Once your UK Amazon business is established, expanding to European marketplaces — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and others — offers significant growth potential. The European Amazon customer base is enormous, and many UK sellers find less competition in continental markets.
The European Marketplaces
Amazon operates separate marketplaces in Germany (amazon.de), France (amazon.fr), Italy (amazon.it), Spain (amazon.es), the Netherlands (amazon.nl), Sweden (amazon.se), Poland (amazon.pl), and Belgium (amazon.com.be). Each marketplace has its own customer base, pricing dynamics, and competitive landscape.
Germany is typically the largest European marketplace after the UK, followed by France. These two often represent the best opportunities for UK sellers expanding internationally.
How to Start Selling in Europe
Your existing Seller Central account can access all European marketplaces — you do not need separate accounts. Under Settings > Account Info, you can enable additional marketplaces. Your Professional selling plan covers all EU marketplaces for no additional fee.
However, selling in each marketplace requires some localisation. Product listings need to be translated into the local language (Amazon provides basic machine translation, but professional translation produces better results). Pricing needs to account for different market dynamics. And you need to handle local tax obligations.
Pan-European FBA
Amazon's Pan-European FBA programme allows you to store inventory across Amazon's European fulfilment centres. You send stock to one fulfilment centre, and Amazon distributes it across the network. When a customer in Germany orders, Amazon ships from the nearest European fulfilment centre — often within the same country.
The advantage is faster delivery and better customer experience in each country. The disadvantage is that your inventory is stored in multiple countries, which has VAT implications (you may need to be VAT-registered in each country where stock is stored).
VAT Considerations
This is the biggest complexity of European expansion. Post-Brexit, UK sellers exporting to the EU need to understand import VAT, local VAT registration requirements, and the One Stop Shop (OSS) system for simplified VAT reporting.
If you store inventory in a European country (through Pan-European FBA), you generally need to be VAT-registered in that country. Services like SimplyVAT or AVASK specialise in European VAT compliance for Amazon sellers.
European Fulfilment Network (EFN)
An alternative to Pan-European FBA is the European Fulfilment Network, where your inventory stays in UK fulfilment centres and is shipped cross-border when European customers order. This avoids the multi-country VAT registration issue but results in slower delivery times and higher per-order fulfilment costs.
Is European Expansion Worth It?
For many UK sellers, the answer is yes — but start small. Test with your best-performing products on the German and French marketplaces. Evaluate the demand, competition, and margins before committing to full expansion. The tax and compliance costs of European selling are real but manageable, especially with specialist support.