Opening a business in the EU

[kfulf]

Hi,

We are small but successful and profitable online retail company with
offices in the US.

Lately, we were thinking of expanding into Europe. We can do it now,
by shipping from States to EU, but we were more thinking of opening a warehouse in Europe, hiring people in europe signing
distributors over in Europe and doing it strictly within Europe (treat
US and EU businesses as separate).

I have a few questions if anyone could give me some direciton to how to start reseaching or what i need to do to start a business in Europe I would appreciate it.

1) What shipping company is widely used in Europe?

2) How would we (and do we need to?) register a company in Europe? Do
we need to incorporate it in one of the countries? I was told
Netherlands has one of the lowest taxes in EU.

3) Would it be hard to open a business account in Europe? What are the procedures?

4) What are top 3-4 merchants that accept credit cards online in
Europe. What currency should we accept? Euro? UK pounds?

5) What is preferred payment over the internet in Europe? Credit card, cheque?

5) Customer Service & Language issues - how would we go about this?
Should the site be in English or should we add French, German,
Spanish, etc.

6) Marketing – what we do in US – just get listed on Yahoo, and
pay Google and Overture. What should we do in Europe?

7) Also, I was thinking maybe at first of opening up a small just for
the UK (as it is English speaking and all) and then gradually
expanding into the rest of Europe. If we do it this way, should we
have different domains – i.e. .com for US, .co.uk for UK, .de for
Germany? Or can we use .co.uk for all of the Europe? Would users say
in France be turned away if a domain is with .co.uk?

Any other help you can provide us with doing business in Europe would
be really appreciated as it will help us to decide. Thanks a lot!!!

[Cougar]

Hi there -

In addition to the questions you've already raised, you'll need to consider import taxes (including customs duty and import VAT) if the retail goods you intend to sell in Europe are sourced from ouside the EU.

What types of goods are you proposing to sell?

If you prefer not to be too specific on the forum send me a private message or go via our web site www.tariffaxe.com

[dmc]

for setting biz in EU, the best bets are UK and Czech Republic.

regarding currency... euro is currency used in payment between countries in whole europe, EU and no-EU. for instance, if you send money from hungary to serbia, you'll use euro.

domain... i think it's best if you use your company name + europe .com domain. let's say www.kfulfeurope.com.

shipping? well... DHL is good... also UPS is widely present... fedEx somewhere, too.

marketing strategy depends a lot on your product and target group. beside google, you can use country's local search engine [www.krstarica.com for serbia or www.centrum.cz for czech republic and so on].

language? except for italy, spain, france, ... european common language of business is english. for romance languages speaking countries, you should use local languages. in italy very few people speak english.

european business culture is not homogenous and every country got its own customs, habits and way to do things. if you ask precisely about certain countries i'd be glad to respond you. from my experience, best countries to do biz in term of ethics, codex, biz morality and so on are germany and UK.

[JamesS]

Online payments can be handled with:

Protx
WorldPay
Direct internet account with your bank account (May cost you extra)
PayPal
NoChex

Main cards used in the UK:

Credit Cards in the UK: Visa, MasterCard
Debit Cards: Solo, Switch (maestro)

If someone is ordering online they are most likely to use a card.

Within the UK I’ve had delivers from companies using:

City Link
Parcel Force (Part of Royal Mail)
DHL
FedEx
Business Post (Part of FedEx I believe)

UK is still in pounds. Other countries in Europe are Euro. You'll need to find out which ones are using what as their primary currency if you plan on selling to them. One tip: If you're selling to Brits, have the price and the transaction in £, if you're selling to the French use Euro etc. I hate buying from a site who are "UK" based but charge me in $.

Easy as pie to open a business bank account in the UK.

[dmc]

visa debit cards are also widely used in europe.

regarding currency... not all EU uses euro... new EU members are still on their national currency. int'l transactions in whole europe [EU and non-EU] are in euro... if you transfer money from ukraine to serbia, it's in euro. sweden and denmark still use own currencies, as well.

if you intend to spread on markets of russia, ukraine and belarus, open company in serbia. except china, we're among few countries outside of former sovjet union with free trade agreement with UA/BY/RU.

[languageservicesco]

You haven't mentioned your target customer group (private, business, etc.), but in Germany and Austria for example, many people still don't have credit cards, and those that do are very wary of using them on the net. You can however debit their bank accounts without a formal direct debit in place. As a previous poster mentioned, the cultural side is very important, and this includes making sure that web pages are localised properly. I disagree with a previous poster concerning language. Whether they understand English or not, and many have an unreasonably high opinion of their English skills, a professionally translated site is a must if you want to be taken seriously. A .com or .eu domain also shows you are more international than a country-specific domain. If you don't want to disclose too many details publicly, send me a PM. Regards, Kevin