and EU markets bottom line. And he knows his stuff and he loves having fun while he does it.
As you'll hear in the interview, one of the things, uh, that you can find him do when he's not working, he enjoys.
Cycling kayaking and just hanging out with his friends and family on England, south coast.
Yes. He's a fellow Brit. Yes. You're going to want to grab your notebooks and pens because here's
my conversation with Andy, Andy. Thanks for joining me here on the e-commerce podcast.
Uh, and you have a quintessentially English accent. So you are in fact in England days.
I definitely am. Yeah, like you could self, uh, I am based in an hour, south of London in a place
just outside a place called south Hampton. Does that mean you're a. No, I'm not, no, um, I'm an arsenal fan because I grew up north London.
So that's where, uh, yeah, my, my, my loyalties lie, although to be quite honest, uh, I don't follow anywhere near as much as I do.
So given up the ghost, does that, is that I see having Liverpool. Right. And I appreciate this as an e-commerce podcast and we will start talking
about e-commerce it's not a full podcast, but I'm in Liverpool. And I came to Liverpool.
Not many people know this. Actually I came to Liverpool in years.
And the reason I moved here, um, for the university, the reason I chose the university was because I was a big Liverpool football club fan always
have been my whole life and I just wanted to be closer to Anfield field. Uh, and so, um, yeah, it's fascinating.
Isn't it? How sort of football impacts your life at certain points and yeah. And then there's periods where you don't talk about it or think about it
for a little while and obviously being a Liverpool fan in the modern era. I am talking about it a lot because it's the first chance
I've had to do that for awhile. Yeah, I bet. Well, I mean, I remember when I was, I was a kid, they were sort of, yeah,
it was Devon Spurs at the time that were really sort of leading then obviously it will change is over and it all goes through periods.
Doesn't it. It'll change again. Sorry, let's say that.
So e-commerce. Um, now Andy, I said in the intro that what you do is successfully
expand brands into Europe. That's what your specialty is. You kind of help people get set up into Europe, right?
Um, how did you get started in this whole thing?
So I laugh and I'm sorry, I'm listening while I laugh, because like most business owners, um, I think the buzzwords entrepreneurs, but yeah, like
most business owners, we all have a varied path into things in most cases.
So I was, I had the short one. I had a job and I love doing what I was doing.
My job was to get more people in sailing. You know, my job was to talk to people about sailing all day. Like how difficult can that be?
Right. I was just up here. Loved it. The front of me is whenever you do a job that is truly epic. It normally doesn't pay very much money and don't get me wrong.
It was, it was. It was, it was a decent salary, but the reality is I had expectations for
you slightly better things in life. Let's say anyway, nine, the financial crash happened.
And basically I was a little bit screwed for cash. And at that point I realized I never wanted anyone else to be
in control of my finances again. Uh, in metaphorically speaking, because you know, when you've still got business,
someone's still in control of some of those things, because, but at least you've got the ability to go and try them.
So that was really the catalyst. And then from there I did a whole host of things. So we looked after dogs.
When people went on holiday, we, uh, flipped things on eBay. We sold stuff on Amazon.
We went to car boot sales. I did wedding photography and the list goes on and on.
Um, yeah. So when I got to I just, well, was the Olympic games in London.
And at that point I set myself a goal that within the next two years I would leave employment and set up on my own.
So I basically started saving the cash to. Um, sets up a business so that I could pay for my currents then salary
for the first year without working. So, uh, that's what happened. I actually left at the beginning of um, because
circumstances just led to that. So I had a year of salary in the bank, so to speak and I was like, right.
I gotta make this work. The reality is I probably needed a bit more than a year salary because I hadn't really factored in for advertising and funding and.
Anyway, long story short is I made it work and here we are now. But how I got into e-commerce boy into this role specifically, was
that I was doing some consultancy and doing some management consultancy
in the end, because I was trying to earn more, a bit more cash. And I was doing some work.
I was still selling stuff on Amazon. And I knew that in what was going to happen was the rules were
changing for sellers on Amazon. Specifically, the Amazon required overseas sellers to be VAT registered
and they needed to show that they were VAT registered online. Anyway, I was doing some management consulting for an accountant.
We struck a really great relationship, um, a spark and an idea was
formed and, uh, NASA globally. Experts essentially started was by solving the problem for overseas
sellers, expanding into Europe based on my experience of flipping stuff on eBay, selling stuff on Amazon.
And. Sending stuff on Amazon for me was okay. I was earning, you know, a few thousand out of it a month.
It wasn't you, it wasn't, uh, it wasn't my core interest. Let's say I don't really get a buzz from selling stuff.
I get a buzz from selling services and serving people. Um, so there we go. That was a quick fire.
Why wasn't that quick in the end? Was it for, there we go. But it was helpful. Yeah, it was helpful.
So you you've you've since then, uh, been helping people sort of. Um, established in Europe, right.
And building their businesses in Europe. And one of the things that we talked about on our pre-call as a result of
this, you've got your success pathway. Haven't you you're say these sort of seven steps that we're going to
get into, uh, in, in this podcast. Um, and is this something that you, uh, before we get into what they are,
is this something that you saw quite early on as a pattern emerging when you were helping people get established?
Yeah, exactly that. So, yeah, I'm a, I'm a problem solver. I like to S I like to feel like we're, we're making a difference and I'm a coach.
The birth of Andy's success pathway
My background is coaching people. Uh, you know, whether it be businesses or people.
That's what I really love doing them because of that. I'm a bit of a problem solver. And what happened was when we first died working with these clients for
VAT specifically, there are a lot more, I mean, I've expanded to Europe and the UK, and then they need, well, I need someone to send them a returns
or to receive some stock, so, okay. So we built out a warehouse and then it was, then there was a next problem, the next problem.
And, and, you know, Basically over time, we basically built out all
these different services, which we, yeah, we'll, we'll go through. But what happened was is the more you talk to your clients and the more you
understand them, what happens is, is your identifying ways to see what the problems.
To solve. So the pathway essentially came out. We work with you around about clients that we've expanded and doing
that across lots of different services, whether it be compliance or logistics or
account management, doesn't really matter. But the advantage is we see the data. So what we, what we've been able to do is work out what
actually does success look like? Number one, you know? And what does that, what does that look like?
But what are all the different components that add up to making that work? Because.
Whenever you're going into something new. You want someone that's basically been there, done it
and can speed up the process. You've either got time or you got cash. And if you haven't got the cash, you've normally got the time.
And if you've got the time young got the cash. So there's two ways of looking at it and we're all at different
stages at that, depending on how much something is to invest in.
So there's always a balance. So that that's really how we came up with this path. Looking at why successful clients were doing, looking at what the data was
telling us and looking at what the metrics were saying was, okay, how does this work?
Would this make sense? Okay. And let's bridge that gap to make it easy. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.
I like what you said that, although it's not related to the topic necessarily at hand, how you would talk to your customers and listen to them and you would find problems.
Uh, and the more you talk to the customers, the more you understood what those problems were, and you could then increase your service
range and offer services to them. I think this is such a fundamental principle of business.
Um, then we've almost forgotten it in the world of e-commerce because you never have to talk to your customers.
You know, you're just waxed off on a website and away you go. And I think. I think actually, if you're going to, my experience here is if you want to
be successful in the longterm, if you want longevity in e-commerce, you've got to do some of these old fashioned.
I call them old fashioned to mean, but these sort of old fashioned business principles, ideas where you go, actually, no, I need to talk to my customers.
I need to do a bit of research here and find out how. How else I can help them, uh, because you never know where
that's going to lead, right? No. And so the, we, we based had one question. We asked everyone to talk to you cause we're doing running,
you know, we supply services. So, you know, it's not like a product to a degree. Yeah. It's a slightly different model, isn't it?
But the, you know, from a service point of view, I wanted us to always be in contact with our clients and ask them to ask the teams, always, just ask one quick.
How's your expansion going or talk me through how you, I mean, I would say, so tell me for how your expansions going.
And that just opens up to sometimes it's a yes, fine. No problems. Some people say, oh, it's going pretty well, but we're struggling with this.
Or we're looking to do this, or we don't know how to do that. Um, that is literally where we found out what those problems were because
people were coming to us and saying, well, I want to expand, but it's too difficult and I'm not, well, I'm just going to remove the pain everywhere.
Yeah, that's a really good point. I think it's such a valid thing to do, you know, figure out that the, sort of the questions that your nurse, your customers, and just that simple one question, you
know, what, what is it for your business? What does it for your industry? Uh, makes an awful lot of sense.
And just keep asking that same question. I like that. How did you, I mean, I guess when I think about that question,
how does the expansion go? That makes a lot of sense. Cause you're helping people expand into Europe.
It was this a question you thought through or was it just something that just, you kind of went? No, this is your question. Makes sense. Let's just ask that and open the doors.
I can't remember in all honesty, I think because you know, at the beginning of, you know, anyone who's got a business lunch stand, you know, you at the
beginning, you're doing everything and then slowly as you take on people, you're, you're, you're, you're moving away from certain bits in different ways.
And for me, the focus on the customer is the critical part. We want to successfully expand clients.
Well, the only way we can do that is by understanding what the success looks like. I don't know whether it was something that I kept on saying to people, you know,
tell me for how your expansions going. And I think just the conversation just kept on having, I don't think it
was well, what question can we ask? Our clients. And I think, you know, we all go through these well, let's do our business plan.
Let's do the strategy. What, what strategic questions should we ask her? I think some of the best things happen, not by strategically
thinking, but by just the happening. Um, and, and sometimes I think you modify that and to be fair, you know, the team
here, some, some of the team feel really comfortable by saying to their client.
Tell me three of your expansions going and having a really good conversation. Some of them, especially our data analysts, that the VAT,
well, we've employed them cause they're epic of doing VAT, right? We've employed them because the epic data, we haven't employed
them because they're epic of having conversations with clients on the fund. So some of them find it more difficult or in all honesty, but you know, I
think it was just, it was an easy you're talking to your client, just ask them how their expansions go. That's just great survey.
That's exactly it. Right. And I like what you said, what does success look like? What does success look like for your customer?
Uh, and I'm talking around that I think is just so useful. Anyway, we've taken a slight rabbit trail. Is we always like to on these great shows because the goal
is always in the rabbit trails. Um, let's get into your pathway.
Seven steps of the success pathway
Um, so the seven basic steps, right? And I've got them here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read. Yeah, and then we're going to get into, uh, we're going to get into
the seven basic steps of your success pathway on how to expand into Europe. So number one, market research, number two, compliance number three, marketplace.
Number four is three PL number five, promote products. Number six, your website and number seven.
Right or growth, but where you call growth. And so I've, I got that. Right. And that's the main person, first thing, mate, you got it all wrong.
It's all backwards. Just one complete.
So we are going to get into that, but before we do, don't go anywhere because we are just going to take a moment to hear from this week.
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so Andy, uh, your seven basic steps. Let's, let's jump into them.
Market research
The first one is market research. I smile when I say this, uh, because every good framework I think starts
off with market research, or it has that as a component at the beginning. And if it doesn't, I'm always a bit wary.
So why have you got. Um, so most of the clients that we work with are expanding into
a new continent or a new region. Certainly. So what happens is, is that they're selling a, an epic little widget or
product in, let's say the states, a lot of our clients are selling in the states primarily, and they've got these products and they want to expand it into.
UK Germany, France, Italy, Spain. The main core stays of the e-commerce landscaping in Europe.
Right? The problem with that is, is that not one, not every product is relevant
for every market first off, and secondly, different products sell better in some places than others.
So something that sells really well. And I, cause we were just talking about might sell really well in the
south of France, Italy and Spain, but be absolutely rubbish in the UK. Um, there might be products that sell better in Northern parts of
the states where they get a lot of snow in other parts of, of Europe. So it's crucial to do two things.
I understand the size of the market and that your products are relevant to be sold in those areas.
And what returns could you expect based on your current market
share that you've currently got? So if you know, you've got a % market share in the states, for example,
well, what does that market share? Look like if there was in Europe and you can get a broad. And I I'm, I'm hesitant you a very broad idea of why am I like?
So the first thing is to do some form of feasibility study to make sure that the product can be sold.
And there's, there's a compliance piece in there as well, because all your products and we're going to come on to compliance specifically next, but
you do need to consider you is your product, you know, can you sell it? Animal, for example, it was a great one.
It can be sold in some parts of Europe and not in others. Like it's a great point to pick that up at the market research, um, at that stage.
And then the second part of market research is product sourcing you with the current state of getting shipping around the world.
Could you source your products locally. So could you source the products and get them made in Europe instead of getting them brought in from other parts of the world?
We can see now that actually, I think that's becoming higher and higher on everyone's agenda.
Uh, we've been talking about it for a few years, but actually, can you look at sourcing your products locally?
We've got one client did is really successfully. They sell. Um, so basically you, you bypass.
Carpooled faults. And you build them for your kids instead of putting basically a chairs upside
down and some, and some, and some better, I guess, is what we've all done and what they did before they launched.
They decided that in the states they have somewhere in Mexico, I believe making the products before they launched, they were going to find somewhere
in Europe to do that, to reduce the cost of sourcing, which reduced the costs of travel shipments on what a winner that's proved to be this year
or in the last months, because. But all of a sudden, normally get containers out of China and a decent rate.
Um, so that, that there are two key parts feasibility and sourcing the product.
Um, and some people would do more or less of, of over those. That's sort of interesting.
I liked that. Um, I like that idea of trying to, can you get the product made or manufactured
local to where you're shipping it? Um, I think that's a really clever question.
Principally because of, for me, it's just more of a sustainability thing, you know, it's much more sustainable.
Where do you go Andy, to do market research? What sort of things do you think.
So things we're looking at is if you've got a product that's coming in, I mean, you can normally get a pretty good idea of a gut-feel based on what the
product is, but really people want data. So we use a whole load of different tools.
You know, some of the tools that you know of like things like jungle scout, everyone's heard of jungle scout, helium we use software to help us.
That's certainly the first place we go. We can get a broad understand of markets. In some of those softwares by utilizing different tools.
Um, and then, so you can get an understanding of, is someone selling something similar and what does that market look like if
they're not selling that product? Is that product because there's no market for the product or is it just
a brand new, innovative product? There's a bit of research to doing that. And then second thing is where, what, what areas of Europe will they sell well in?
So, you know, will it sell well in the Nordics? Will it sell well, when in the hotter climbs, you know, wearing Europe will
actually work better and then identify. Actually you says some different marketplaces that might work best
because quite often, a lot of our clients sell on Amazon already by.
Quite often, there's a whole lot of other marketplaces that they should be selling on outside of that. But there's a process to do that and we'll get all down to that marketplace launch,
but it's identifying, you know, what a product sale is there other people selling similar to that, what's a good price point for this product, you know, and what
sort of returns could they possibly get? So, you know, it's basically using different pieces of software and intelligence from the data we've already got.
Uh, because we can put into our software that internally we've basically got, essentially, you could call it a massive spreadsheet that has got
different sort of products in, and we can identify a similar sort of product and what sort of routes that taken.
Then we can look at what that looks like. Um, we've taken out all the client data, so it's not new, there's
no GDPR and issues like that. So we can then look at and say, well, how long, how quickly did this product scale?
You know how the problem with that. Everyone puts different budgets behind things. So it's really hard to actually look at that and go, oh, well, this one
didn't sell very well, but it's because they didn't put in budget behind it, like, or, or they didn't have any stock for six months or, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, no, that's all useful questions to ask yourself very useful questions. So that's stage one, right?
Is market research. Step two is compliance. And the thing that you said in our pre-call about compliance,
Compliance
which I'm keen to get. Compliance is the piece that no one wants to talk about and no one
wants to pay for, but the reality of it is everybody needs it. Right. And so, um, and compliance just isn't sexy, uh, is probably
how I would phrase that. So why is compliance in, I mean, I know why compliance is in here, but
you know, just give us a brief on. So there's two areas to compliance.
First of all, there's the product. And secondly, there's the business. So first of all, you want to get the product compliance.
So if you're expanding the product from another region leg, again, let's take the states or Australia or Canada or Asia or wherever else that might be the
product has been designed for that market. So the regulations in that market are different to the
regulations here in the UK. Or in the European union. So the regulations could be slightly different.
So when you're looking at the product of the current compliant, the product of, sorry, let me start that again.
The compliance of the product, easy for me to say, there's three things you need to consider
the first. You know, what are the regulations, the product falls under? So you need to identify what that regulation is.
You then need to make sure that the product is compliant with that regulation and has the relevant certificates to make sure that it says so.
And in thirdly, that the label on the product is compliant with the regulations also.
So, you know, and to be honest, this path. It could be done in any, I mean, there are the three things you need to identify,
whether you're going into the UK, Europe, us, Asia, India, Australia, wherever it's the same three things you need to identify, but there are the things you
need to identify in that compliance piece. And no one wants to go through that process because it's like, well, I've already got the product.
Just send it over. It will be fine. The problem with that is that the regulators are putting more and
more emphasis on the marketplaces to make sure that's correct. So what happens is you might send the product in, but if it doesn't get held up
at customs, which it could do, it's most likely to get pulled up on a marketplace.
At some point that doesn't mean to say that you won't be able to send it in and start selling it. But what you don't want to do is build this epic you a product, get it
selling, great, get grout, great sales, velocity, start selling the product. Then only for it to be taken down because he's not compliant.
Um, with a short piece of compliance beforehand shakes, you can basically solve those problems.
You know, it's, it's a little bit of headache at the beginning to basically just tick the boxes to a much bigger headache, further down.
Um, so that's the product compliance space and there's a whole load of different things in there around that.
Then you've got business compliance. Now the business compliance takes a whole load of different, different formats.
Let's do this cover the first big piece, which is VAT or GST in some places or sales tax in others.
But for Europe is VAT value added tax. The bottom line is if you're selling.
In a country, the government wants some cash in return for you selling the product. Like let's be reasonable about this.
If you're selling something in someone's region, give them a little bit of cash for doing that. That really is the bottom line.
And you know, in, in most, in all European countries, they have VAT, they have import VAT and Sal's VAT.
Um, you need to make sure that your business is able to. Pay import VAT and collect it back and pay for sales VAT when you sell a product.
And there's a lot of who's where's if what's a maybes in both of those, the bottom line is if you're selling products from within a
country and you're fulfilling in a country, you need to pay VAT. And if you're sending a shed load of.
To a country from another country, you need to pay VAT. Um, now there's a whole lot of thresholds and numbers in there, but yeah, that's
where, that's where you need to start thinking about is if you're you're selling a product somewhere, you need to pay VAT.
That's the bottom line. So that's, that's the second part. And there's two other parts to business compliance. You need to be aware of.
One is trademarks. I'm not going to go into deeply, but if you want to build a solid e-commerce
brand, you need to be trademarked. I'm just going to leave that there as a compliance piece and coming in at
the moment, there's a lot of things called EPR, which is a recycling tax specifically in France and Germany.
But. Once it's a success there there'll be put in everywhere else in Europe. So basically what that is, is it very simply as a tax on recycling?
So if you send a product into a country, they're going to basically charge you a little bit of tax to recycle the product and they're the pieces and
that's why compliance is important. You need to make sure you've got all these pieces solved at the beginning,
because it's much easier to do now when you're not selling anything than it is further down the line when you're unraveling a lot of string.
That's a fair point. And I, I get that and, and. And I can see why actually, um, people will contact you.
And the, um, because complaints is just one of those minefields, isn't it?
It's just, it's not sexy people avoid it because it becomes like, you know,
the Alice in Wonderland, doesn't it. How deep does this hole go? Really? And you just get sucked into this whole thing, which is an absolute nightmare.
So compliance is on your list. Marketplace, you briefly touched on this a second ago, but let's dig into that.
Marketplace
Yeah. So I think the next thing is doing, and some of this will be come out of your market research, but what you really want to identify is what's the best marketplace
for you to launch on, you know, and this is launching this isn't succession. This isn't thinking in a year's time, I won't be on different
platforms in different countries. This is your marketplace launch. What is the best place?
Bang for buck for you to launch your product and your business in, in, in Europe.
So depending on where you're selling beforehand is going to depend on that. If you are a, if you've got your own website and let's say Shopify,
or either you are selling on that, well, clearly you probably not going to launch on the marketplace.
You're going to launch on your own website. And I get that because that's what you're used to basically stick to what you're used to.
If you're selling mainly on Amazon in the U S. Just transfer that to Amazon in Europe, because it's really straightforward
to do the majority of the tools and functionality and the design of
the platform is exactly the same. It makes no difference. So stick with what I didn't say, stick with what you're used to start off with.
Are there are some other battery better platforms that might work better in those regions more than likely is the honest answer, but don't necessarily go around
to do that straight off the bat, stick with what you're used to that works. And then you've got to think about which countries am I going to do first.
So broadens day, I'm going to take Amazon as a great example because it accounts for a lot of, a lot of sellers that listen to e-commerce.
Podcasts. So in a nutshell, the UK and Germany account for two thirds of
all cells across Europe, on Amazon. So if you talk about a launch strategy, where would you launch?
Well, the UK Germany, and I'm going to put in Netherlands and we'll come on to Netherlands. Why? When we get to logistics later, is that you launched by launching in UK Germany.
You've got two thirds of all opportunities in Europe. So actually your marketplace strategy is launching those two first.
Because you can tackle the majority of, of Amazon from there and other things that come in there.
So things to consider is you need to consider, uh, listings and translations, make sure your lap, your listings are translated in relevant country.
And you've got some key words in there. Translation. You need to make sure you've got a payment system set up because if you
just get Amazon, for example, to pay you directly into your bank account, if it's in a different currency, Amazon stings you for the interest charge.
So you want to make sure you've got decent payment gateway to make that. You then need to make sure you've got someone that can ship your
products to where you need to get to. So within this, it was marketplace launch. This could come into three PO next, I guess, but you need to make sure
you've got a way of shipping products into the marketplace or into a three PL which we'll come on to next.
And your customs is all sorted and you want to have that set up. So it's ready to go when you're launching on that marketplace to get products
into region as quickly as possible. So decide on the market. Get a payment gateway, get the listings and translated sorted and
shipping and customs and wide say on listings and translations is crucial that you get those done.
And here's the, but is have an rule. You're never going to get it to a hundred percent correct. Because you're just launching.
It's never going to be right. If you stagnate and think or procrastinate would probably be a better word about
you are, well, I'm not going to get that done yet, so I won't launch it. It won't ever happen. Get the majority of it done and then tweak it after, because
it will never be perfect. Anyway, chip top tip. And why did you, um, I'm curious to understand why you mentioned the new.
Yeah. So the reason for the Netherlands is coming into Europe. The Netherlands is the gateway into Europe from a logistics point of
view, because basically shipping into lots of European countries. They just make it really quite difficult.
The Germans are renounced for making sure that the paperwork for example
is a hundred percent correct, and also making your life really, really good.
Fact you speak to go to any e-commerce forum and say shipping to Germany.
I can attest to this fact and I'm preaching to the converted, but so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm not.
So, I suppose the Dutch are more like Connie and guys let's have some fun and that's why we, so we have a warehouse in the Netherlands for that
very reason, because it's a gateway in and you can ship to all over Europe from the Netherlands, no problems, relatively straightforward and easy.
You can even use something called limited fiscal representation going through the Netherlands into Germany.
So you don't even need to be VAT. In Germany, sorry, in Netherlands to get to Germany.
So you can ship your products. Let's say from the UK through the Netherlands, into Germany, but because
the end destination is Germany, you can use something called limited fiscal representation, which means you don't need to be VAT registered.
There. It's a, it's an easy fix. If you want to do it on the odd occasion.
It's not a solution. If you want to ship lots of products. Right. But it does help to unlock an initial transaction, for example.
Okay. Top tips there. Okay. So PM. What'd you mean by PM?
PL
So you need to have a third party logistics operation in some form knit
or in the region that you want to sell. So if you're in the UK, you need some form of operation that can do store your goods,
fulfill your goods, rework your goods, or do returns exactly the same in Europe. And the reason for that is that.
One getting stuck in through the logistics network is really, really tough. So getting stuck out China's difficult.
So you need to make sure you've got buffer stock in region. Now, whether that be your garage or somebody else's warehouse doesn't
really matter, but you need to have the ability to fulfill into, to top up.
So you don't run out of stock. An operation that, you know, can solve those problems.
Now, when you are not in that region, it makes it really difficult to do that.
So you need to find some form of third party logistics that can help prove will solve those issues.
So a typical client of ours would send a container into one of our warehouses over UK or Europe sent, let's say half of it into Amazon,
uh, into FBA and keep the other half. Now when the other. In the warehouse, you can do several things.
One, you could just leave it there if you want it. And then just top it up into Amazon when they run out of stock. Great. No problems with that whatsoever.
You can have the returns come there and they can be reworked, either be sold back on Amazon or ponds where you bay or destroyed, whatever it
needs, needs to happen to that. You know, if something comes in from China and it needs reworking because
I say China, because a lot of sellers have stock coming in from China. Other locations are available.
Uh, you can basically have that stock coming and we've all had it where the stocks come in and we realized the wrong barcodes on something.
So the ability to put new barcodes on. So you might need that problem. Um, or what you might do is say, well, we've put the other
half in there into Amazon. We've got half sat in the way. Why don't we make that work for us while it's there and launched
that on other marketplaces, our own website, and then just fulfill direct to the consumer from, from there.
Because even if you sell products a day, which might not be very much.
But actually, if it takes you three months, you, days, that's products. You've got less in the warehouse that you, that you didn't have.
So all of a sudden you've cited products. You're then not paying storage on those products. Like that's gotta be a, when you've sold those.
And the way that you win in e-commerce is by selling your products as quickly as possible to get the cash in the bank, to get more products, to get more stock
out the door, as quickly as you can. It's all about stock rotation, a minimum amount of stock on the shelf
while it's on a shelf, it costs you money and you don't want it on the shelf you want in people's hands. So the more you can do around that.
And that's why three PL works really well, especially since, you know,
let's say COVID was a great example. Amazon shuts his doors and you can't sell it.
You can't get your product into Amazon because it's, you know, it's only, you know, um, you know, products for COVID or whatever, and face
masks or whatever happens to be. So you need seller fulfilled prime enabled potentially in those regions as well.
Um, so that's why three PL can be really, really useful in those areas. So, um, I guess one question here is how do you find.
Um, a good three, PL I mean, what are some of the things that you need to look for?
So the key things I would suggest is one, they used to work in any commerce.
They understand e-commerce like they understand that it's all gotta be done tomorrow. Um, so what you're looking for there is, is how long does it take goods to come in
versus goods going out quite quite often? So what we do is we basically solve all the problems on the.
'cause he wants to go out tomorrow or that day, whether it be to FBA or direct
to the consumer, it needs to go today. Yeah. So, uh, you need to be able to make sure that they're geared up for
solving the problems on the way in so that it can go out quickly. So there's the first thing they need to be able to send directly into Amazon
or the, or whatever you're shipping to. They need to understand the requirements for doing that. They need to have the ability to do direct.
In our experience, you wanted someone that can do both, uh, and you also want them to be able to do reworks and returns.
So your returns coming in, you need to be able to process and either destroy quickly or put back to stock quickly, coming back to the point of you need to
rotate your stock as quickly as possible. You know, even if you, if, even if you make a minor loss on that product
of a pound, that's better than destroying the product and losing. Like it doesn't matter.
You need to recoup and you want to, you want people that can be able to do that for you. So there, I think some of the keys, some of the things we're seeing at the
moment is that there's not many, three pills or warehouses and storage files. They want to do both.
They don't want to do direct to consumer and to FBA, right. They want to do one or the other.
I think that's because, you know, when you start looking at really fast pick and pack, Sending cartons and pallets into Amazon is a real bull like, um, and
you know, it's, it's a really difficult operation to have both, and there's
not very many people that can do that. So it depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for, um, the DTC operation, then you might be better
off going to a D only someone that's. Direct to consumer that's solely focused on that because they will be a hundred
percent slicker doing that, um, than someone that does both or just does FBA.
We do both. Uh, the problem with that is that we have to split stock on the way in for it to go to the countries.
Or to go to FBA. Yeah, they problem. The downside is that it takes a little bit longer for gas stocking.
You know, it takes hours to do that instead of hours sometimes like for some people that doesn't make much difference.
Um, and if you're well-organized seller that won't make any difference. Yeah. Yeah.
Top tips. Uh, very good. Top tips. So market research compliance, uh, marketplace launched three PL three
party, a third-party logistics, and then. Promote products was your FA fifth one.
Promote products
So what this is, yeah. Exactly that. So if you think that you're going to be able to launch your product,
stick it on our website and not do any promotion, you may as well go home now. Yeah. So this bit is about basically telling people you need to promote your product.
And there's a whole load of different ways in which you can do that. And all of those ways are constantly changing.
So what we first saw. There were longer works because the market is adapted and changed and the
policies have changed or the software has changed for lots of different reasons. You know? So it's about finding what's the right way to promote your product today.
Um, rather than what happens yesterday, because it's constantly changing, but let's be honest. There's some pretty standard ways of doing that.
You know, you're going to have to pay someone. To drive traffic to said products.
That doesn't matter whether it's on a marketplace or whether it's on your own website. And you're you bring in socially, you know, either way you need to
generate traffic in one form or another in order to promote your product.
And quite honestly, there's a whole load of different ways you do that. But, but the bottom line is, is you need to generate traffic of some description.
Yeah, no. And I said, I, I, I appreciate it. People might be listening to, well, that's an obvious thing to say, and it
is, but there are still people out there to think if you build it, they will come. And you know, and it's no, it's not true anymore.
You've got to actually have a really good marketing strategy and that marketing strategy. Yes. As got to work for the area that you're going into.
Right. So what works for us here in the UK might not make sense for, um, a marketplace
based in the Netherlands, for example. And so, you know, this, again comes back down to your market research, doesn't it. And find that what strategies work in that, in that space, which is
why you're going to have to pay somebody to help you because. You're not going to know. Right. You just, you're not.
And so find someone that can, that can help you in that area. Okay. So a six number six on the list website.
Website
We, we've not, we've not touched this yet in some respects. So why is this so far down?
So the majority of the sellers that we work with come from a marketplace. So because they come from marketplaces, what happens is, is that they're
really focused on marketplaces. So for us, the website piece comes much further down the line
once they're settled in region. So once they're in the region and they they've, they've selling products, they've proven the model.
Then what they can do is they can then create their own web. Or hopefully, hopefully they're already selling on their own
website in their own country. Yeah. They can just add a new domain.co.uk dot D E D I T E S whatever
it happens to be into that. Um, so it's that onto that platform and they can start carry on selling.
Mm. Yeah, we see now that the brands, again, that are winning are those that have an
omni-channel approach, those that have an ability to create their own list. So by creating their own list, when they bring out a new product, they can market
their products back to the same customers like that works really, really well. That's really sensible.
And I know that some of the marketplaces are actually catching onto this and starting to give you the ability to start doing some of this as well,
which is really, really encouraging. Um, The bottom line is, is that you need, if you get switched off from a
marketplace, you need to be able to sell your product somewhere and you need to have your own website to do that.
You know, this is by far the, the, the sort of the next strategy in your process.
Now for some sellers, actually the website or marketplace. Pieces might swap over.
So instead of this being sick, they might be third and marketplace might be sick instead of third. So depends on you as a seller on what you, and how you currently do it.
You might actually swap these over again. There's no problem with that. You know, he's designed to be slightly adaptable according to.
Like a, you know, you as a brand. Um, so that, that, there's three core things to think about when you got to build the store.
Makes perfect sense. So you want to build a list and third we've pawn here while we classes the dream
So you don't really want to be selling to your top a hundred sellers where you want to be doing is create.
Top hundred influences, for example, who w who are already in contact with a hundred clients each.
So a hundred times a hundred is a lot better than just Like you've got to have the ability to adapt that and adapt differently.
So don't think Rob build a website and I'll just sell to people individually. No, no, no. Think about how you can build a website.
Build a following. Yes. Social, the rest of it. We've talked about social and promote, you know, you need a social interaction,
but you create the top hundred influences. Don't really talk about. Like I'd actually from a business point of view, whatever you do,
this is a great thing to do. Who are the top hundred partners you can work with that can elevate your brand in any way, shape or form.
And actually, it doesn't actually matter if that's on Amazon either. You know, you can have someone doing an unboxing video on YouTube and
send them to your Amazon listing. No dramas. Um, actually that's great for ranking.
Um, so then we go to that. That's the website piece. Yeah. And finally growth.
Growth
Yeah. I mean, the, this is, I mean, for me, we were unsure whether it's called this growth or scale. Once you've got all of these pieces in, you're constantly scaling, you're
constantly growing, but at this point you really are looking to you really, really
capital up to capitalize on everything you're doing to take it to the next level. And there's three areas in here that you should be considering.
One is. Yeah. What digital marketplaces do you need to be on? And how would you build on the marketplaces you're already on?
So let's say you're on, we talked about being on Amazon in the UK and Germany, for example. Well, how'd you get on, on Italy, Spain, France, Czech, Poland,
Sweden, Netherlands, and the others don't come shortly, you know? So you should be getting on those, but what other marketplaces are there?
Let's talk about, you know, the UK eBay really straightforward and easy on by straightforward and easy, Frugo straightforward and easy, and
a whole load of others that could be put into contention, Etsy, Wayfair, you know, there, there are ones in there that you could easily work with.
You know, we've just wish, you know, wishes as a massive transformation over the last six months and could be an amazing opportunity for a lot of sellers.
So, you know, but then you get into other countries. Netherlands you have, Amazon is in the biggest marketplace
in the Netherlands polies. Like you want to be on bold.com. You don't be on Amazon re I mean, you want to be on Amazon, but.
paul.com is much better. And then you get into Allegro. You going to auto CD discount, real auto in all those other countries.
What other marketplaces should you be on? And if you're working with a decent agency or service provider, well, they're
going to be able to do is they're going to be able to connect you from their warehouse into all these other platforms.
And then they can just, if you get one order a day from platform, Great. Does it matter?
It's still reducing your stock by or products a day. The sat in the warehouse anyway, like it makes perfect sense.
Um, so, so that's, that's the first thing is to adapt and evolve into further marketplaces.
The next one is by getting into retail. What retail can you get into? Can you work with distributors that can help get your products
into boots or department stores? Other local shops. Um, so that's the next thing.
And that's relatively complicated to do unless you know, different distributors.
So we were really trying to build out different distributors in different niches to say, well, here's the distributor in the baby section, go talk to these.
Here's one in toys. Here's one in food. He's wanting supplements. He's wanting whatever else that comes with that, because if we
can help focus you into that. That really, really works. And then the last thing, because it's really popular right now is exit.
Like how would you exit your brands and what does that look like? And I'm not going to go into that because there's a million, one, people talking about it right now, but you know, it's about that growth piece.
And if you're thinking about you get to this point and what does success look like we talked about right at the beginning is typically our sellers that that's
selling in the U S their target should be % of their us sales here in Europe.
That's what success is the measurement. For us. Okay. So basically that's where we aim to get our clients to, um, when
they expand through this pathway. So client comes in and says, Hey, Andy, I want to successfully expand.
What does that look like? Well, by the time they get to the growth piece, when they're working with our growth managers throughout the growth managers, target is
to get them to % of the USL. So we're going to adapt that soon and hopefully we're going to
get to a hundred percent by, by just adapting that to globally. So it might be Japan and Australia and stuff like that.
So I didn't, but that will come in time today, we're focused on the Europe and it's % of the U S.
That's a really good metric straight up. I so good. I've written it down. Um, I'm curious to know what, um, some of my sites actually sales
are in relation to those figures. So I'm going to go and check, uh, Andy, listen, there is so much value that
you've given and I, um, I get that. Uh, you you've covered a lot, right?
So this is a couple of things. One you've covered a lot, and I think we will put comprehensive show notes together. So people can sort of get ahold of this information because I think
we all want to go over it again. But I, I appreciate like, since Brexit, for example, there's
a lot change for people with distribute from the UK to Europe. And there's a whole bunch of things that have gone on in questions
that people are going to have. So if people want to get hold of you, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do.
Connect with Andy
Yeah. Great. Thanks. So I think, um, I think the UK Brexit, thing's a big thing.
Just pick up on that. We've not talked about that, that whole Brexit, you know, UK to Europe, Europe to UK is really easy.
People are over complicated right now and they should just think. It's easy because it is. Um, so if people wanna get in contact with us really, really straightforward,
there's several things you can do. You can either Google globally commerce experts and we're
hopefully fingers crossed. We're going to come up. We should do.
Yeah. Yeah. We, you can contact us on all the social platforms, wherever works best for you.
You know, I don't think we're particularly heavy on Tik TOK, um, because, uh, that's not me right now.
Although I, new marketing person is convinced that I'm going there very, very soon. Um, but real wasn't Tik TOK videos.
Exactly that. So, but really realistically the easiest way is to go to LinkedIn and go Andy Hooper.
And you're going to find me on LinkedIn, and then I'm going to bow. You can ask me any questions you like fire away, and then I'll direct you
to the most relevant person within the team that can support you if you want our, um, six step, sorry, our seven step guide downloadable PDF.
Send me or connect with me on LinkedIn and ask for it and I'll get it sent over. And it's an ebook that people can get from us on how to expand, basically expanding
a bit more detail in what we talked with Matt today, about how they can do it. And then you've got some notes on that as well.
Fantastic. And we will put a link to Andy and everybody, uh, in the show notes, like I say, so, uh, before we end though, Andy, I'm curious,
uh, UK to Europe, post-Brexit. Uh, I know a lot of people that are gonna argue with you on this one.
So why would you say, uh, so before, before Brexit, % of our business
was all focused with sellers based in the states, expanding into Europe.
And it doesn't matter whether they're expanding into the UK or to Germany as the two biggest markets we've been doing it for years.
American centers have been doing this for years. And what's happened is, is that the typical Brits, typical Brits and some
Europeans is that when something changes it, everything goes in the too difficult
pole because we don't understand it. And what happens is because the regulations change.
No, one's actually said to us, Here's what you need to do. Step-by-step to make sure that's solvable.
Well, the good news is for anyone listening today, you can take these seven steps and you can utilize these and you can go through these seven steps and
that's how to expand back into Europe. Now there's a few complications that have arisen since.
Do you need an NCD? Do you not need an entity? How do you ship things into Europe and how easy is that?
And the biggest problem we all had was shipping things into Europe. It was the biggest problem, the biggest pain.
So we've got ways around that. We can solve those things for you. Most of those.
Engage with the UK, Netherlands and Germany strategy in one form or another, by having VAT registration in the Netherlands or limited fiscal
representation in the Netherlands, you ship stuff into the Netherlands and you're back into Europe. Literally overnight.
Most people will probably already have still have VAT in most of the European countries, unless you've really thrown your toys out the pram
and got rid of your VAT numbers as well. And I know things change. Because life changes.
That's what happens as business owners what's going to happen is Brexit has
thrown everything out the out of the box, and you've got reput the box back together and understand how to do that.
The jigsaw or whatever you want to call it. Well in three months time, there'll be something else. And, you know, as a business owner, your role is to solve
problems and to make things happen. And if you are unsure on those, we've got to find experts that
are available that can do that. And some of that is just about finding who those people are. Who's already done this.
Who's made it a success. Obviously. We'd love to talk to you. We can do that for you, but I'm sure there's other people that
have done that now that can make that happen as well, that you may know, you know, it's, there's a.
The rural big has been ripped up and we got to start getting, okay, who's got the rule book. How do I change that? Because in a years time, it won't be, Brexit will be something else.
Yeah. Um, I like that, uh, Brexit is easy. So, uh, that, that's a really good quote, which we'll put on social media.
I've no doubt. And he listened to. So much for your time, but it has been an absolute treat and privilege to,
uh, to converse with your good self. Um, I've got lots of notes. Uh, I've enjoyed it. Um, so yeah.
Brilliant. Thank you, Matt. Thanks very much for your time.
So there you have it, another fantastic conversation. And again, huge.
Wrap up with Matt
Thanks to Andy for joining me on the podcast today. Now don't forget if you're new to the show, you can check out our
complete back catalog over on our newly revamped website, which you can reach at e-commerce podcast.net.
Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from, because as always, we've got some more great content lined up and I don't want you to miss out.
No, I don't more great people like Andy are coming very, very soon. So do subscribe to the show.
Thanks for listening. And in case no one has told you today, you, my friend are awesome.