And What to Prioritize Once Your Brand Establishes a Global Presence
Once your brand has secured a foothold in your home market, expanding globally through Amazon presents an excellent opportunity for growth. Selling internationally on Amazon offers the potential for greater sales volume and the benefits of seasonal diversification, a broader customer base, and a more resilient business.
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Here’s why exploring global markets on Amazon can be a strategic advantage for brands ready to scale up:
1. Access to Amazon’s Global Audience
Amazon’s reach extends across over 20 marketplaces worldwide, offering unparalleled access to millions of customers in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. By leveraging Amazon’s established reputation, brands can tap into customer trust, which can be challenging to build independently in new regions. Amazon’s global brand recognition and tools, like its cross-listing features, help establish your products in new marketplaces with minimal friction.
2. Diversify Revenue Streams and Capitalize on Seasonality
Selling in multiple regions helps your brand become less dependent on seasonal sales trends in a single market. For example, while summer sales may slow down in the U.S., winter in Australia can keep demand steady. Amazon provides tools like the Sell Globally dashboard, which offers data on customer demand by country. This insight allows brands to prioritize their highest-potential markets and make data-driven decisions to adapt inventory and marketing strategies accordingly.
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3. Simplified Global Selling Tools
Amazon has streamlined the expansion process, enabling brands to manage multiple regional accounts with unified selling accounts, cross-listing, and automated currency conversion. For instance, with tools like Build International Listings (BIL), brands can automatically translate listings, sync prices across marketplaces, and even manage currency conversions through Amazon’s Currency Converter. These tools make it easier for brands to navigate language, logistics, and currency barriers without needing a large operational team.
4. Fulfillment Solutions Tailored for Global Reach
Amazon’s Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) service is optimized for international sales, covering everything from picking and packing to customer service and returns. Options like FBA Export and Remote Fulfillment extend your product availability to countries without additional warehousing, while Amazon’s Pan-European FBA allows inventory distribution across Europe. This infrastructure gives brands peace of mind by handling the complexities of international fulfillment and customer service in a variety of languages and regions.
5. Leverage Regional Market Trends and Insights
For many brands, the primary motivation for expanding globally through Amazon is the opportunity to test international demand before making larger financial or operational commitments. Amazon’s Marketplace Product Guidance tool provides critical insights into demand trends and product category performance by country, making it an ideal platform for gauging sales potential.
Instead of immediately investing in direct-to-consumer (DTC) infrastructure or forging wholesale and retail partnerships, brands can use Amazon’s simplified framework to assess how their products resonate in new markets. This approach reduces upfront risks while delivering actionable data on which products succeed in diverse regions. For example, a brand considering entry into Europe can use Amazon to determine whether demand for a specific product justifies deeper investments like localized marketing campaigns or partnerships with regional distributors.
By using Amazon to test demand, brands can identify high-potential markets and align their offerings with customer preferences, ensuring that any subsequent expansion efforts—whether through DTC channels, wholesale, or retail—are backed by reliable market data. This measured approach allows brands to scale their international presence strategically while reducing financial risk.
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6. Reduce Competition’s Impact by Expanding
While platforms like Temu and AliExpress grow in popularity, Amazon remains a dominant player globally and has strategic growth plans across markets. By expanding internationally, brand scan diversify and reduce reliance on a single region, thus mitigating the potential impacts of local competition or market shifts.
Getting Started: Steps to Expand Your Amazon Business Globally
For brands ready to take the next step, Amazon provides a structured approach for selling globally from the US:
- Step 1: Create unified regional selling accounts (e.g., for North America or Europe).
- Step 2: Use Marketplace Product Guidance and the Sell Globally dashboard to identify products suited for each marketplace.
- Step 3: Set up tax, compliance, and listing requirements for each country.
- Step 4: Cross-list products with Build International Listings and manage currency conversions.
- Step 5: Choose a fulfillment option tailored for global sales.
- Step 6: Utilize Seller Central’s management tools for automated, streamlined global operations.
Conclusion
Expanding globally through Amazon is a strategic move for established brands ready to scale. By leveraging Amazon’s tools and infrastructure, brands can reduce the complexity of global expansion and focus on reaching new customers. When done right, this expansion enhances brand reach, creates a more resilient revenue model, and opens new opportunities in emerging e-commerce markets worldwide.
