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EA7 How To Sell Internationally On Amazon with Kevin Sanderson

What would you do to increase your Amazon sales by up to 30%? Open an additional account? Diversify your products? If you’re anything like e-commerce entrepreneur Kevin Sanderson, you’ll do what others won’t to achieve the results others can’t. So what’s something most won’t do? Hop the pond (or simply cross the US-Canadian border) through international expansion.

Expanding internationally can increase your sales anywhere from 10-30%. In this episode of Entrepreneur Adventure, Kevin demystifies international expansion so you can boost business without the head-scratching confusion.

Kevin’s Story

Like many of us, Scott Voelker’s The Amazing Seller podcast introduced Kevin to e-commerce. After investing a season’s worth of part-time income into his Amazon business, Kevin began working full-time for his own dream selling private label. Kevin and Todd connected through Brand Accelerator Live, an event that allows e-commerce professionals to share their secrets to success. Today, Kevin shares his secrets with you.

Cast A Wider Net

Kevin believes everything is a function of time; the faster you cast a wider net, the faster you’ll see results. Kevin has successfully increased his professional growth by multiplying his sales channels through international expansion. Despite fears of complex tax laws, Kevin feels most international regulations are easier to interpret than U.S. tax laws.

Canada

If you’ve never expanded internationally, Canada is a fantastic place to start. Their tax laws are simpler (and friendlier) than Europe’s and Canada is closer. In other words, shipping is cheaper. Not to mention, there’s generally less competition. Kevin recommends hiring a CPA and registering for GST and HST, Canada’s goods and services tax. If registered you’ll recoup what you paid in GST through Amazon. Fill out your RC1 form here! While you lose Amazon’s UPS discounts, Kevin has discount codes that always come through at checkout (EASY & FAST).

Europe

Looking to expand to Europe? Start in the U.K. The U.K. has a 20% VAT tax included in your selling price. However, if you’re using a prep center, ask how they deal with VAT because when it comes to business-to-business deals, prep centers may in fact add VAT on top of the selling price.

Amazon also has an algorithm in the United States that determines where your products should be shipped for expedited delivery. The only way to replicate this in Europe is by clicking that you accept Pan-European. By accepting this agreement, you’re responsible for products not only in the E.U. but in countries where products are stored (Poland, Czech Republic). Due to the money required to file and register in these additional countries, Kevin doesn’t recommend accepting this agreement.

Margins 101

Generally speaking, you’ll experience higher sales and smaller margins in Europe and lower sales with higher margins in Canada. It’s also important to remember that your U.S. strategy won’t translate internationally. You must figure out if your products will sell in Canada or Europe.

Summary

As Joe Valley recently mentioned on Kevin’s podcast, expanding internationally does nothing but legitimize your business should you decide to sell. Not to mention, in an industry where suppliers constantly doubt the legitimacy of Amazon sellers, expanding internationally adds the equivalent of a verified check to your name.

Feeling overwhelmed? Kevin’s created a checklist that breaks down everything you need to know about expanding internationally. After requesting the checklist, the thank-you page helps you schedule a free thirty-minute strategy session.

Resources From This Episode

Outline Of This Episode

[0:00:18] Todd’s introduction to this episode

[0:02:33] Kevin’s story

[0:12:26] Why you should cast a wide net

[0:16:50] Why Canada is the best place to start internationally

[0:39:42] Navigating European expansion

[0:59:07] Understanding your margins internationally

[1:04:20] Additional resources from Kevin

[1:01:30] Todd’s closing thoughts on the episode

Transcript

Announcer: 00:00:01 Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the entrepreneur adventure podcast where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an eCommerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch.

Kevin: 00:00:18 Welcome to another episode of entrepreneur adventure and is a fantastic one. We sit down with Kevin Sanderson today over at maximizing e-commerce and he is a successful Amazon seller in the private label space. But what we’re going to be talking about today is selling your products in other marketplaces such as Canada and the UK and the rest of Europe, and how it can help you expand your Amazon business without a significantly amount more of work you can expect going into these markets to get a 10 20 30% sales increase versus what you’re doing in the United States. So if you’re selling $100,000 in the United States, you’ll probably do about 10,000 or so in Canada and maybe 30,000 or 40,000 over in the UK. So what would you do to be able to gain an additional 40 or $50,000 in sales a month depending of course, where your business as some of you are starting out in the beginning. So this is something to keep in the back of your mind. But if you already have an established Amazon storefront in the U S you definitely are going to want to think about doing this sooner rather than later. I know I am, I just went into Canada and I’m looking at going into the U K and it’s really going to help boost my business without a significant amount more of work. So make sure you stay tuned for this one. Sit back, relax. And let’s go ahead and jump into this episode with Kevin Sanderson.

Kevin: 00:01:57 Today we have a successful Amazon seller and e-commerce entrepreneur, Kevin Sanderson joining us today. He really specializes in private label and bringing products to other countries and other markets. So a lot of us are used to selling on amazon.com but we, he’s going to talk to us today about selling in other markets such as Canada and Europe. So Kevin, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about your background.

Kevin: 00:02:32 Awesome. Well, I’m super excited to be here, Todd. Thank you for having me. This is this is going to be a lot of fun. This is going to be a lot of fun. You and I we met at brand accelerator live. I think we’ve met in the the forums before that. We have a Facebook group for that event. So yeah, super excited to be here. So I guess the question of how did I get it into e-commerce? So about 15, 16 years ago, I bought a bought two Nike 4 woods golf clubs on

Kevin: 00:03:00 Ebay with the intention of selling them. And I did my product research at the time, which included going on nike.com and looking at seeing the MSRP was about $400. So I was like, okay, well that means I’m going to 10x my money if I’m buying them for 40 bucks on eBay then I’m going to be able to sell it 10 times the price. Well, I bought them, I bought, two of them didn’t occur to me to think about it until after the fact. What were people actually buying this for other than me and pretty much consistently everyone was buying the Nike 4 woods, which if you play golf, it’s a very unusual golf club. [inaudible] Basically. Yeah, everyone else was paying $40 so it was like, why is someone going to now buy mine for 400 so I did what a lot of people do. Nothing. So one of them is still in the packaging and one of them is a around here somewhere in my golf bag collecting dust isn’t that much right.

Kevin: 00:03:58 That’s how I first got into it. But then later on down the road, call it about 2015 I was working for a friend of mine, his insurance agency, and they were going through a period of rapid growth. And I remember at the time thinking, you know, I’m working really hard for someone else’s dreams and I was happy for them and their dreams and still am very happy for them. But it was one of those things. I was like, if I’m to work this hard, I might as well be on my own dream. So start thinking about what do I want to do? Mmm. You know, how a bunch of different ideas of what I Oh, do. And I’ve been listening to podcasts for a few years doing nothing and it happened to find the amazing seller podcast, Scott Voelker which I think a lot of people in the private label side of the world.

Kevin: 00:04:37 We’ve been doing it for a couple of years. That’s how we got into it was finding his podcasts and I was like, okay, this makes sense. So this is kind of saying step-by-step what to do. So this was, let’s say summer of 2015 I went to Walgreens and Goodwill and a couple other places. I bought some stuff on clearance, send it into Amazon. And I remember the first day it arrived, I sold one of those little blue freezer packs and like you know that you put in the freezer to keep your hands cool and your cooler. And like, I remember like starting my addiction, many of us have of like taking our thumbs and flicking it on the screen for our our seller app. And yeah, exactly that little slot machine failing. And it’s like I’m doing it trying to figure out like, okay, is this slot machine going to show me anything?

Kevin: 00:05:25 Zero, zero, zero. All of a sudden 1 wait, what what’s, what’s happening here? There was like this rush of adrenaline, like, Oh my gosh, now all of a sudden I’ve made a sale. So go running to the living room, a show. My wife was like, you have to see this. And she did. First I thought I was like crazy. This, you realized it was just excited. So after that I was hooked and I’ve been hooked ever since. And I basically, it took a, the season’s worth of earnings as a high school football official, that fall and invested into my first

Kevin: 00:05:58 A private label product. And then what I did was just kept reinvesting for about three years. And about a year ago I just left my job and now I’m doing this full time. And basically sell on Amazon in the U S and eight international marketplaces and it’s just a wild ride and I love it. And yeah, you and I were talking off camera and I’m [inaudible] I don’t want to say it. My hope, my goal is I will also expand my offerings into wholesale as well, so awesome. Yup, that’ll be, it’s wholesale is excellent. Definitely something you want to get into. Personally, I think the risk is a lot lower than any other channel or way of selling on Amazon for sure. Because you’re selling other people’s products who are, that are already successful for the most part. So you’re just kinda jumping on there and sell them more.

Kevin: 00:06:54 But what I love about your story there is, well, number one, you didn’t give up after the golf clubs, which you definitely could have and a lot of people do unfortunately. But I like that you, you basically got another job. I’m sure it was fun for you referee and you probably enjoy that, but you took the money from that, put it in the business and one key there everybody, if you’re listening to this three years that took before he went full time. So this is not any kind of get rich quick scheme. If anybody’s telling you that it is, they’re lying to you. It takes time. I’m in my third year and I’m just getting close to jumping off and going at this more full time. So it takes time to build up everything. So that’s an important thing to remember. Don’t risk your livelihood and your, the life you’ve built by jumping too early because once you start taking money out of the business, if it gets harder to grow at the same time, because now you’re sucking money out of the business.

Kevin: 00:08:00 So I think that’s a really important point from your background there for people to keep in mind. Yeah, exactly. And you know, it’s one of those things like, I think you never truly ready and eventually you got to pull the trigger. Yeah. And you know, I, I, I shortened my horizon of where I was looking to leave the job some point. I was like, I’m just going to do it. But at the same time too, to your point, like, no, I didn’t say six months in like, all right, I’m all in. Let’s just do it. It was, you know, it was still three good years of going into it. So yeah, it’s, it’s been a fun ride. Yeah. And actually this is the first time I’m really telling anybody about this. I told a few people on one of the private groups I’m on, but last night my Amazon account actually got suspended because I had a performance report that I started listing

Todd: 00:08:56 A product that I ended up finding out was restricted. It was a, an energy drink, which has been selling on Amazon for years, this exact same product. And I thought I’d be smart and make a three pack of it, made my three pack, didn’t even send me anything in yet. And all of a sudden that listing went down. I got an email from Amazon that I’m trying to sell a product that has a D M H a, it was called, which apparently is not approved by the FDA yet. And so they took down the list thing and I had to submit a plan of action as to how I was never gonna run a foul of any laws or Amazon policies ever again in my life. And I did that and I thought I made a really good plan. But last night they refused my plan, shut down my account, probably about 10:30 PM. So right before I was going to go to bed. So now I’ve got gotta run to the computer and create a new plan of action. And I submitted it last night and by the time I got up this morning, thankfully my account was reactivated. Oh God.

Todd: 00:10:06 It’s, it’s something to keep in mind that that risk is there. So if I was depending on this for my income, I probably wouldn’t have got any sleep last night. Oh no, no. It’s a, there’s always risks in everything. We’re playing an Amazon’s worlds. We’ve got to follow their rules and everything like that. And I actually contacted the lawyer last night in case I was still suspended this morning and everything. So I’m not trying to scare anyone out there from not doing Amazon. It’s major opportunity, but just keep these things in mind, all the rules and know that you know, things can happen just like anything any kind of business things can happen. But not to get too sidetracked on that, but I just thought I’d throw it out there cause it’s fresh in my mind and had my heart racing a little bit last night.

Todd: 00:10:57 So yeah, you got my heart racing to Todd. Wow. For sure. So that wasn’t fun, but lesson learned definitely going to look a little closer at those kinds of things going forward. So now the company that you run is maximizing e-commerce. That is your eCommerce business where you’re helping other people basically get started selling their products on Amazon into different countries and things like that. You also have a podcast. So if you’re out there and you’re interested in that kind of stuff and adding another podcast, go ahead and search for maximizing e-commerce. It’s really good. I have it on my subscription list and listen to it every time you put a new one out. So highly recommend that. But your specialty in what we’re going to be talking about today is really helping people

Kevin: 00:11:54 Bring their products into other platforms. So why don’t you give us an overview of that and we can get jumped into that. Sure, sure, sure. Absolutely. So one of the things I learned early on from my 10 to 11 year blackout period from Oh four or Oh five until 2015 where I didn’t do anything in e-commerce world, even though I kind of started it. And the reason I say, Oh four Oh five is I’ve checked and my eBay account doesn’t go back that far to tell me when I purchased it. But basically what I, I came to learn is, you know, everything is a function of time. So the more we can cast a wider net over time, the more results we’re going to get. Because we’ll never get [inaudible] time [inaudible] we can always add more products, you know, add new wholesale accounts or add new channels or whatever the case is, but we’ll never get more time.

Kevin: 00:12:42 So early on I was like, you know what, Amazons, go ahead. But you know, still working on the snowball and still working on the snowball. The snowball is relatively small in the beginning, but it was one of those things where it was like, how can I make this go faster? So, you know, listen to my stuff on eBay, create a Shopify store and I’m getting very, very, very limited sales, you know, going that way. In fact, I remember the first eBay sale I made, the person ended up getting a refund. I haven’t had that bad sales or lock on my eBay sales since then. But I’ve had very few sales relative to what I’ve done in Amazon. One thing I learned quickly is if I just take my products and I list them in Canada and send it in some FBA inventory, test it out.

Kevin: 00:13:31 I was getting way more sales in Canada then I was an eBay. And my Shopify store and now Etsy and all that other fun stuff. So I was like, okay, let’s replicate this and go into the UK. So under the UK and as of the time we’re recording this, we can send stuff into the UK and they’ll ship it to Germany and Italy and Spanish, France, Spain, France and Spain. Mmm. So it’s like, let’s do that. And then I added on Japan, added on Australia and it’s like, it’s, it’s one of those things you just keep casting a wider net and it’s, it’s definitely helped me a lot in growing that business. And so [inaudible] is come into it and that’s how maximizing e-commerce was born was I started finding it, go to conferences and tell people like, Oh yeah, I’m in, you know, all these marketplaces.

Kevin: 00:14:21 And that’s all they wanted to talk about was, well how did, how do you do that? Like what forms that you fill out or whatever and you know, Oh, it seems so hard. And I’m like, well, it’s sixth grade level math to figure out the currency differences. And yeah, don’t give up on not having [inaudible] more sales. Just because you don’t want to fill out a form. Yeah. It’s no harder than, you know, getting a driver’s license or a passport to register Canada for example. In fact I’ve found the tax structure is actually for sales. Tax is easier. And the other countries, cause it’s usually just to, you know, the main government

Kevin: 00:14:52 And not, okay. I don’t even think anyone really knows what we’re supposed to do here in the United States. Cause you talk to 10 different sales tax experts and I’ll tell you something different. Yeah. In fact you ask them again and they’ll probably just tell you something different than what they told you, you know, the day before. So it’s one of those things, it’s constantly evolving thing here in the U S was there. It’s much simpler once you kind of learn the, the roadmap. So basically I now also help people in this. So I’ve done it myself and now I’ve helped others. So I’d love to share with your audience how they, if they wanted to add on additional sales channel, they can do that in their business. Yeah, for sure. And I’m really interested in myself cause I just started selling in Canada. Oh cool. Got a few products that are listed.

Kevin: 00:15:36 I went through that process of completing the paperwork, which was not that hard. And in fact I jumped on the phone with the Canada tax people or with the government there and they actually asked me, you know, what kind of Amazon business I’m doing and stuff like that. So they actually ask you if you’re doing FBA or FBM they did. Yes. And they know those terms. Yep, exactly. Yeah, no it was, it was really good. Really refreshing for sure. And so I worked through that myself. Personally, I’m not a, a big government guys, so anytime I have to deal with the government, I have some fighting gloves on, you know. But it wasn’t really like that at all. I was really, yeah, really pretty simple and got it. I’ve got a prep center up there and I’m starting to send stuff in.

Kevin: 00:16:25 And the only thing is dealing with like duties and things like that and shipping is, is just as easy as shipping in the U S but a little bit different. So yeah, why don’t you go ahead and jump into that and kinda give us a overview of someone who maybe is selling some products in the U S and wants to start selling in Canada. Yeah, absolutely. So I think Canada is the best place to start internationally. The reason I say that is it’s right there. Yeah. It’s pretty close to the U S shipping costs if you’re, if you have products in the U S to send it into Canada is way less expensive than, you know, sending you across the pond by boat or by air most likely by air. But either way it’s going to be a lot more expensive and it’s a lot more complicated. [inaudible] [inaudible] We’ll say varsity. He was kind of like a high school football analogy. Mmm. That would be like varsity sales tax. Whereas GST, HST, the sales tax and Canada is like the freshman team. It’s much simpler. It’s one of those things like it’s added onto the selling price just like we do here in the U S and one of the nice things is is you have to pay at the border generally to get [inaudible] your goods into Canada. [inaudible] Actually Amazon charges you their sales tax, the GST HST on top of some of your fees,

Kevin: 00:17:49 But

Kevin: 00:17:50 You actually can take whatever you pay at the border and whatever you pay Amazon and GST and you can subtract that from what you collect from customers. And so basically it’s a credit. So you’re basically getting that money back. That’s one of the nice things is that just something that we don’t necessarily have in most cases with sales tax is like something we’re even deduct out and pay less. So here that is something, so it’s just nice to see like a deduction from your income, whatever income from Canada. Okay. Sort of. It’s on the sales tax side and I’m glad you brought that up because I think what trips people up and getting started is two things. It’s either the money stuff or the government stuff and as you mentioned, the government stuff’s not so bad and at least with dealing with them, they’re usually pretty nice.

Kevin: 00:18:31 In Canada there’s that stereotypical friendly Canadian and I’ll say that and sometimes Americans are like, Oh, that might offend you. No, like they’re usually proud of that and like they’ll say thank you for saying that. Like they say that so nicely and proudly. Yeah. Well one of the things I’ve learned [inaudible] you know with the government stuff, it comes down to really taxes. That’s the part that really trips people up. Then you have two buckets of taxes. You have sales, tax and income tax. So income tax is whatever you make off of your profit, well that you, assuming you’re in the United States, Oh to uncle Sam, you’re going to generally pay it to your own government. And if you don’t have a CPA or someone doing your taxes, have them help you. And they can figure this out. If you know they’ve got a college degree in accounting pass the CPA exam, they know what they’re doing, they can, they can handle [inaudible] another market.

Kevin: 00:19:25 Trust me. And then the sales taxes pretty much always going to go to whatever the local government and in Canada, if you are registered for GST, HST, which you generally should be in most cases they will Amazon will collect it from the customers and you just pay the, the government. And then that way you’re also recouping what you paid in GST that you wouldn’t have gotten if people were collecting. So that’s pretty simple. And then Canada, you only have to file once a year for your GST, HSC sales tax, which is nice until you have like a million and a half in sales. And then if you have more than a million and a half in sales, Canadian dollars in sales, let’s call it a good problem to have. But you now, you have to file quarterly. Well, you’ve got plenty of profit to pay for, you know, more filings. Yeah. You have to have someone do it for you.

Kevin: 00:20:15 Yeah. Or you could do it yourself. They’re not even that complicated. Then the money stuff is what trips people up like, Oh my gosh, it’s different. Well, you know, whether it’s Canadian dollars or euros or yen or British pounds, it’s all just a basic ratio. My sister is a sixth grade or sixth grade. My sister is a principal at an elementary school in Texas, a K through six. And I asked her what grade level would be able to figure out if I said $1 in the U S is like say $1.30 Canadian. So $20 in the U S is how much in Canadian dollars. She was like, Oh, that’s sixth grade. That’s a basic ratios. So you are smarter than a sixth grader. You can handle the money part and you know, calculators and spreadsheets, lots of ways to make this very simple. Oh, you know, figuring out what the differences.

Kevin: 00:21:02 So if you’re selling a product for $20, it’s about 26, $27 in Canada, and you’d sell any Canadian roughly, and you can play around. That’s not it. You know, sometimes you can even get away with adding a little bit more because people are used to paying a little bit more Canada stuff. Generally more expensive. Yes. What I’ve come to learn, not too much, but you know, you could, I don’t remember Canadian dollar to just work good measure. And then what will happen is you’ve got your registrations and whatnot and you’ve got the money part, now you’re comfortable. So now it’s time to, to get started. So you register in Canada it’s called a form RC one as in revenue Canada. And if you have questions, you know your experience, Todd, you can just call and they’ll answer your questions. It’s basically you’re registering for GST, HST, which if you’ve done more than 30,000 Canadian dollars in sales, you technically are supposed to.

Kevin: 00:21:56 So it’s about $23,000 U S and what trips people up is, that’s worldwide sales. So your sales here in the U S count to that. So for most people when they go into Canada, they are in a situation where they need to register to be compliant. And I say even if you’re on the border, just like a, the threshold, you might as well because you’re going to pay money. Okay. Import goods into Canada and you’re going to also Hey, money to Amazon on some of your fees. So you might as well recoup that out of you know, what you’re collecting from customers. And if you don’t register, you can’t, Amazon is not going to collect.

Todd: 00:22:33 Yeah, for sure. So, and I’ll put a link down below to what was the name of the form again?

Kevin: 00:22:39 Oh, RC one

Todd: 00:22:42 [Inaudible] in the show notes. So this is going to be episode number seven. So that’d be an entrepreneur, adventure.com forward slash seven. So we’ll have a link to that form, a link to your website and podcasts as well. We’ll throw in there. So yeah, it’s not too hard. I figured it out on my own filling out the form and everything. And like I said, I jumped on the phone when I had questions and they helped me figure it out. Probably the biggest thing that I’m still trying to figure out is exactly how we should handle customs clearance. Oh, gotcha. Talk to about that allude. Are you utilizing a broker or are you just letting FedEx and ups charge you or how are you handling all that?

Kevin: 00:23:27 I usually use ups, so, and I think a lot of freight forwarders really it’s ups that’s doing it. They seem to be pretty big. And the Canadian border of basically the way it works is goods go across the border. My understanding is the Canadian government says pay now. It’s not like, Oh, we’ll get a bill, whatever. Someone has to pay that. Yeah. So your customs broker, which if let’s say it’s ups, they say, okay, we will pay on Todd’s behalf. So then they come to Todd and say, here’s an invoice. You owe us this money. And so Todd pays ups and he’s now free and clear with ups who already paid the money because otherwise you’d have to literally go to the border and say, Hey, who do I give the money to? My stuff’s here. Where is it? Is it that truck over there?

Kevin: 00:24:19 Whatever. Be a mess. So just sign up for a customs broker. And the nice thing is if someone has never used ups outside of Amazon, no, they give us the, the super grid rates. Unfortunately those rates aren’t available cause Amazon doesn’t want to get involved in going across the border. So if you’re shipping stuff from the U S into Canada, you need to have your own shipping and you could theoretically just go on ups.com I’ve come to learn through experience. I have discounts on my ups account. I still put it in this promo code. Either easy E A S Y or fast F A S T like things aren’t hard. They’re easy or not slow but fast. So easy or fast. Either one should work. It’s worked recently. The last time I tried, yes, up to 40% off. Okay. Shipping. So that makes it a lot more cost effective. And one of the things I’ve learned is if you miss a form, like let’s say you have to have a commercial invoice.

Kevin: 00:25:22 If you don’t have the commercial invoice, chances are your local ups, the pickup, the goods, we’ll say we need this form, please send it to him. So you send it to them. Or if let’s say the first time I shipped it, I had no idea what I was doing. I was just like, here we go, ups take it. I didn’t have a brokerage account or customs. Guess what they did. They called me and said, you need to fill this out right away. Okay. So I filled it out. I did notarized whatever I needed to do and sent it back. Like it’s one of those things I’ve come to learn. It’s their job to make sure stuff gets across. I think they have, whether they call them KPIs, key performance indicators or goals or whatever, of getting things across a certain percentage of goods across, clearing it. [inaudible] They look at it as their responsibility. Cause like it doesn’t help them to just ship it back to you and say you didn’t fill out the right form. They want it to get [inaudible].

Todd: 00:26:17 Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So my prep center that I’m using in Canada, they recommended me to another customs broker who would deal with the customs for me. I’m not sure I have to look into it more. I’m not sure if they charge less than ups. Maybe. Maybe like one. My last orders, it wasn’t a big order, it was like 16 or 1700 but

Kevin: 00:26:44 My import duty on that was like Oh 5% so that’s the fees that Canada charges us for allowing us to bring the United States goods Canada. The customs clearance fee that ups charge me was 6.83% of it. So it was actually higher high than what the import duty was. At least if I’m looking at the invoices. Right. Because I believe the invoice was like $144 I’ll have to double check. Is that sound high to you? Yes. One of the things I get tripped up on sometimes even myself, I have to double check the invoice to make sure I’m reading it correctly is which currency isn’t it? Okay. So is it sometimes like is it on this column, is it in us dollars or Canadian dollars? Usually they switch stuff over and it fits you as a us customer. They exchange everything into U S dollars. But you just may want to check that.

Kevin: 00:27:40 Usually I see an itemized dollar amount from ups or custom brokerage charges, which sometimes flex is depending on the, so maybe it’s one of those things your prep center saying especially maybe for lower, for smaller shipments or depending on scale. I mean it’s probably one of the things that’s worth looking into. I’ve not looked into it. Mmm. I guess loyalty ups or maybe they just heard from a customer that they liked this other company better. But either way you just got to get your stuff across the border and somebody has. Okay, good. Well that’s good to know. So you’re not using one, so there’s no absolute needs. They’re probably just trying to refer business to someone that they work with, which is fine. I do the same thing, but maybe they’re cheaper. I’ll have to dig a little bit deeper. But yeah. All right.

Kevin: 00:28:30 So basically they are cheaper. Let me know. I will, I will. So basically we’ve got our products that we’re selling in the U S we filled out the forms for Canada to get our registration number up there and now we’ve shipped our products into Canada. We’ve paid the duty, which is the tax that Canada charges for imparting products. And then we also pay the clearance fees, which is basically like the labor charge for whatever company is bringing the product in for ya. What would be next after we get it across the border now? Yeah, after you pay the duties and GST, the GST is what’s probably the 5%, and that’s what you can recover. So make sure you save your receipt so that at the end of the year you can make that a deduction off what you’re going to pay. Canada basically list product. And I know wholesale world people don’t do a lot of giveaways, but even if someone’s listening and they do private label or they do, Mmm. They, they do some giveaways. Either way, you know, the U S whether it’s private or wholesale,

Kevin: 00:29:42 Generally people I’ve well talk to say they’ve never had luck with doing anything. Those type of strategies in Canada, it’s at most turning on PPC. Now if you’re on a wholesale listening and it’s already getting sales, you’re just adding yourself onto that listing. Yeah. One of the nice things is there’s some hoops you have to jump through that we’ve talked about, like, you know, the brokerage account and the forum with revenue Canada and you had to call them and ask questions. Most people are listening to saying, well, intuitively that doesn’t sound that hard. But a lot of people will say, well, that’s just too much, so I’m not going to do that. So guess what, there’s less competition. So chances are you’re probably competing with less people for the buy box. Mmm. And you’re probably competing with no fewer similar products for the keywords people are looking forward to. So it’s a, it can be a very good thing. So once you start getting the sales, and

Todd: 00:30:40 I was just saying also the products that I’m starting to sell up there, there are sellers on them, but their prices are like astronomically higher. So I’m assuming they’re buying from the U S and then like just drop shipping it into the customer in Canada because most of them are like FBM sellers. So you’ll find a lot of that I think.

Kevin: 00:31:00 Yeah. So if somebody starts looking at the product and it’s like, let’s say it sells for $20 in the U S well, using our math from our example of, we’ll assume the currency exchange is one to 1.3 that’s about $26 so you know, if it’s between 26 and 30 Canadian dollars, that’s about right for where you’d expect it to be. You might look and see that for selling for 75 Canadian dollars. And so don’t think like, Oh wow, I’m just going to crush it. I kind of like how I thought I was gonna crush it with the Nike four would selling them for $400 that’s not going to happen. So what happens is Amazon calls what you just described, a gray listing and what it is is there’s [inaudible] who will go in and they will scrape. Like it could be a million listings in the U S and the list of all of Canada.

Kevin: 00:31:51 And if it make them super high and what they’re banking on is like if, let’s say it’s a popular product and you know, whoever has inventory runs out and they get [inaudible] some one off sale. So they have a very, very, very wide net. And if just a handful of those a day sell, then they’ve actually made decent money because they’re selling it at such an astronomical price and they’re doing exactly what you said. They’re buying it from the U S and drop shipping it. It’s technically against terms of service, although Amazon kind of does that themselves sometimes. Yeah. But it’s one of those things never worry about it because if you have FBA inventory and you have a competitive price and you’re going to get it to the customer, you know, or Amazon will be able to get it to the customer quickly. Who do you think Amazon’s going to give the buy?

Todd: 00:32:40 Yep. And I noticed on the one the few items that I brought over there that had those kinds of people on there, they basically disappeared off of the listing after I got out cause they’re not totally sales anyways. So. All right, perfect. Now are you direct shipping to Amazon warehouses in Canada or do you work with a prep center? Do I ship stuff in?

Kevin: 00:33:05 Great question. So for my private label products, for my own branded products, I send everything into North America and to the U S and then I divvy some of it up. I don’t make a whole order just for Canada, take parts of it and split it up. Now what I do for Europe is I will say like, let’s say I’m ordering a thousand units, I might say [inaudible] 900 units to go to North America, send it to Florida. And I usually do some prep locally just cause I’m kind of a control freak like that. And then what I’ll do is I’ll say the other a hundred units we’ll send into Europe and I have a prep center. I work with [inaudible]. Mmm. The UK that does some [inaudible] labeling and poly bagging dwindling and stuff like that for my own branded products. However, I know lots of people that send stuff directly into Amazon and just try to every marketplace there. Yeah. All right. It’s just one of the things I would caution people to is make sure you get the right labels for the right market. Yeah. Because they’re not always going to be the same

Todd: 00:34:04 For sure. Yeah. I’m using a prep center you know, obviously they’re charging me an extra, I think it’s like a dollar 25 per item to prep it and do, you’re ready. But that way I can either have products shipped directly from the supplier to that prep center and just kinda collect a good amount of stuff and then ship it out to the Amazon warehouses rather than having to send stuff all over to different warehouses. I’m thinking it’ll probably cost me less shipping doing it that way. Oh, gotcha.

Kevin: 00:34:38 Yeah, it’s one of those things, it’s like, it’s always worth trying out or seeing what works best for your business. Like I could probably save money if I send stuff from China because most of my stuff comes from China directly into Amazon and Canada. Yeah. Right now, knock on wood, I haven’t been, it’s too hard with tariffs. So I’ve got the margins to play with and that way I kind of like controlling my inventory. But you know, there’s all, depending on your supply chain, there’s all kinds of ways you could do it. And so what you’re describing, if it works for you, then absolutely do it. So, you know, here’s the prep center. It makes sense and monetarily makes sense. It’s just a game of margins.

Todd: 00:35:16 All right, perfect. Yeah. So anything else you want to touch on that people need to know for Canada before we shift gears over to Europe?

Kevin: 00:35:24 Oh yeah. One thing to keep in mind is if you’re looking at like jungle scout and things like that, keep in mind what you have in the U S on amazon.com is a unicorn. And basically it’s a magical that doesn’t exist anywhere else. So you could be looking on amazon.ca and you might realize like, Oh [inaudible] it’s only selling one or two units a day. Where is that? Let’s say that’s 10% of your sales. But if you start adding that up over a portfolio of products, you could be looking for another, you know, 10 15% of your own sales. And think of it this way, like think of all the things we’ll do to get another 10 15% in sales. Like, you know, how many wholesale accounts once you get up and running, would you need to get another 10 15% in sales? Whereas here, you’re just using the existing accounts you have and possibly even open up to new products that maybe wouldn’t work in the U S but might work there because there’s less competition or know maybe that particular product people are willing to pay a little bit extra for because it’s not available in Canada.

Kevin: 00:36:33 So you’re [inaudible] they’re willing to pay a little bit of a premium. So I would say when you’re looking at it, don’t, don’t look through the same lens that you look at it in the U S really when you look at it as does that product or similar products sell in Canada. And even if it’s 10 15% that’s actually a good sign because you’re just widening your net [inaudible] you’re increasing your snowball. So the money you make from profit from Canada, that could go into a new wholesales fire that could go into maybe wanting to try some PPC marketing. So you know, spike your algorithm here in the U S you can do a lot of those things or hire somebody for your team with the profits you make international. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that’s about what I’ve seen to about 10% of the amount of sales in Canada anyways, forces the U S sales.

Kevin: 00:37:29 That’s really important to expect that you’re going to get the same amount of sales in Canada. But like you said, you know, how much would you do to try to increase your sales? 10 15% in the U S [inaudible] you can just send some a product across the border and increase it that way. Just as easier. Probably easier. Exactly, exactly. And you know, like for example, I had a Joe Valley from quiet light brokerage on my podcast and one of the things he talked about is it’s more attractive to a buyer if you decide to sell your business one day. If you have more marketplaces and you know, having Canada, yeah, that is another marketplace. Even though it’s another Amazon marketplace, it’s another source of income. So [inaudible] bringing in more profit, you’re making it more attractive and potentially you could be looking at higher multiples if you have a bunch of international sales channels as well. So that way you’re getting the value of your company. And both the profit and and a multiple end, which I know that’s a whole other ball game selling your business. Yeah, for sure. It’s something to think about too. Obviously Canada is

Kevin: 00:38:35 A smaller population than the U S but it’s also those marketplaces are all newer than the U S marketplace. There is, I mean, just imagine if we were able to be forward thinking enough that we got in the Amazon game and amazon.com like 2005 or whatever when they first started. Right. So this is an opportunity that we could potentially get into these marketplaces. Maybe they’re not selling as much right now, but they potentially could sell a lot more in the future as Amazon just keeps continuing view, seemingly take over the world here. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, everybody says, Oh I wish I was on Amazon way back when. Well this is kind of your chance because like to your point, Amazon is always on the cutting edge and the the biggest market share and everything of, you know, total sales and the whole country here in the U S but it’s moving that way in other countries.

Kevin: 00:39:32 So you’re, this is your chance to put your your stake in the ground and say, I’m, I’m, I’m here to, yup, absolutely. All right, so let’s jump over to Europe and let’s try to keep this from the perspective of wholesale sellers. Sure. Mostly are going to be buying and sourcing all their products in the United States. So where do we start if we want to sell in Europe? Well, I would say the UK is probably the best place to start. Now. The listing is already existing and it’s translated in another marketplace or you’re looking into that now. [inaudible] Asterisk and everything I’m saying is we’re recording this in early January, early to mid January of a 2020. And the, there’s a hard Brexit, meaning the UK is leaving the European union at the end of this month. Yeah. I literally was just about an hour and a half ago on the phone with [inaudible], my Avast the company I use for that compliance and Europe.

Kevin: 00:40:37 And she’s like, I know as much as you know, no one really knows what’s going to happen. So how that affects trade arrangements. And getting goods in between countries. We don’t know right now. Stuff can move around freely. Like you can have everything housed in the U K and you can sell it in Germany and salad in Italy. You can sell it in Spain and France. But that might all change depending on what happens after Brexit. So everything I say take with a little bit of grain of salt that it might change. But here’s the big thing in mind. A big thing to keep in mind is yup [inaudible] every business margins are very important. I know with wholesale it’s even more important. So one of the things to keep in mind is sales tax there it’s called the VAT that discharged not on top of the selling price, customarily [inaudible] and the selling price.

Kevin: 00:41:33 So you have to account for VAT.

Kevin: 00:41:35 So in the U K the standard VAT rate is 20% so the way to walk through that math, cause I know this is going to be very important for people listening, is let’s say you’re selling a product 12 pounds. So that’s their currency there. So you would think 20% would be two 40 Mmm. $2 and 40 cents or two pounds and 40 Pence as they would call it there. Well not exactly the way it works is your selling price would actually be, even though the customer sees 12 pounds and they pay 12 pounds, technically the selling price, what they would call the VAT exclusive selling price would be [inaudible] 10 pounds and you would have two pounds of, that’s the way the standard scheme works. And then like in Canada, you’re going to pay sometimes for things at the border, whatever the customer prices or whatever your, all right customer price, whatever your whatever.

Kevin: 00:42:38 Basically whatever your declared value is, which is what you paid for the goods, you’re going to pay for that on top of that. And then that could be recoverable. If you use a prep center [inaudible] ask your prep center how they handle that because it’s a very gray area with B to B. So they might say, okay, here’s our prices. So you’re say, Oh okay there. And they charged me one pound, you know, one Sterling pound or you know, their currency per units, but they may actually have to be charging you that and they’re going to charge you that on top of this house because even though I set it on amazon.co. Dot. UK, it’s included in the selling price and consumers. That’s the way it’s done generally is it’s included in the price. The B2B world. Yeah, oftentimes, and it can go both ways. So always confirm this.

Kevin: 00:43:31 They might charge you VAT on top of it so that could make your pricing 20% more expensive. Yeah. Now there’s a lot of landmines and technically you’re supposed to use this form and technically we’re supposed to use this. So one of the things I’ve come to do is whatever VAT I have to pay, like to like a prep center or at the border or whatever [inaudible] Hey, and it’s just part of my cost structure. Then in the UK you can file for what’s called the flat rate scheme, which is instead of 20% it’s seven and a half percent. No, there it would be seven and a half percent of using my example from earlier of 12 pounds. So B seven and a half percent of 12 pounds, not a 10 unfortunately, but it still works out to be, you end up hang in a lot of cases, less in that you may have to validated does cause it depending on how much you’re paying for your products.

Kevin: 00:44:29 This might not work for you. But if anything it gives you simplicity because you don’t have to have all the forms or worry about whatever it is, just whenever your sales were times flat rate amount and that’s what you pay. So that’s what I like to do, just cause it makes it way simpler and I don’t have to worry about like, Oh technically they didn’t send me the right form to be able to prove that I, you know, [inaudible] eligible to recover what I paid at the border cause there’s declares about that in Europe. So that’s one of the things I would definitely keep in mind is just again, for wholesale purposes more than anything, it’s going to be a little more complicated. [inaudible] Europe, going back to why I said it was varsity for a Mmm bit, it’s going to be a lot more complicated to figure out your margin structure is to make sure it makes sense.

Kevin: 00:45:19 And then also if you’re air shipping it from the U S that’s gonna cut into your margins as well. So you really got to make sure that you had your cost structure in line before you take a stab at it. That’s what I would tell people for Europe. That’s why I recommend starting a candidate. If I’m, if I’m understanding right, so if I’m shipping, let’s say $10,000 worth of products from the U S to the UK to get it across the border into the UK, you have to pay VAT on that 10,000 yes. Okay. So that that is on that 10,000 and then I list the products on Amazon and you pay that a second time. Well, technically the way they’re looking at is the customer’s paying the bat the second time. So think of it this way. Let’s say it’s $10,000 worth of product and you’re selling it for the equivalent of $20,000 [inaudible] so you’re going to pay that on the 10,000 and then when you collect from the customer [inaudible] [inaudible] 20,000 you collect and so maybe you really should be charging 24,000 to make your margins work.

Kevin: 00:46:35 Got it. So you really want to be very careful with how you’re gracing things there. Like I wouldn’t just take whatever your price is in the U S and if let’s say $1 in the U S is hypothetically 0.75 British pounds, don’t just use that calculation and just say, I’m just going to go with that and make it simple. Yeah. I would go through every step of the process to figure out what your margins actually are because that’s where you can get [inaudible] trouble is [inaudible] what that might cost you. Yeah, you have to know all those expenses. Every little one. That’s why I have for each one of my products, I have a calculated down to the penny and how much they import duty is how much the clearance fee is and shipping per pound and everything else. I know exactly how

Kevin: 00:47:29 I’m paying because you gotta make sure you’re making money. Obviously that’s why we’re doing this, right? We’re not just doing this to give a Amazon fulfillment phase. Exactly. So all right, so that’s really important to know. So the 20% VAT going into the UK, that’s basically like the import duty from Canada or are you paying for duty on top of the VAT as well? Generally in both cases you have an important duty as well. The import duty is generally much smaller than the GST or the bat. Okay. All right. And that depends on your product and the codes and all that. All right. So basically in general, whatever product we’re sending over, they’re probably going to be relatively selling higher priced than what we’re selling them in the U S because of those, the added shipping charges, the added that when bringing in the country, and then you have the duty on top of that.

Kevin: 00:48:22 And then of course the second VAT, which customer is paying, but that we have to include in the cost that we’re paying or we’re charging the customer. Yes. So here’s just to take a step back on, you know, what pain paid and bat and how that all structures, so whatever the customer pays that’s included in your selling price, you’re going to owe that to the government. Whether it’s, so you’re the flat rate scheme or standards scheme. If you’re on the standard scheme, meaning you’re not on the flat rate scheme, whatever you paid, you paid into the system basically as a customer. So think of yourself as a customer at the border and a customer with your prep center, whatever that you paid, you’ll subtract from what you owe the government. That’s the way to think of it. So I would not pay it twice.

Kevin: 00:49:08 What do you pay? Paid at the border. You subtract from what you pay in the end. Yes, so that’s why it might make sense to say, okay, this is the flat rate scheme makes sense to me or not. So maybe it does for you to say, okay, this is what I’m collecting from customers. Basically one sixth of my selling price or then I take it and subtract out whatever or what I have paid into the system so to speak for that at the border. Nope. Prep centers or if I have any other services I have in the U K subtract that out now. Okay. There, let’s see if that makes sense it which is better for me, that rate that I just gave an example of or the flat rate, right. Only just say seven and a half. Okay. No, you don’t recover in the seven and a half percent because the flat rate scheme is just to assume it’s all kind of lumped in there. The nice thing is with the flat rate scheme is your first year you actually [inaudible] take off another percent. You actually only think six and a half percent. All right. And do you have to decide for that flat rate scream upfront or can you wait until it’s time to file and pay? Determine which way would be cheapest and do that way or do you have to decide upfront?

Kevin: 00:50:28 Well, good question. So generally I’m almost positive you have to do it upfront. And the reason I say that is I accidentally [inaudible] Oh my myself in the flat rate scheme and then for several years I was using the standard scape. Well because I DIY it and I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I just [inaudible] what’s called an SIC code and an industry code and I picked the wrong one. And so what ended up happening is even though I’d never used that scheme my accountant at Avast wait it out like, Oh well if you’re on the flat rate scheme, you should actually have been on the seven and a half percent. So I called HMRC, their version of the IRS and they backdated my industry code to the right one. So I was only paying seven and a half percent. And then actually ended up getting a refund from them for all that extra money I’d spent them.

Kevin: 00:51:25 So in my case, it made sense to do the flat rate scheme. But here’s what I’ll say is you can go on the flat rate scheme and you can come off it, but to be eligible you can. Mmm. [inaudible] I don’t remember the exact details, but yeah, yeah. Within a certain time period you couldn’t have gone off the fire it’s game and then go back on. Okay. All right, perfect. And how often are you paying your taxes, do you have Oh, annually or quarterly? Quarterly, quarterly. [inaudible] And UK. It’s quarterly. Okay, perfect. So, all right. So we have our product shipped over into the [inaudible]

Todd: 00:52:02 Okay. Into a prep center. So that sounds like we definitely want to have a prep center in [inaudible].

Kevin: 00:52:08 Yes. I mean, if it makes sense and you can send it straight into Amazon, you could do that too. I personally use a prep center.

Todd: 00:52:15 Okay. Yeah, I definitely think it would probably be easier, but up to everybody. All right. So now while once we get it into the prep center where are we going from there? Are we the, we created the listing on Amazon UK and the prep center sends it into whatever Amazon warehouse and I think there’s some, some way to send it around to different countries as well. Correct?

Kevin: 00:52:41 Yes. I’m so glad you brought that up. So currently there’s what’s called the pan European program and they will, you can save, it’s about a Euro [inaudible] fulfillment fee when you ship out to a customer outside of the the UK. Cause the way that works is in my non tax professional understanding, well what I’ve pretty much come to learn, this is how it works is when you ship into a country and you live outside of that country, Mmm. If you’re from outside of Europe, I should [inaudible] you’re required to register and file in that country if you store goods in that country. [inaudible] Supposed to register and file. Yeah. Here’s one of the things, Europe, the way it stands pre-Brexit right now in the U S we’re so used to everything’s destination based. So it’s not where the goods are shipped from. It’s where the customer lives. In Europe, it’s the opposite.

Kevin: 00:53:37 It’s where the goods are being, what they’d say dispatched from. So if it’s being dispatched from Amazon’s warehouse and the UK to a customer in Germany, you owe that on that sail and Germany to the UK government. No, that might change after Brexit. It might not. We’ll see. That’s basically how it works now. Amazon once to be able to move stuff around, like here in the U S let’s say ship stuff into Charlotte. They might put some of that in Michigan, put some of it and California, some in Texas, they’ll just move it around however they want because they want to get it fastest to the customer and their algorithm. We kind of figured that out. Well in Europe they can only do that if you click a box saying you accept pan-European, so yes, you save a Euro per unit. However you now are responsible for that, not just in the five countries.

Kevin: 00:54:34 Amazon has marketplaces, but also the Czech Republican, Poland, where they will also store goods from. So it might be the equivalent of [inaudible] eight $9,000 U S to do all the filings and all the registrations. And you know how it’s like super simple. We talked about the register in Canada. It’s, they’re not quite as friendly in the UK, but you know, they just sound so intelligent with their British accents when you call the accent. Yeah, the accent definitely makes them sound so smart. [inaudible] Yeah, yeah. You start calling, you know, the tax office and Italy, you have no idea what they’re saying. There might not be anyone who speaks English before you try to look at the form and the Czech Republic, like the letters aren’t even the same. It’s like our letters. So you end up having to use another company and it’s, it’s very convoluted to figure out which country gets figured out.

Kevin: 00:55:36 So you just, you kind of have to let the tax experts take care of it. And so if you think about it outside of the UK, you would need to have seven, 8,000 sales a year just to make that worthwhile just for what you’re paying in tax compliance for comparing the savings and then you’re going to end up paying like some countries are monthly. So like I remember I did pan European for a year and I came right off of it more just cause I wanted to learn what it was like, but it was like I paying like the Czech Republic equivalent of like $8 each month because I had a couple orders shipped from their warehouses and it’s like right, this is nonsense. This is just a waste of time. And then the, even having a Vasque do the forms for me, like Spain, like had to go to a consulate to do something, so I paid an extra. So they go to the consulate and might AF.

Kevin: 00:56:23 And then it was like, I didn’t even know what it meant to Postel a document until did that. But it’s like basically the state of Florida provide a certificate to prove that notary is a real person or just like, this is weird. So yeah, it’s like more work than I thought it was worth. So I would highly recommend against it. So if we end up in a situation where there’s a hard Brexit and nothing can leave the UK, well Germany, okay. How’s of operations because they’re the bat rates the lowest, there’ll be something that that comes out of that Amazon will figure that out for sure. And even if we do have Brexit which is interesting, all of that you know, I don’t want to dive into all that, but you know, [inaudible] is the second largest economy. I believe the European union and Germany is the largest.

Kevin: 00:57:23 So even if you K leaves and there isn’t anything set up between all those other States, I was just looking it up. So the United States population is currently about 330 million. Canada is about 37000000%. California, 10% of the sales UK is about 63 million. So you could still probably expect about 20% of the sales in the U S into the UK even if everything else gets cut off. So probably would still be a good market. They speak English, everything is set up pretty easily to flow into the UK. And I can’t imagine that something won’t be worked out. With the UK in the European union considering that UK is the second largest economy in the area. Yeah. I mean we could be eating Crow. I agree with you. We both could be eating a lot of Crow here in a few weeks. We’ll see. We’ll see. I mean they’ve had hard Brexits for three [inaudible] [inaudible] the can keeps getting kicked down the road and this one’s supposed to be like this one’s actually happening.

Kevin: 00:58:34 Cause there’s a new government in place that wasn’t in place in the previous a deadline dates. We’ll see. Yup. Yup. It’s interesting. It makes me think of when the United States left Britain, you know, we basically left Britain and now Britain is trying to get out of the European unions. That’s kind of funny how that goes, but all right, so what else should we know? Anything else that we should touch on before we wrap up here in Europe? Yeah. One of the things to keep in mind is in Canada you’re going to have less sales, then you’ll probably have [inaudible] the UK, but in Europe, generally speaking, you can’t, I want to say can’t. The market tends to be in a situation where you’re not going to recoup all of your that costs. So you ended up having lower margins in Europe, but higher sales in Canada you tend to have higher margins but lower sales than you would in Europe.

Kevin: 00:59:42 It depends on the products are selling and things of that nature. But you know, as a general rule of thumb, it’s something to keep in mind because also with Canada, even though Canada is such an enormous country, most people live within a hundred miles of the border and most of them are in either expensive cities like Toronto and Vancouver, which are like San Francisco or New York basically is, you know, cost of living. Yeah. They, a lot of people just live out in the boondocks and there’s like a general store an hour away that’s like the size of a seven 11 or they can just go on their phone and having Amazon bring them stuff so they we’re willing to pay a little extra. Yup. So, so let me understand that correctly. So are you saying that in Europe as it stands right now using the pan, he use it called, right?

Kevin: 01:00:34 Yeah. So pan European versus European fulfillment network. So panty use where they move stuff in Europe we can expect to actually sell a higher vlog or higher quantity of product versus the U S no, sorry. Versus Canada versus candidate. Yup, that’s right. Okay. Okay. So it wasn’t clear there. The U S even though you’re selling into lots of directs, you’ll, I’ll, I’ll just, I could be wrong, but generally speaking, unless you know, you have a product that’s just not doing so well in the U S that’s just gangbusters outside of the U S you probably combined, you might see 30% in Europe in Canada and be happy with that. Yeah. Think about that. What else would you do to get 30% more sales? Yup. It’s pretty simple. It’s not new accounts. No, it’s less risky on the wholesale side too. So not only if we go into Canada and UK, not only can we sell the products that we’re currently selling in the U S possibly you’re gonna want to make sure with the suppliers that they allow you to sell it in other countries because not all products can be sold out of the country.

Kevin: 01:01:46 So we’re going to want to check on that. Especially anything you consume, put it in your body, that kind of stuff. There’s going to be more. But now that we’re open up in those different countries, the European union and Canada, we can start finding suppliers in those countries and their products. So there’s plenty of companies that make products in Canada. I actually import some products from Canada into the U S the cell, so now that opens up more markets to be able to find products from Canada, from the UK, from Germany that night. You can open up accounts there, sell their products in those market places as well. And maybe eventually import those into the U S even. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I’m very new to this wholesale game. I’m just now like starting to say, okay, I’m about to dip my toe in [inaudible] knowing what I know, which is very limited, and you can correct me if I’m wrong here, but I would imagine if I’m calling a supplier and I’m saying, Hey, I’m going to sell your product in the U S versus, Hey, I’m gonna sell your products in the U S Canada and Europe, which is more attractive and at least going to get their attention to continue the conversation.

Kevin: 01:02:56 Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely something that you’ll be able to use and maybe they say no in the U S but then you can say, well, we also sell in Canada, in the UK, and they might allow you to get in the door selling in those platforms and then down the road maybe you can jump into the U S market or something like that. So, yeah, it definitely would be something that you can hang out there as a carrot, so to speak, and maybe get some more suppliers to allow you to open accounts for sure. Plus they look like more of a legitimate business. Right. Cause that’s a lot of the downside of Amazon wholesale sellers is that they are, a lot of times they don’t treat it like a real business. And that’s why companies get so sick of them and just say no Amazon sellers. So the more you act and look and represent yourself like a real business, the more likely you’re gonna be able to get those accounts open.

Kevin: 01:03:56 Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, well I think we are a little bit over the hour Mark. So it’s good discussion. You put, it was fantastic. A lot of great stuff here for sure. I’m going to have to listen to this one again, but you put together a checklist for us that is going to help people get into the markets. Tell us a little bit about what we’re going to see on there. Yeah, absolutely. So what ends up happening is I’m sure people that are, that have made it all the way through. So if you’re listening to this right now, you made it all the way through. I want to congratulate you for that. You probably feel like you’re just drinking from a fire hose like that. GST or Canada wet. What, what? What is hard to follow on this? Well, put together a checklist, which is really more of a mini guidance, like 16 agents where it walks you through step by step what you need to grow your own international empire so that you can get these, you know, sales numbers that we’re talking about in other countries.

Kevin: 01:04:55 It’s one of those things we can’t guarantee what your sales are going to look like, but we can guarantee what they won’t look like if you, yeah. So if you’re willing to do the things other people won’t do, you’re going to have results other people can’t pass. So if you go to maximizing e-commerce dot com forward slash Todd T O D D I have a checklist that you can download absolutely for free. It’ll walk you through all this stuff. Okay. If I can shorten the cycle for you and make it simpler, then it’s a win for me. So for sure, and I’ll be downloading that myself and I’ll put the links in the show notes. Again, that was entrepreneur, adventure.com, forward slash seven for this episode. If you’re watching on YouTube, it’ll be down in the description as well. So I will be definitely picking that up.

Kevin: 01:05:40 And then Kevin, you also, what if they want more help from you on going into these other markets? You offer that service as well, right? I do actually. And here’s what I’ll do for your for your listeners. If they download the checklist and they want to set up a free 30 minute strategy session, I’d be more than happy to do so. So I’ll make it so that on the thank you Paige. They can click a button to schedule something as long as they have a business that started. So thinking about getting started, get started in the U S first before we start worrying about international marketplaces. But if you’ve got a foothold in the U S [inaudible] the private label game, I had one products for sale or that were coming in the pipeline when I got into Canada. So I think you can start relatively early, but as long as they’re at least started selling in the U S and they are saying, okay, I want to at least consider this, you know, I’d be more than happy to jump on a half our callers or myself or someone on my team to at least go through and answer whatever questions they may have know.

Kevin: 01:06:44 I’d love to see them have a win. Yeah. Expanding their business with us wider net. Okay, awesome. Yeah, that’s appreciated. I appreciate that. So yeah, definitely head on over to maximizing e-commerce dot com for slash Todd T O D D download that checklist and schedule your call. Other than that, Kevin, it’s been awesome having you on. I’ve learned a lot. Like I said, I’m probably going to have to listen to this one again cause I want to go more into Canada and eventually into the U K as well. So maybe I’ll even take you up on that 30 minute call at some point as well, but absolutely. I appreciate you coming on and taking the time to let us know how to sell internationally. Thank you for having me. It’s been a blast.

Kevin: 01:07:29 All right. What did I tell you? That was an excellent episode. In fact, this is one that I am definitely going to have to listen to again because I am going into Canada like I said earlier and looking to go into the UK sooner rather than later, so definitely download that checklist that Kevin made for us. You can get that at maximizing e-commerce dot com forward slash Todd T O D D or you can pick it up in the show notes, entrepreneur, adventure.com forward slash seven and you can download it there along with see the transcript and the show notes and other links for this episode that you’re definitely going to want to check out. Yeah, I really hope you enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed sitting down with Kevin Sanderson, appreciate his time. So with that, we’ll finish up this episode. This is Todd with entrepreneur adventure. Signing off. Happy selling everybody.

Announcer: 01:08:27 This has been another episode of the entrepreneur adventure podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours if you take it.