Hi guys, my name is Marianna I'm a Content Marketer here at Printful.
And here today with me I have Nora, who’s also a Content Marketer.
And she's going to tell us about
the basics of selling in Europe.
Because as you may know, last year, in the summer of 2017,
we opened a brand new facility in Europe in Riga, Latvia.
And that means a host of new opportunities for us
and a brand new door into the world of European ecommerce.
So Nora, take it away.
Yes, the first thing you want to remember about ecommerce in Europe
is that it's not quite as established as it is in the US.
Right now we have the UK, France and Germany
as the top players.
But other countries are getting there
and their rate of growth is steadily growing across the board.
It's a good idea to get started now
because you can kind of get in on the ground floor
and grow with the trend
before it gets a little too crowded and competitive.
That's kind of what Printful did
and why we decided to open our facility here.
We wanted to help European customers
open their ecommerce stores
and to also give our existing customers access to a whole new market.
First things first, when it comes to selling,
you have to decide on what products to sell.
So let's talk about products a bit.
Does this new European facility mean that everything
that's fulfilled in the States
is also going to be fulfilled in Europe?
Not quite,
although it is our long-term goal
to offer all of the same product categories
in both the US and in Europe.
And we're getting there, in the past year we've added
posters, socks, phone cases...
The product selection is definitely growing,
but for our current products
we won't be able to offer all of the exact same models and brands
that we have in the US.
That's because not everything is available
or reliably stocked by our suppliers here.
So moving forward,
every time we add a new product, like t-shirts, for example,
we want to make sure they're available both in the US and in Europe.
Because we do want to narrow that gap
and we want people on both continents to have access to all the same products.
But for our existing models,
it's just not going to be possible for every single one.
Is there any way to check product availability for Europe?
We have a landing page
where you can browse all of our product categories.
It'll be included in the description below this video, so check it out.
It's updated regularly
whenever we have a new product category added.
We have a team of merchandisers
that every month will look at different products,
that we can add,in new colors and sizes.
If you also look at our
Products & Pricing page for any specific product,
you can filter whether it's stocked in the US and in Europe.
So you can see which colors and sizes are fulfilled where.
Remember that we do ship worldwide,
so even if you do see a model that you want
that's not stocked in Europe,
that doesn't mean you're out of luck.
It just means it'll be shipping from the US instead of Europe.
Okay, so we ship worldwide.
We ship to Europe.
But is there any way I can make sure
that an order, which is meant for a customer in Europe
is also fulfilled in Europe?
Yes you can.
We recognized this was a pretty big need early on
when we launched this location
for customers to be able to use it effectively.
So if you go to your store settings, you can check this little box.
And what that does,
every time you get an order for a product
that we have available in Europe
and it's going to a customer in Europe,
we’ll always fulfill that order in Europe.
So if a situation comes up,
where we would have previously automatically routed it to the US,
instead of routing it, we would put the order on hold.
And then you can decide what to do.
So for example,
if the product is temporarily out of stock in Europe,
we would then hold the order.
And then you could decide
whether you want to switch to an alternative
that is available in Europe,
you could route the order to the US anyway,
you could cancel the order,
you could just wait for the stock to replenish.
It kind of gives you better opportunities
to manage your orders to Europe.
There are two major benefits that we need to talk about
and those are faster shipping times and no customs duties.
Yes, and those are the two biggest benefits to us being in Europe:
no customs and faster shipping.
So previously, before we opened this location,
every time you'd get an order for a customer in Europe,
it would automatically just fulfill in the US.
Because that’s where we were located before.
And then upon arriving in Europe,
it would obviously sometimes incur customs duties,
which the end customer would have to pay and that's never a fun surprise.
So that's why we recommend stocking products
that we have available in Europe
for customers that you're targeting in Europe.
That way the product is fulfilled here in Latvia, in Europe,
and it will not have extra customs duties
when it gets to the end customer.
The second biggest benefit is faster shipping.
So most of our products they all ship between
five and ten business days after fulfillment in Europe,
which is pretty fast but it's actually often a lot quicker.
So for example,
we can ship to Sweden and the Netherlands
in just two business days after fulfillment,
which is a huge bonus.
Because customers these days expect fast shipping,
they want to order their products they want to get them now,
and this helps you better manage expectations.
And we updated our tracking, didn't we?
Yeah, we added International Express Mail With Tracking
So basically
all orders that use this tracking method within the EU have tracking.
We want to expand that to Europe and Asia
so more destinations have tracking with their orders as well,
but for now, it's just the EU.
Do note that the carrier requires a phone number for delivery,
so if you do want to add this to your store
then make sure you have an area
where the customer can fill out their phone number during checkout
or this option won't show up on your store.
Well we've talked about the nice stuff and we’ve talked about the goodies,
but let's talk about something a tad less exciting.
Nora, can you tell us about VAT?
I sure can,
this is kind of the biggest obstacle or the elephant in the room.
When people are thinking about targeting Europe
they don't know how to deal with VAT.
It's confusing, it definitely is.
I'm not gonna talk about what you need to be doing for your store
and whether you should be charging your customers
It's best that you talk to an accountant to kind of sort that out.
But I will talk about how it works on Printful’s end.
So VAT stands for a value-added tax
and it's kind of like sales tax, but in Europe.
So just like we charge sales tax
for orders going to California and North Carolina,
we are required by law to charge VAT on orders that we fulfill in Latvia
and that are going to an address in the EU.
We don't add sales tax to orders that we fulfill in the US,
it's just orders that we fulfill in Latvia
and the rate that we charge depends on the destination.
So we have a 20% VAT rate for orders going to the UK
and 21% everywhere else.
That's because we're located in Latvia,
we're primarily registered VAT payers in Latvia,
and 21% is Latvia’s VAT rate, so that's the default that we charge.
If you are a registered VAT payer and you're charging your customers VAT,
you can submit your VAT ID to us and then we would charge a 0%VAT rate.
Except for orders to the UK and Latvia because those count as domestic orders
and we always have to charge VAT there.
So again, VAT is kind of like sales tax.
A couple of the biggest differences
is that we charge VAT based on our Printful prices
and sales tax is based on the end retail price that you charge.
And VAT is also always added to shipping
and with sales tax, it depends on the state.
Okay got it.
Let's talk money a bit more because money’s fun.
Any other money-related suggestions that you can point out?
Yeah, you'll want to charge your products to Europe
in the currency that you're selling it.
So for Europe that'll probably be the Euro or the British Pound,
but you definitely want to charge your store in a currency
that's comfortable for the end customer.
So that means you want to do your market research,
look up what prices are competitive, what your competitors are charging.
You also don't want to convert directly just from US dollars to euros.
You want to make sure the euro that you're charging is a nice, round number.
Is there anything else you can do to make your life easier in general?
You can, if you're really serious about targeting the European market,
one thing you can do to make your life a little bit easier
is to open a separate store for Europe.
That's because you can sell, for example,
your specific products on this one Europe store
and other products on your USA store.
You can charge the euro currency in your Europe store.
If you're also liable to charge VAT sales tax
then you can charge VAT on one store and sales tax on the other,
because not all platforms let you charge both tax rates in one go.
It's a little bit of extra set up in the beginning
but it'll make your life easier in the long run
if you have a separate store for your Europe customers and Europe products.
Awesome, well thank you, Nora. Thank you very much.
I hope you guys found that useful,
feel free to leave a comment below
and let us know if you'd like to see any more of these lovely Q&As in the future.
Bye!