Europe-Based Ecommerce business. Want to serve US clients. Help.

[phisigma]

Hey there!

I was wondering if anyone here is doing ecommerce from Europe and has successfully served customers in the US?

Here's a bit about my project:
- I make decorative objects myself in France
- They're about 5 x 5 x 20 cm in size
- I can produce up to 10 a day at home, but can easily scale up to 100 a day (I have developed a quite unique method for this)
- I sell them on my own Shopify website for $100-$250 depending on the variant

I have a couple of questions:

1. How do you handle shipping to the US as a small European ecommerce business? I checked out FedEx but it seems pretty expensive. Any tips?

2. What about customs fees? Do you include them in your pricing or have the customer pay separately?

Thanks so much for your help!
Let me know if anything is unclear (English isn't my first language).

 

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[StrikingViper69]

Hey there!

I was wondering if anyone here is doing ecommerce from Europe and has successfully served customers in the US?

Here's a bit about my project:
- I make decorative objects myself in France
- They're about 5 x 5 x 20 cm in size
- I can produce up to 10 a day at home, but can easily scale up to 100 a day (I have developed a quite unique method for this)
- I sell them on my own Shopify website for $100-$250 depending on the variant

I have a couple of questions:

1. How do you handle shipping to the US as a small European ecommerce business? I checked out FedEx but it seems pretty expensive. Any tips?

2. What about customs fees? Do you include them in your pricing or have the customer pay separately?

Thanks so much for your help!
Let me know if anything is unclear (English isn't my first language).

Shipping is expensive but people pay for it. Be careful assuming what people will and won’t pay for, don’t decide for them.

Check your national post service against the cost of a courier. I’m in the UK and Royal Mail is much cheaper than FedEx etc.

I recently bought something from the US and the shipping was 30% of the total price. I still bought it, I really wanted the thing.

Import taxes are the customers problem, not yours.

Best thing to do is find out. Run your ads (or however you promote) in the US and see if anyone is willing to pay the shipping. Make sure your shopify is properly configured to calculate their shipping at checkout.

And congrats on your success so far!

 

[joestarrd]

I would suggest finding a US partner who you can ship bulk too and have them represent your products on the US marketplace. This way they would handle everything local, take care of tax/compliance issues where you would only focus on wholesale production.

I work with a few distributors this way with a few of my brands and it makes everything easier opposed to establishing your own domestic logistic logistics