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OUR GOAL
To provide an A-to-Z e-commerce logistics solution that would complete Amazon fulfillment network in the European Union.
You’ve made the decision: Europe is your next market to launch your brand in. You’ve validated demand, double-checked your pricing and maybe even translated your product pages. Now comes one of the hardest and heaviest questions to answer, though: how are you going to get your products to European customers? Should you ship directly from your home country (say, the U.S.) using international deliveries? Or should you store your goods somewhere inside the EU and ship from there?
This is one of the most important questions you'll have to answer when moving to the EU, as how much work you'll have with customs, how long it will take to deliver the products and how high your landing costs will be all depends on this one choice.
But before you start worrying about the consequences of your choice, read this article;. Inside, we’ll break down the practical pros and cons of both options, explain what changes once your goods are inside the EU customs zone, and help you figure out which model actually fits your business.
What does shipping internationally from US to the EU might look like?
Shipping orders directly from your home country (like the U.S., Canada, or Australia) can work. In fact, for many small businesses just starting to sell in Europe, it’s the simplest and most flexible way to test the waters.
For example, let's say you just launched your handmade toys brand in Germany and Poland and only have around a dozen international orders a month or so. In that case, shipping those orders straight from your home country might be a good idea, especially since your products are lightweight, easy to ship, and not time-sensitive.
What are the pros of this approach?
- You don’t have to commit to building an EU infrastructure right away: There’s no need to rent warehouse space, set up VAT registrations, or deal with EU bureaucracy, you just print the label and ship. That’s perfect when you’re still exploring the market and learning where the demand is.
- Costs stay flexible: Since you can't yet estimate precisely how many orders you'll have per month and thus can't estimate how many toys you should keep in stock, selling directly from your warehouse is a better idea as you’re only paying shipping costs, taxes and duties when an order comes in.
- Full control over the warehouse: All your products are in one place so you can inspect quality, bundle orders, include custom inserts, or personalize packaging easily, without coordinating with other people across borders.
Plus, those dozen EU orders a month are giving you plenty of information about people from which countries buy most often from you, what price ranges work for them and how long shipping actually takes.
Of course, you do need to take care of customer paperwork (HS codes, Incoterms, calculating VAT and duties, ensuring you have the necessary compliance documents and certifications, etc.) but for a handful of packages, this shouldn't take too much of your time.
What starts to break when volume goes up
Fast-forward a year, and now the same U.S. toy company is processing 300–400 EU orders every month instead of a dozen — and they’re still fulfilling everything from their U.S. warehouse. The processes that worked well just a half a year ago now are struggling with the demand, though - and so is the warehouse staff.
The main issues they might be struggling with now:
- Slow shipping times are hurting customer satisfaction: The toy company is now getting more and more emails and messages from customers frustrated with how long it takes for their orders to pass the custom checks and arrive at their house. The warehouse staff does what they can, but with the increased volume of orders it's increasingly hard to pack and send all the orders on time — not to mention, to fill all the paperwork correctly. Customers only see that the package took two weeks to arrive, though, instead of 2–3 days like with a local seller.
- International shipping is eating into margins: Shipping a single toy to Germany or France from the USA costs around $20 per package—sometimes more, depending on weight and size. Multiply that by hundreds of monthly orders, though, and suddenly a huge chunk of the company's profit is going to postage. And we are only talking about the standard shipping - for express shipping, the cost might be twice as big. Many customers might abandon their cart at checkout when they see the shipping cost, though, leaving the company with two equally bad options: either absorb a part of the costs and lose margin or pass the costs onto the customer and risk losing the sale.
- Returns are almost unmanageable: European customers expect easy, local returns for all their orders. But what they see on the brand's page is that to send a toy back to the U.S., they would have to pay international postage (often higher than the product value), fill out customs forms and then wait weeks for processing. Even if they were interested in purchasing the product earlier, the shipping hurdles might be a deal-breaker for them. You could offer a free return shipping to the USA, but that would hurt your margins even more, especially as you would need to pay duties again when re-importing those toys into the U.S.
- Operations are slowing down internally: With a few dozen orders, it was easy to manage international paperwork manually. But at scale? The team is spending hours preparing documents for the shipments, responding to customers’ issues and questions, and even more on tracking the deliveries inconsistent across borders. They spend so much time on those tasks, and yet it feels like their workload only increases with each order, making the entire company to be on the edge.
At this stage, sending the toys via international shipping services is only hampering the business growth and frustrating everyone involved - from you as the owner, to the overwhelmed with work staff and customers who are used to 2-3 days shipping time, not 2–3 weeks. And this is also the moment when the toy company started to consider renting a warehouse space in Germany, since the majority of the monthly orders come from there.
What changes when you store goods inside the EU?
After months of juggling customs forms, high shipping costs, and long delivery times, our U.S.-based toy company finally decided it was time for a change. They partnered with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) and moved part of their inventory (just a few pallets of their best-selling toys) into a warehouse in Germany, to see if it would improve their metrics and lower the staff’s workload.
And the results were visible almost immediately - here's what changed.
Orders arrive much faster at the customers' doorstep
With inventory stored in Germany, the company could now ship orders as if they were a local seller, since they only needed to pass the clearance procedures once, unloaded into the warehouse and then the packages were ready to be sent to buyers the same day. So instead of 2-3 weeks, German customers are now receiving their packages in 1–2 business days, while neighbouring countries like France, the Netherlands, and Austria got deliveries within 2–3 days.
Plus, they can now offer express delivery options or parcel locker deliveries as well, which encouraged customers (who wouldn't order anything via international shipping) to buy a toy from this brand.
Shipping costs dropped significantly
Instead of paying $20–30 per parcel for international shipping, the company is now paying a fraction of that, thanks to local and intra-EU courier rates. They even started offering free shipping for orders above a specific value because now they can easily cover the shipping cost from their improved margins.
And because they shipped in bulk to the EU warehouse, the per-unit cost of freight went significantly down too. Shipping 500 toys in one consolidated pallet to Germany cost them far less (per unit) than it would cost shipping those 500 toys individually from the U.S.
Returns became smooth and customer-friendly
Instead of asking customers to return items to the U.S. (which almost no one did), the company could now accept local returns directly at the warehouse in Germany, as the 3PL company took over the returns processing:
- Receiving returned items
- Inspecting them
- Restocking what was still sellable
- and reporting inventory changes back to the toy company via a dedicated warehouse dashboard.
This allowed the toy store to offer prepaid return labels and refund the customer in a matter of days - which instantly boosted trust with EU customers.
Fulfilment became faster, more professional, and hands-off
Besides storing inventory at their Germany warehouse and managing returns, the 3PL company is now also in charge of order picking, packing, and shipping too. Orders flow automatically from the toy company’s Shopify store to the warehouse system and then the Germany warehouse staff takes care of picking the items, packing them according to the toy store owner instructions and ship them using a chosen by the buyer local delivery method. That way, their EU orders are processed locally, while the in-house team had far less work on their shoulders, as they only were managing domestic orders now.
They unlocked new sales channels
With inventory in the EU, the toy company could also now list their products on various European marketplaces, such as Allegro (Poland), Cdiscount (France), or OTTO (Germany). What's more, they can now also qualify for local seller programs and show their fast shipping badges, to show their products to a wider European audience and bring more customers to their store.
How FLEX. Logistics can help you expand to Europe while staying flexible and in control
And best of all? The toy company didn't have to commit to a full-scale operation (renting an entire warehouse, hiring staff and sending half of their entire stock there). Instead, they talked with the 3PL company about what services they need (storage + fulfilment) and started with just a few pallets of their most popular toys. And when they noticed that besides the orders from Germany they started getting more orders from Poland as well, they decided to rent a warehouse in Poland as well and ask the 3PL company to handle fulfilment and returns there as well.
The story you’ve just read is close to what many of our clients experience when they move their operations into the EU - and it’s exactly the kind of transition we help companies manage every day. At FLEX. Logistics, we work with small and mid-sized e-commerce brands from outside Europe who are serious about selling in the EU but don’t want to build their own logistics infrastructure from scratch.
You can begin with as little as one pallet of inventory and pick the services your brand needs the most. Just need storage? Great. Want us to pick, pack, and ship too? We do that. Need FBA prep or returns handling? We got you covered. Plus, our warehouses in Germany, Poland, France, and the UK give you coverage across the EU. We also partner with local couriers for fast, reliable delivery.
Want to find out how we can help your own brand grow in Europe as well? Schedule a free call with our team, and then we’ll walk you through how our services work and what kind of setup makes sense based on your current volume and goals.
Wrapping up: one step closer to selling like a local
While international shipping from your home country can absolutely be the right move when you’re starting out, it has its limits. As your order volume grows, so do the risks, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities, as you could see from the toy store example:
- Shipping 12 orders a month from the U.S. made sense.
- Shipping 300+ that way? Not so much.
Moving just a portion of their inventory to a local EU warehouse helped them shorten delivery times, cut costs and simplify product returns, which all helped them boost the European customer's trust. While renting an EU warehouse might not be the decision you need to make today, it’s a good idea to start preparing for it, especially if you are serious about building your presence in Europe. And at FLEX. Logistics team, we are always ready to speak with you about how to help your brand look like a local seller.
