JAJT
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Do not open a US LLC, that is a big mistake (tax purposes).
To be clearer here, "big mistake" means paying the highest tax rate possible on your first dollar.
(Ask me how I know...)
I am wondering if any Canadian's out there could give a brief overview of how they went about selling in the US.
I've done this / do this. It's not hard.
Amazon's accounts are "unified" now. Meaning your one account gives you access to canada, the usa, and mexico. When you're ready to ship to those countries, they'll give you the address to send to for their FBA warehouses. The "hard part" is getting your product from the manufacturer to Amazon's address if it isn't going to you first. Basically you'll need a shipping solution to let you pay all import duties and taxes before it gets to Amazon.
You also need to follow all of Amazon's label requirements, which is an entire topic in itself since you can have Amazon do this (for a fee), you can have your manufacturer do this, you can avoid it entirely under certain circumstances, etc...
Also - don't forget the cost of storage fees at Amazon's warehouses. I recently made the mistake of ignoring this and it was costly. They charge you monthly to store goods at their warehouses. US-located folks have a really great solution around this (store excess at their house, or a storage unit, and trickle inventory into Amazon as needed) but Canadian folks don't have physical access like this, so you'll either need a third party logistics company (which will charge you to hold/ship as well) or just factor those storage costs into your margins. You'll probably want to balance ordering as much as possible to get a price break from your manufacturer but as little as possible to avoid excess fees with Amazon. It's a hurdle Canadians have to deal with that Americans largely don't in the beginning.
Anyway - if you have questions, just tag me.
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