Planet Amazon Podcast

Unlocking Amazon’s European Potential: Strategy and Success Stories

• Adam Shaffer • Episode 25

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Ready to unlock the secrets of international Amazon success? Join us as Alex Karagiannis, founder of Lezzat and seasoned Amazon FBA seller, reveals the intricacies of scaling your Amazon business from the US to the bustling European markets. From overcoming language barriers to mastering regulatory compliance, Alex shares his expert insights on making a seamless transition across borders. Discover the strategic importance of entering through Germany and the nuances of maintaining consistency with ASINs to leverage existing reviews.

Our conversation with Alex delves into the pivotal Amazon Brand Registry process and the strategic adjustments needed for effective advertising in new regions. Learn why securing brand protection through the EU and UK IPOs is crucial, and how Amazon's IP Accelerator program can fast-track your international journey. We also shed light on adapting your marketing strategies to different languages and cultures, and the essential steps for understanding your total addressable market.

Finally, we unpack the complexities of European pricing strategies and the implications of competition laws on your business. With a focus on achieving higher margins and handling potential challenges like copycats, Alex offers a roadmap for successfully navigating the European marketplace. Whether you're an established seller or testing the waters, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you thrive on the international Amazon stage.

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The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.

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Announcement:

Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam Shaffer, where we explore the world of Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces. Join us as we delve into the latest strategies and tactics for successful selling on the world's largest online marketplace.

Adam Shaffer:

Hello, I'm Adam Shaffer, and welcome to Planet Amazon, where we talk about all things Amazon. Today on Planet Amazon, we're thrilled to welcome Alex Karagiannis, the founder and owner of Lezzat, a UK-based digital marketing agency specializing in Amazon services. With a strong presence in both the UK and Greece, lazat supports brands across the globe in navigating complexities of the Amazon marketplace. Alex himself is an Amazon FBA seller and the founder of the Athens e-commerce meetup, bringing years of on-hands experience and insights into the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape. Today, we're diving into the critical topic of managing Amazon accounts for global brands, the challenges that come with it and how companies can stay ahead of this dynamic environment.

Announcement:

Alex, welcome to the show.

Adam Shaffer:

It's great to have you here. This is an awesome topic to talk about, because I don't know how many people talk to me about hey, we're selling in the US, but what do we do and how do we start selling in Europe and Asia on Amazon? You guys are helping us sell in Canada, in Mexico, but we want to break out because the markets in the UK, Germany and France and Japan are really big. So this is the perfect topic, which is a great place to grow, and Amazon kind of makes it easy. So really, first, before we get into that, I want to know and I think everybody wants to know a little bit more about you, Lezzat, and what inspired you to start Lezzat.

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, okay, well, thank you very much for having me on the show. So I started Lezzat a bit over six years. It really started from my journey as an Amazon seller. So at the time I was laid off from a previous company and all things came together as such and I stumbled upon, basically, amazon and a friend of mine told me that he knows of a person that's selling Tupperware on Amazon US and making, I think, a bit over $6 million back then. So that intrigued me. I did a course, I started learning about Amazon and started as an Amazon seller. Soon I realized that it's more difficult than you would expect to sell on Amazon, and that actually started the need to create Lezat, which essentially helps alleviate those problems and makes it easier for sellers to sell on Amazon and grow on Amazon. So that's the story. Yeah, no, that's great.

Adam Shaffer:

So you were doing it yourself and you realize that Amazon is big, but it's absolutely not the easiest thing to navigate and there's so much competition and so much you need to know, so it's like never ending. So the thing is, let's focus more on international. Again, I think that most of the sellers not everybody, but most of the sellers that are selling are on the North American, or at least the US, platform today. Tell us about what's the key differences between managing Amazon accounts in the EU versus the US.

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, well, quite a few things there. First of all, the language, I guess, is probably the easiest one and thing that most people are aware of. So I guess one of the main things that people worry about is uh. Well, in the us I only have to worry about one language as such on the on my listings, um, but in uh, in eu you have quite a lot. So you obviously have your german, which is german is the biggest amazon marketplace, and in europe, then followed by uk, and then obviously you move into France, spain and Italy, so all of those you need to have localized content.

Alex Karagiannis:

Now, it goes a bit beyond this because there's also some other complexities that come with it. So it's also the regulatory and compliance which is a big issue for a lot of sellers. How you do your fulfillment is also a big issue, so how you need to be VAT registered but also use Amazon's warehouse, and also where you're going to ship your majority of your products to. So there is a few complexities that are before selling on Amazon, while you're going to be selling, and obviously making sure that you know how to do it going forward, because managing PPC in all these languages, restock, et cetera can be more complex. However, obviously the price is there for the grabs, as I say to our clients, because there's less competition and actually Amazon Europe is growing quite fast. Each year there's more markets added to it. Amazon Europe is growing quite fast. Each year there's more markets added to it. It's a growing market and it's somewhere where we see a lot of demand for these sort of services expanding from US over to Europe.

Adam Shaffer:

So if I was a US seller and I wanted to start selling in Europe, kind of help me understand in the sequence that you need to do it. What are the things? Yeah, you would. You mentioned a couple of things like compliancy, regulatory, but I think the bat register report, like you, got to get that going right yeah yeah that from the last uh, from our last check, that's for germany it's at three months.

Alex Karagiannis:

So this is something that people are not aware of. Is, for example, in the uk that you can get it done in 48 hours? No problem, it's very, very easy Online done. Yeah, it's applications goes through, you can have it. It's a matter of a couple of days give or take. In Germany right now it's four months. It used to be more, it used to be seven, so that's not very easy.

Alex Karagiannis:

So imagine having all the plans and all the work and everything ready, only to be told that you have to wait seven months for a bureaucratic thing. So I guess the first step that people need to do is essentially they need to understand their total addressable market, the segmented addressable market that they're going for, so that they can understand. Okay, well, if I take my product, which Amazon marketplaces make sense? Where do I start? We usually recommend you start with one, whether it's Germany or UK. Uk is the easiest one, so usually most people go for that, but also Germany is very lucrative because it opens the whole EU space. So you can find distributors of Amazon. You can use your D2C website and actually translate it and have a version of it in German language. So it's not just what I'd like listeners to understand. It's not when we say we want to start selling on Amazon in Europe, we're actually saying we're opening a whole new chessboard in Europe and doing the fulfillment and everything right for Amazon means it's also applicable to other retailers offline, online and D2C.

Alex Karagiannis:

So first step is understanding where. Learn who your competitors are in each one of those marketplaces, learn what price they're selling in. If you're able to have some tools, like the leading tools for searching data and market size, etc. Use some of those to understand what's happening and then try and realistically see whether your product, with the reviews that it has, the USP that it has and the positioning it has as a brand, can actually stand there. That's something I think a lot of people can do, even without talking to a specialist agency or using some external help. That's something any owner could do on their own. Just a tip for your audience Obviously, make sure you use a local postcode. So if you're in Amazon Germany, find a postcode in Berlin, for example, and use that so that you get the correct searches on Amazon and not just any searches.

Adam Shaffer:

So we talked about getting VAT registered in Germany takes longer than the UK. Those are the two best markets to start in. But if you're selling let's say if you're selling in Germany and you have products at Amazon, fba, germany, even if you don't have the VAT for the other European countries, can you sell into them like in the US, or do?

Alex Karagiannis:

you need to get a VAT for every country.

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, very good question. Now here, what happens is there's a threshold. So the easy way of explaining this and by all means it's not that I'm an accountant by trade as such, but this comes from my experience and seeing what my clients also do, and I'm also selling on Amazon Europe so the way it works is there's a threshold from which you can sell from Germany to Italy, for example, sell from Germany to Italy, for example, but then if you exceed that threshold, then you need to start paying tax in Italy for those products. So there's a tool called One Stop Shop, the OSS, which is a quick way to actually get VAT registered and attribute your VAT to all those countries. So essentially, what's going to happen is the normal step.

Alex Karagiannis:

The most common way that we see things happening is some people they just set up Amazon Germany. They have a warehouse outside of Amazon where they input the goods, then they drip feed Amazon FBA Germany. Once that is set up, then they activate the rest of the countries, which is Italy, france, spain, poland, belgium and Sweden. It's not as big as the other ones. They're catching up, but not as big. So Italy, france, spain and Germany is what we call the EU4.

Alex Karagiannis:

So once they activate those, some sales start to come in. Some sales start to come in. If a product is very unique and there's a match out of Amazon, also a trend, et cetera, then usually the sales pick up a bit faster. When you hit that 10,000 euro threshold, then actually you need to be VAT registered in that specific country. So it's always good to keep an eye on this, because regulatory compliance can actually come with fines and can actually be something quite annoying for sellers at the beginning. So it's something that you should know and take it as a positive thing, because the more you grow, the more you have to comply with the taxman, and it's one of those countries.

Adam Shaffer:

Yeah, okay, so I could start in Germany, but by being in Germany I could leverage all of Europe until I get to 10,000 or thereabouts. Amazon doesn't stop you. You have to self-regulate.

Announcement:

Will Amazon keep on?

Adam Shaffer:

selling. Will they suspend your item in those countries?

Alex Karagiannis:

No, no, no. So you guys, you got to manage that. Amazon says it's your responsibility to pay that where you should. I don't care, okay, got it Got it.

Adam Shaffer:

So that's interesting and so it's great. And is Germany the place that people go to put their products at FBA to leverage Europe, or are they doing it in Poland.

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, so well. The thing is, germany is the main one, and the reason behind this is because, first of all, germany is, in terms of population and location, actually is very central to Europe, so countries like Poland, for example, would purchase, austria would purchase, and so on. Secondly, amazon has started to expand. There's a program, essentially, so in other countries where Amazon doesn't have a marketplace, if you buy from Amazon Germany, the free delivery is up to 50 euros or over, so actually it's pretty economical really to even purchase from a country like Greece to buy from Amazon Germany your products and pretty good service in terms of delivery. So, as such, what has happened is Amazon Germany has grown a lot. It's become the biggest one in Europe and continues to grow. So that's where people focus their effort and that's where we would recommend they focus it as well and then localize it in other countries.

Adam Shaffer:

Cool, so that's great, and my guess is, this is why you need help, because it actually can be a little complicated. So I have a product. It's doing great in the US. It's got lots of reviews, five stars. I want to sell it in England and Germany. What happens? Am I able to port my reviews? I'm always told I could port the reviews over. Is that true or not?

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, very good question. So it depends on two methods. One is the wrong method and one is the correct method. So the wrong method, but if you do it, you're not going to get the reviews across. The wrong method is usually one of the two problems people have. One is they create a new SKU. It's a very, very small detail and it's one of those things that gets slipped. But if you don't have an Amazon expert by your side or an e-commerce expert, it might happen. So they say, well, we have this product. Well, we're going to sell in Germany. Okay, well, we need new packaging. Okay, well, new packaging. Okay, well, new packaging means use barcode, and that's where the issue becomes. So when they create that new barcode, then you cannot carry those reviews with you, so the barcode has to be the same so your UPC has to be the same right.

Alex Karagiannis:

Yes, that's the unique identifier of Amazon saying that this product is linked with this product.

Adam Shaffer:

So, basically, you're taking an ASIN you have in the US and you're bringing the same ASIN over. You're not creating a brand new ASIN, and by making it the same exact ASIN, they let you bring the reviews over. Is that right?

Alex Karagiannis:

Exactly, you got it 100%, adam. You got it yes. And then, to comply with the local regulations, you can put stickers on top of it to say about the warnings, the suffocation warnings, the distributor address, the local address, local telephone line.

Adam Shaffer:

I was just going to ask you do you really need to have separate packaging? And you're saying you put stickers.

Alex Karagiannis:

You're saying you put stickers, no stickers. Stickers is the best way to do it. Or you could just have the version of your packaging in the other language, but the barcodes remain the same. Everything else is exactly the same. So that's how more people do it.

Adam Shaffer:

Yes, and do you get all the reviews, or they only let you take some, all of them, all of them. Okay, I mean, that's a huge benefit, right? I mean, if you worked so hard to get those reviews.

Alex Karagiannis:

Exactly, and that's why it's also you don't start from step number one, so some people might falsely believe that, well, amazon was so hard to start back in the day to get this, I don't want to do it again and start from scratch, and so on. You actually have a very good head start with those reviews going in, let alone some brand recognition, let alone also Amazon does. I don't know if you're aware of this, but Amazon also has incentives for US sellers, one that gets all over in Europe, and there's quite big incentives in terms of cash back and allowances, et. Etc. That they offer, usually through approved agencies and such. But this is also a very clear winner, essentially, and a reason why people could come over.

Adam Shaffer:

And if I'm in the US and I have products here that I want to ship over to Germany or UK, do I need to have a 3PL or somebody on the ground there, or can I ship it directly to FBA?

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, well, that's the other thing. People do it. So my usual recommendation is try not to even consider doing Amazon Europe if you're not doing at least 2 million and up per annum on Amazon US. The reason why I'm saying this to you is because the correct setup is you need to have a local warehouse in EU. Now you might want to have it in the Netherlands. A lot of people have it there because they can actually just arrive, it's quick to get your EORI number and your VAT number there and then while you apply for your german and so on, and also netherlands is a very, very good hub for custom clearance in europe, etc.

Alex Karagiannis:

So the reason why this is happening is I'll just give you a real example of an actual case that happened to us last week. So we had an account came over and they had their account closed because a previous expert didn't know what they were doing. Anyhow, they put a lot of stock into Amazon. They had got a section three. We unblocked the account. Oh well, then we see that there's a lot of stock that they sent. They had sent pallets and pallets for the first order, because Amazon as a new seller allows you to send as much as you want. But then obviously it's a ticket time bomb, because now they have a lot of stock, now that client is not in a country, in Bulgaria, so they don't have a marketplace there. So we go into Amazon and say, well, remove some of that inventory right, send it back to the customer. You can't. Amazon says removal orders you can only do on an Amazon marketplace. So Germany, france, italy, spain, netherlands, belgium, sweden, poland, give me an address there, okay. So that's a very common.

Adam Shaffer:

So if you're going to remove product, it's got to go back to one of the Amazon countries, Correct. Otherwise you liquidate. To remove product, it's got to go back to one of the Amazon countries Correct.

Alex Karagiannis:

Otherwise you liquidate it or you dispose it, and all of these come with ever-increasing costs by Amazon. So again, that's why I say, when you're trying to look at opening a Europe Amazon Europe, try and think of it as opening a new chessboard. Amazon is a big thing of it, but also you want to utilize it for other things as well. So finding offline distributors, finding et cetera. That way you can best utilize big shipments sending to Europe, your containers as such, and be able to move products much faster in this continent.

Adam Shaffer:

Okay, I didn't realize that. So you got to have some kind of local in one of the countries. You got to have some local warehouse, this 3PL, something to hold your products and feed it to Amazon.

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, because in US it's like remove order. Okay, well, it's in Texas, okay, let's send it, I don't know, in California, whatever, oh yes, but in Europe. Oh yes, but in Europe that's not the case.

Adam Shaffer:

You cannot send it anywhere you want and you talked about, I guess, localization earlier. But if you have an ASIN, let's go back to. I have this ASIN in the US. It's got five stars, it's got tons of reviews. I'm going to turn it on in Germany, but I have it in English. Is Amazon, when I do, canada it translates it, or Mexico translates it? Is it going to translate it or am I going to have to redo the entire copy?

Alex Karagiannis:

Well, I think you know the answer to that one. Unfortunately, the auto-translation is not there, and it's one of those most common things. Matt, I'm sure you've understood how competitive Amazon is also becoming, in the sense of bigger brands are joining in. They're using Amazon as a main revenue source. They're optimizing listing keywords. This is exactly what's happening over this side of the Atlantic as well. So therefore, your German listing is not just a closed translation, it's not just going to cut it. You need those keywords, you need to speak the language of a consumer, you need to use the terminology that people use for the specific product, and so on. That does include your A-plus content and your brand story and your video and infographics, so it's very crucial. Another tip for your audience whenever you do design work whether it's with an agency or someone else, a third party or in-house make sure you keep those source files ready, because you never know when you need to reopen them and just change the English to French or Italian and so on. That's going to be very handy.

Adam Shaffer:

But you need to actually to be successful if you want to have the right copy, the right SEO, you kind of have to start from scratch and redo the copy. Maybe the pictures are good, but the call-outs have to be changed.

Alex Karagiannis:

Correct, it has to be in German language. That's why I say UK is a bit easier, so UK, you don't really have to do that. Okay, a difference between american english and uk english it's um, but very little differences and etc. Maybe there are some changes in how people search on amazoncouk as opposed to dot com, but it's very small compared to, obviously, the other marketplaces. Um, so in germany, france, italy and spain you have to have local English is not going to cut it.

Adam Shaffer:

So if I have brand registry in the US, do I need to apply for brand registry in Europe?

Alex Karagiannis:

Yes, so you have what's called the EU IPO, so European Union Intellectual Property Office, which is over in Madrid. So you need to do that, which is going to take. Well, it depends on your case, etc. Sometimes some big brands over in the US have global trademarks. If you have a global one, you already have it. If you only have US, you need to do the EU one and if you are going to sell in UK, you need the UK one. So prices for those depend. Really, if you do it alone, most sellers can do them DIY. They can do them themselves. It's pretty self-executive and easy process to do and it can take anywhere. Really, from my experience, anywhere between three, maybe four to five months. It depends.

Adam Shaffer:

Really. But you can't use the US trademark. You can't use a US trademark, no. So you got to get an EU or a British trademark. In the US they have this program called IP Accelerator where you could use an approved lawyer, ip lawyer in the US and before you get the trademark completed, which could take a while, in a couple of weeks you're up on Amazon with brand registry. Does that exist?

Alex Karagiannis:

Yes, so in US the trademark process there's more scrutiny around it. In UK and EU it's a bit easier to go to navigate through this and you can actually just put your application number. So even though it's pending, it still goes through. So then when it gets granted, it's automatically granted. So it's one of those quick things that you want to look at together as you're doing your VAT and your EORI, which is your import code. As such, you want to look at that EU and UK IPO together.

Adam Shaffer:

But it's the same concept. You need to have brand registry to have A-plus content. You need to have brand registry to run certain advertising. You need brand registry to protect your content. It's the same same old, same old. Yes, I mean, that's a big deal. So part of getting the VAT, you got to get brand registry sorted out if you want to have good content or you won't be able to bring over your A-plus content, I imagine Correct.

Alex Karagiannis:

You won't be able to bring over your A-plus content, I imagine. Correct, wow, okay Again. That's why I said there's a reason why I set the threshold before to this type of sellers to that level of revenue. Yeah, because you will have a setup fee. Right, whether you go with a specialist agency like us or anyone, a consultant or anything, you will need to do those things because you want to do them as professional as possible to give the best chances that you can to grow in those marketplaces. And the first couple of months obviously is about setting, getting that data back from Amazon, advertising, ranking, all of those things. So realistic expectation is there's going to be a couple of months where you collect data before you actually start seeing those things. So realistic expectation is there's going to be a couple of months where you collect data before you actually start seeing those results, very similar to when you launch a new product on Amazon. Really, you don't expect month one or month two to be high profit, high revenue no, but I'm hoping with the reviews.

Adam Shaffer:

I'm hoping with the reviews and hopefully the content, I could get some running start anyway.

Alex Karagiannis:

Absolutely Well. The other thing that's good is you can do Vine again, okay you can do. Vine again to get more reviews. You can re-Vine them if you want.

Adam Shaffer:

It's the same program in the countries. Yeah, cool. Okay, that's great. Now you talked a little bit about the advertising, but PPC, so you're spending a lot of money on advertising in the US. Is there a way to go to school on the advertising that you've been doing in the US and bring it over there, or are you really starting from scratch?

Alex Karagiannis:

not, because what happens is on your, your advertising. You will have realized a few things around. First of all, create. Let's start from the creatives. Okay, so the creative sides of the most more advanced type of campaigns your sponsor brand, for example, or video, the creatives that you have split a be tested. Those will still apply. Main image, which obviously applies for your sponsor product. Again, speed data testing, your main image for CTR and so on. Those experiments will still apply. So therefore, you can bring with you lessons learned, because an optimized Amazon image is the same in US and in Germany.

Alex Karagiannis:

Now what you need to start learning a bit more is your other data, like your competitors, or maybe the category, or maybe the ASIN you're targeting or the keywords you're targeting, that sort of thing. But again, you're not starting from scratch. Also, you will have a better understanding of how you're doing your upper funnel, mid funnel and lower funnel in US and how you're allocating budget to those different type of campaigns, so you can use a similar structure as well. So month one is going to look like this. Month six, my setup, should be looking something like this and you can start to bring this in that methodology, bring it in into Europe as well, and from our experience, it's less competitive than US. Us budgets are much higher for PPC and there's a lot more competition in AI tools and agencies involved, whereas in Europe it's significantly less. So we tend to see very, very good ROAS over here.

Adam Shaffer:

You know, one of the things we do for our clients is we help them maintain what they call minimum advertised price or MAP in the US, and we help them by creating a policy that works for their channel. And we help find unauthorized sellers and find the source that they're getting it from and getting it off the platform to make it a cleaner channel on Amazon. But I think, and you tell me, in some of the countries you can't have a minimum advertised price. Is that right?

Alex Karagiannis:

No, you're right, this is a very, very, very good question. So, for example, in the UK, you've got the. It's an anti-competition law, so you cannot say this. So you cannot say, actually, well, this product, if I sell it to distributors, the distributors are not allowed to sell it below this price, for example. That is not allowed and that is actually. It's an offense. You can actually have very serious consequences with this.

Alex Karagiannis:

Similar versions of this applies to EU as well, to a different extent in its country. So the reason as such the enforcement of losing your buy box and the enforcement of maintaining a price is a very delicate process and something you need to manage. Now, it really depends on the size of the clients. Now we've seen clients that come over to Europe and say, well, spain and Italy have exclusivities, so we don't touch those, we just update the listings, update the content and obviously their distributors, their exclusive distributors in those countries, sell, and then other countries, like Germany, for example, is up for grabs, so in which case, they're the exclusive seller. Now there are procedures in place.

Alex Karagiannis:

If someone, for example, is selling your product, how to go about it? You buy one, you see if it's exact where they get it from. If need be, you can use transparency, although I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. But you don't get this issue of what you see very often in the US with hijackers and also people selling a copycat of your product. It's easier done in the US than it is in the EU and one of the main reasons is there's a lot of paperwork involved when you're setting up firstly in the EU. So you're lucid. Maybe you've heard of that which has to do with recycling and how you abide with recycling regulations and plastic regulations, etc. So all of these are very, very important and actually help make it difficult to enter, but also the people that are makes it a better room for them to grow professionally professionally, but it's the same story.

Adam Shaffer:

If you have a few different sellers on your ASIN, the lower price is going to most likely win, as long as it's prime right.

Alex Karagiannis:

But from where would you get them? If you were never selling in Europe, where did you get these? So it's probably you're going to have two types of sellers. You're going to have the person who's selling, I don't know let's say water bottles, and then they're selling water bottles that are unique, et cetera, and they're doing I don't know something like 5 million on Amazon per year. They've never sold in Europe. They had one time a distributor in the UK didn't do much. Their product does not exist in Europe. So those people, there's never going to be anyone that competes with them in Europe.

Adam Shaffer:

So the less distributed you are, the better you are.

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, and then the bigger ones, the much, much bigger ones, which are usually within the top five in their industry. We were talking to one of those in the pet category doing exactly this. They're very big, they're number one actually in their respective category in the US. And then in Europe they have some other copycats. They have some of their product being sold at a ridiculously high price X5, et cetera. So when they go into that market then actually that's like a cleanup process, because you've got the original, you've got the ownership, you've got the correct price, et cetera. If anyone's trying to use the design, et cetera, you can get those down. So it's part of that process. It's a slow process, but the problem is not as big as it's part of that process. It's a slow process, but the problem is not as big as it's over in the US on similar cases.

Adam Shaffer:

And are you finding with pricing, if somebody's selling something for $100 in the US, is it usually just translated or are they trying to make more money in Europe? What do you think is the average kind of thing out there? So you mean, I'm selling it for $100, but I'm now going to start selling it in the UK or Germany. Do you think I'm able to convert the price so I can make $10 or $20 more, or am I going to be probably on par with my US pricing? Can you make more margin in Europe?

Alex Karagiannis:

Yes, you can actually Again, because this goes back to the first thing that I mentioned in terms of how you want to be doing your market research before going in. So you're in a very, very, very good position if your products are more in the premium range. You're in a very good position if you're one of the original inventors of something, and then you don't have a lot of competition. So therefore, you can justify why the price is more expensive in Europe rather than UK compared to your listings. So it's not a direct exchange rate conversion as such.

Adam Shaffer:

And when it comes to ASINs, could you be, I guess, suspended or delisted for a SKU or an ASIN in one country and not another? Or is it, once you're delisted, you're delisted for a skewer in one country and not another? Or is it, once you're delisted, you're delisted?

Alex Karagiannis:

No, it's the first what you just said. So you can get a, let's say, trademark violation, a policy violation, and that takes down your listing in Italy, but Spain and France and Germany continues as normal, for example. Okay.

Adam Shaffer:

Very rare, but yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, continues as normal. For example very rare, but yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. And when you're, if you're again an fba in germany but you're somebody in another, another country's buying your stuff, are they changing what you pay, amazon, or is it still fixed? You're, you go into the amazon calculator, it tells you what the fba price is and that's your price, or is it? Is it changing if somebody's buying it from poland, from germany, then germany to germany?

Alex Karagiannis:

so. So there's different settings in your, your shipment settings in terms of if you send outside of germany, what the charge is. So usually there's delivery fees involved. So if I'm buying, let's say, something from greece, from amazon germany, there's delivery fees involved. If I exceed the first, there's like coupons, and then those are waived. And if I buy from Germany and I'm in Germany, it's obviously free, with prime over a certain threshold, or if I'm a member, and so on. It's very similar, I guess, to the sense of if you're in US and you buy from somewhere abroad, let's say somewhere in Latin America, for example, or you buy within the country in the US. That's how that goes.

Adam Shaffer:

And so, going back to the markets, germany's biggest UK, france, italy.

Alex Karagiannis:

Spain. Yeah, so I mean just a bit from the top of my head just to give you a bit in terms of how big it is on a monthly user basis. Now, these are just estimated numbers based on the last data I had. But you're looking at something around half a billion searches on Amazon Germany per month. Searches is on Amazon Germany per month, and then you've got something like 350 on UK, and then it goes 160, 160. So France and Italy is more or less the same, and then just a tiny bit less is Amazon Spain, and then all the other ones are. Then the gap is quite big. So Netherlands is about 20, sweden is about 15, poland 15, belgium 11.

Alex Karagiannis:

And, just to give you an understanding, com is 2.2 billion. So if I add all those together, roughly you could say that the searches are about 60% of com is all of Europe. But then next year we've got Ireland coming up. So that's exciting because you've got a country that has quite a lot of spend online close to UK. Many other things that can actually work well and it keeps on growing. Turkey came online last year and it's just continuing. There's more and more countries added, so that number is going to be growing higher and higher.

Adam Shaffer:

Cool, that's great. And then just a quickie on customer service. So you're dealing with multiple languages, multiple questions. Are you able to deal with this centrally, or do you need people in different countries? How does that work?

Alex Karagiannis:

no, no, that's it. That's, that's the easy bit. That's that's where things like chat, gpt and your translators are fine, because 99.9 is the same question. Right, I got my product is damaged, or, uh, you send me either wrong or I wanted an SDS. Now that's something else. If your products are chemical, for example, you may need the MSDS or SDS as it's also called. You'll save the data sheets those need to be translated over to its language. But customer service is especially in FBA. Most of the listeners, if they're selling on Amazon, they know they rarely, rarely have a message from someone on Amazon Very rarely, because 99.9% it's something like where's my shipment? I haven't received it, it's damaged, I need a replacement. And this is where the beauty of FBA comes in. So, no, you don't need people that speak the local language, you can just go about with the translation. It's fine. And should the same sort of questions arise again and again and again, let's say invoicing, et cetera you can just have a template and use that how they can self-service to get those.

Adam Shaffer:

Essentially, Okay, thanks, that's great, and what are we missing? What are we not talking about, alex, that people might want to know about? I mean, I'm sure we can go on forever about this and it's really interesting, but tell me, like, what are the topics we're not hitting right now that you want to talk about?

Alex Karagiannis:

In terms of the EU expansion. Yes, specifically, specifically. So well, the the things that we're not talking about is one uh, it's not understanding. Your pricing is not going to be very easy. So people think is I'm just going to throw my products into amazon germany and then I'm going to sell in amazon germany and I'm just going to activate france, italy, spain, etc. And then it's going to send that. Okay, what's the fees involved? Because if you send from germany to france, they're big fees and they keep on increasing. So really you're not going to do that. It's going to be very expensive. So if you just to give an understanding for something like normal size, like, let's say, mobile phone size thing, something that would be 380 in germany, sending it to france eight. So is it really worth it? You know, if you're selling something for 800, yeah, okay, but if most people that sell something for like 15, 20, 25, 30, you need to consider this. So that's that's, that's a, that's something to consider when you're at the initial stages, and not that registered in france as well.

Alex Karagiannis:

The other thing is for the bigger players that want to expand, when you get VAT registered in France, italy, spain, germany, so all of those countries together. There's the benefit of what's called pan-European FBA, so that's like a very, very high level program of Amazon that unfortunately, was advertised as something easy that anyone can do, but really it's only for companies who are really big that can utilize it, because you want to be VAT-registered in France, italy, spain and Germany. So then Amazon just moves the inventory around to just make sure you have enough for Prime. The other thing that I would say is, again, depending on your size as a company, you want to start preparing and getting organized all your assets together, so videos that you have, ugc, contents that other people have created for you, maybe you can get source files of those You're in for graphics and A-plus content all nice and tight in one place, with source files of those. Your infographics and A-plus content all nice and tight in one place with source files. So having everything neat is going to make the translation localization much quicker and actually very, very efficient. So that's very important.

Alex Karagiannis:

Make sure you have very good understanding of the regulatory and compliance Use a very professional agency that does this and someone that knows what they're doing, and I think, finally, make sure that you have enough stock. I think you hear a lot of people that say this. It's the number one rule. It's probably the only thing that we ask of sellers. Do not run out of stock. It's like building like your little bonfire and then if it just dies out, it's going to take a while to get it back up To start it again.

Adam Shaffer:

I know that makes sense, yeah.

Alex Karagiannis:

Your honeymoon period, your launch your vine, all of that stuff.

Adam Shaffer:

That is awesome. Well, I've definitely learned a lot and I can keep on asking. I'll probably email you more questions because I'm quite interested in expanding out there. But for people that want to make the jump and start selling in Europe, how can they get in touch with you if they need some help?

Alex Karagiannis:

Yeah, sure, okay, well, the easiest is either through our website, lezzat. co. uk, or lezzat. com, it's the same. They can reach out to me on LinkedIn, alex karagiannis, so you can find me there, or just email me on, alex, at lesatcouk. I'm happy to do an audit to just show them if eu is right fit for them so we can send them a personalized custom plan. You're going to see my face on that video, so it's not going to be one video for all. We're going to see my face on that video, so it's not going to be one video for all. We're going to do it fully customized, to just make sure if EU is right for them Is the right size. Can it happen? Is there anything to be aware of? Maybe they just take some specific SKUs and not their entire catalog, what it would look like, so happy to offer that to anyone listening.

Adam Shaffer:

That is awesome. I'm going to do the audit just so I can see your face. That is great. Yeah, it's quite a benefit. So, with that, thank you for joining planet amazon. I mean, this is just an awesome topic and thanks for helping at least explain some of the issues that people have and some of the benefits they're going to have. It's really, really important cool, cool, my pleasure.

Alex Karagiannis:

Thank you very much, adam. Thank you for having me.

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Thank you for watching another episode of the Planet Amazon podcast, where we talk all things Amazon. If you want to learn about how to accelerate your sales on Amazon, visit Phelps United's website at phelpsunitedcom.

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