When shipping into a place like the UK, here's something to

think about. It can pose a lot of problems if you're trying to ship directly

into Amazon. So what I do is, this is the reason why it's

actually great to expand internationally. And that is that if

you're operating, let's say, in the USA and you want to open up your

listing in the UK, the listing reviews transfer

over to the UK listing as well. The other thing to think about

when expanding into international territories is that, I'm

Matthew Fraser, And this is Amazon Ecom

Secrets. I'll be sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from

millions in debt to an eight figure entrepreneur. If

you're ready to escape the nine to five and live life on your terms,

let me show you the way. Hey guys, welcome to Amazon Ecom

Secrets. My name is Matthew Fraser, a $50 million online

seller. And in today's episode, I'm gonna be talking about

how to take your product to international markets and

not necessarily via Amazon. It could be through

Shopify as well if that's somewhere where you sell and

this is going to be so freaking powerful. This

episode, do not tune out if you are already selling

in any particular marketplace and you're thinking about that you want

to now go to other territories. Because

guys, I've done this. I've already done this

exact method and I've made mistakes and

I've had successes and I'm going to share with you some

of the tips and tricks along the way and how

I was able to do that and what I would suggest to you. So

let's just start off with You're in Amazon

USA, for example, and you're now thinking about expanding your

product into another territory. First of all, which

one would you even pick? Do you go to UK? Do you go

to Australia? Do you go to India? Yeah, there's

a number of different places. And it's all

going to depend on the type of product that

you sell. Okay, now I sell a healthcare product and

a healthcare product requires licensing, like

medical licensing into different marketplaces. So

that in itself poses barriers to entry. If

you're selling a knife set, a kitchen knife

set or a yoga mat set, not going to be so many

barriers, right? You could just send that into any market. So let's pretend

for a second that you've got a fairly generic type of product

that's not going to have those types of barriers. But

that said, you could have a children's product and the

children's product may require certain government regulatory

documents in order to get through the customs or something like

that, right? So you're going to have to check on that. The

first thing, though, is I would now sell into other

local territories. So if you're in the USA, the first

place I'm going to go to is probably Canada. Anything in North

America. The next place would be Mexico. And

once I dialed in that entire North American

market, and when I say dialed in, I mean made it profitable,

that was the first thing I would do before I even thought about going to the UK

or Australia or something like that. And when I'm in that

marketplace, I'm also going to be thinking about how else can

I leverage the existing distribution model

that I already have. Because this also comes

back to the advertising and marketing. For

example, If you are selling on Amazon in

USA, I would also think about selling

on Shopify in USA. I would also

be thinking about selling on Walmart in USA and

eBay in USA. And the reason why is that when

people come across your product, now it may be that a friend's got

the product or maybe you're doing Facebook ads for your product

to drive traffic to your Shopify store. people are

always going to default to the marketplace that

they love. Okay. You might be someone who shops on

Amazon, but I can tell you there's a range of people who don't. I

was just talking to someone last night and I said I actually personally like shopping

on eBay as well and I think that's because I've been using

eBay for 20 years so I just go there and I can find most things

there. I also like to buy sometimes some second hand things as well

but that's a place that I like to shop. Now you'll find that

other people like to shop on Walmart. So, what you want to do is

take advantage of those platforms by being

available on those platforms. So, you're maximizing

the sales opportunity in that one territory. So,

why we want to capitalize on the one territory is because

you're already shipping into that one territory. by

increasing your footprint within the territory. You

can also increase the stock that's now going into that territory.

And therefore, you can increase your orders, which will

hopefully decrease the cost per unit, if

that's what you can negotiate with your manufacturer who may

be in China, right? So you're just really capitalizing on

that whole ecosystem within that one marketplace. It's

not much effort to then stretch it out over to Canada and

then over to Mexico in that one North American marketplace.

Where would you go after that? The next place I would

go would be the next biggest Western-speaking

country. right, is going to be UK. That's

going to be a big, big marketplace. UK, then

I would consider after that Australia, then after that I would consider maybe

branching out into parts of Europe. Once you go down the European pathway,

it can become very, very messy. Why

is it messy? Because there's just so many different languages there. Now, I already

spoke about you know, going into Mexico, obviously

that's going to be a different language there as well. Maybe that's one you bypass, maybe

it's not. There's different things you've got to think about when you're going into

places that have a different language. First

thing is going to be your product itself and

the instructions, for example. If your product comes with an instruction

manual, this will probably be something that you didn't think of. You're

going to have to put down the language of

what you're talking about in your instructions. Now, there's ways to get

around that. One thing you could do is obviously you just do a print form and you

have all the different languages. You can have all the different languages of the whole world if you

wanted to in your one instruction manual. Another

way you could do is do a QR code. So the QR code

goes to a website which then has all of the information on there. That

one is actually quite powerful because then you could potentially try

and have something on that website that can capture the

customer's information so you could then remarket to them later. That

would be key. So when thinking about Europe, it can be a minefield

of information because you've got obviously different

languages. You've also got many different territories

and licensing potentially. And so those

types of things you've got to think about before you go into the marketplace. Because

I mean, even if one example. Europe loves taxes.

The tax system in Europe is, is, it's

a fricking nightmare. One they brought up the other day, which I

had to go and I say the other day, like maybe a year or two ago, it

was about a tax now on packaging. So you now have

to submit how much packaging you think

you're going to be importing into a particular country like

Germany or something, and then prepaid the tax on that. And

that's not to mention any other types of import tax and

duties that are applicable. When

shipping into a place like the UK, here's something to think

about. I don't ship directly into Amazon.

I use a middleman. Okay. And a fulfillment center. So

my goods just happened to be manufactured in Australia. They ship

from here all the way into the UK. It goes through customs and

what the customs love to just like Australia as well and imports you

pay in Australia, you pay GST. In the UK,

you pay a VAT, which is the same thing. It's a value added tax. 20%, mind

you. It's a rort over there. And it can

pose a lot of problems if you're trying to ship

directly into Amazon. So what I

do is I don't do that. I ship into a third party fulfillment

center. They will help manage the importation of

the goods. So if anything comes up, any

issues, I can have them deal with customs or

the shipping company. If it happens and you were sending it

directly in, and I've tried this as well, if you're sending it directly into

Amazon, there's no one in Amazon that you can call and

say, hey, could you just call up FedEx or DHL and

UK Customs and sort it out? They just don't do it. There's just

no one to call. So what will end up happening is the issue doesn't

get resolved and your stock could be then destroyed or

sent back to the destination. And that is something that you want

to avoid at all costs. So for me, it's

worth the peace of mind and the efficiency of

having it imported into the fulfillment center. And then from

the fulfillment center, whatever I need to ship into Amazon, I ship it

from within the territory. And by doing that

as well, I can utilize Amazon's shipping fulfillment

company and their processes and cost. Because

when you deal with Amazon to go and collect the goods, it's so, so

cheap. So overall, I end up winning. The other thing though too

is because I'm also selling through Shopify in the UK,

the Fulfillment Company ships those products for me.

So every time I make a sale on Shopify, it goes through to the Fulfillment Company

already in the UK and it's going to ship the goods for me there. So I'm

actually utilizing two different fulfillment methods, FBA

Amazon UK and my own Fulfillment Company in

the UK as well. Why I do that across the

world, not just in the UK, I split it, is I want to

provide some risk mitigation. Because

when you ship stuff into Amazon, and perhaps you might want

to get that stock back out of Amazon for whatever reason, it has happened, it's

a freaking nightmare. You can't just ring up Amazon and say, hey, should we

have the goods? It's a real pain in the ass problem. So

that's why I like to have the majority of my stock sitting in the fulfillment company

and use that to drip feed into Amazon FBA if

and when I need The

other thing that a lot of people don't think about internationally is

Currency and the currency conversions because in

the UK you're going to be getting paid in pounds. You're gonna have to

report on VAT and

And obviously income tax And of course, that

is going to pose another level of complexity because

you're probably going to want to have a UK-based company. Now,

when I set up my UK-based company many years ago now, I

could do it quite easily, but now the government's changed the

rules. And so what you need now is you need to have someone who's

based in the UK who operates as a

guarantor basically for your company. Now,

you can't just ring up, you're like, I have a UK accountant.

they don't provide that service. They are not going to be on the

hook for your company not paying taxes, okay?

And that's the ultimate reason why the UK government requires

someone to be on the hook for the company

in the UK. Now, it's only applicable if you're a foreign

person like myself, so I don't live in the UK, but

I'm the director of a UK company, right? The UK

government can't come and arrest me if I don't pay taxes.

I'm over here in Australia. But now

they've got guarantors living in the UK, they can go

knock on their door and say, hey, that guy that's living in Australia that

owns that company that you said you're a guarantor for, he hasn't paid his taxes. So

we're going to come and see you about it. And of course, no one wants to be on the hook

for that. So it can be quite difficult now to

get a UK company set up. Hey guys, I just want

to break away from the episode for just one moment and let you know that I've just launched

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to get started on Amazon really, really fast. Guess

what? I can get you launched to your first product on Amazon with just five

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is absolutely free. All right, thanks guys, and back to the episode.

Back to currency conversions, because all of my goods

are manufactured in Australia, ultimately I

have all of my income, my revenue,

brought back and converted into Australian dollars. It might be

because I'm going to buy the stock in Australian dollars. It might be different for

you though because Most times,

the Chinese manufacturer, if that's where your product is manufactured, is

going to want to get paid in USD, in US

dollars. And so if you're operating out of, let's say,

the US, and you're getting paid in US dollars, maybe

you don't want to convert it to Australian dollars. just so

that you can then reconvert it back to US dollars to then pay

the Chinese supplier. So you're going to have to figure out how much money

perhaps you don't want to have converted to have it sort of pass through

from Amazon. Maybe you have an OFX account that you

keep US dollars in and then you pay from there to

your Chinese manufacturer. It's going to work out. You

have to work it out based on your own cash flow because if

you're based in Australia, this is probably something that people don't talk about, If

you're based in Australia, you really want, you have to ultimately

have your income declared in Australia because

where else are you going to spend the money, right? So this is

going to be how it works. You're making all this money in international markets. You're

going to bring the money eventually back to Australia.

You're going to declare the income in Australia and you're going to pay tax

in Australia. If

you're someone who wants to grow their wealth, you may want to use the

banking system, right? You want to go to the bank and say, hey, look, this is all the

money that my company is making internationally. And

the only way to prove that is through an Australian tax return,

right? And obviously to get an Australian tax return, you have to declare income. And

sure, you're going to be writing a whole bunch of things off, but

you want to still have a good, healthy income in order to

borrow money from the bank so that you can buy Houses and

cars and you know, whatever it is. So there's really is

no way of getting around paying tax I

often make a joke to my account because I say Paul when

am I gonna start opening up their account in the Bahamas? Surely

now's the time because I'm sick of paying all this tax is

like yeah, Matt You can definitely open up that account in Bahamas. But the

problem is you're gonna have to move to the Bahamas Okay.

Now obviously I want to do that So there's no other loophole that

I know of where you can live in Australia and not pay tax. Ultimately,

when the money comes back to Australia, because that's generally where you're going to spend it,

you can do that. Now, just thinking about that, maybe you're

someone who has a family or

maybe you have a location like

in Dubai, for example, where you spend half the year. If that's the

case, then maybe you could set up a company in Dubai, and

that is now your main company where you bring in all your income. Because

I know Dubai has very favorable tax

advantages for people who are not

residents, essentially, or citizens. of

Dubai. That is something that you should definitely check out. Maybe speak to your accountant about,

hey, should I just go and live in Dubai for most of the year so I can pay less

tax in Dubai? Maybe that's something for you. Now, as you know, I have

a business that is across the globe. I'm literally, let

me think, in USA, Canada, not

Mexico, Australia, New Zealand,

Japan is an interesting one. Let's talk about Japan in a second. and

Europe and the UK that that's my

terror and I have sold previously in Spain that

was a disaster and I think the reason why that was the case having thinking

about that was because the postal system in Spain

was a freaking mess it was it was and

so what was happening oh that's right I was shipping products out of the

UK into Spain I was used I was using UK as my

hub shipping into Spain. And

the stock was just going missing all the time. And I remember seeing a

video once that a customer had sent through to me and

what had happened was the product was delivered and then someone just came around, just picked it

up and walked off with it. And you know what, it just became way too

much hassle for the theft and

missing products that was going on in Spain. I said, I'll stuff it. We'll

just, we'll move on, move on from Spain. I

want to tell you one of the big things though that happened to me. years

ago and this is when I was setting up in the UK and so

I want you to avoid this mistake and that is that

when I was selling on Amazon, I had to get category

approval for my healthcare product

to be able to sell on Amazon UK. And I

thought, I'll just get this done myself. So you can go into Amazon, you can apply to get

the category approval, which was, I think

it was under medical products and filled

out the paperwork, submitted it. And it came back within like 24 hours, like

declined. I was like, oh, this is rubbish. So

then I reapplied again. I thought I must've just done

something wrong. Reapplied again, declined.

I was like, come on, this can't be serious. I'm

thinking I'm supplying all the correct paperwork. I then applied again

and it was declined for the third time. And

what I didn't know at the time though was that you can't actually

apply more than three times. Once you've applied for three times and

declined, that's it. You are out. I had to

go through this freaking rigmarole Because I

had already set up that UK account in

a UK company, which I just set up. So

now I can't use that account. So I've just

spent all this money on setting up this UK company. I now have to get rid

of that company and set up a whole new UK company to

start a whole new Amazon account and then reapply for the

medical category approval. But how

I got around it then was I actually outsourced it. I went on to, I

think it was Upwork or somewhere, and there were people there who can actually

get these category approvals done for you. And

I was like, far out, this is ridiculous. I paid her

something like, I think it was like $2,000 or something to

get this category approval sorted out. And she did, like within

like 48 hours, it was done. And so my lesson

is don't do the category approval yourself, just

outsource it. And I know what you're going to say. It seems like a lot of money, like,

Oh wow, it's gonna be like $2,000 to get that done. Look, maybe in different categories,

I know it can be cheaper, like maybe $500. But I tell you what,

for the heartache and pain that it caused at the time, because not only

did I then have to spend all that money on getting the UK company redone.

It was the lost revenue because now I was like weeks and weeks and

weeks and weeks and weeks of dicking around trying to

get this account sorted out and I was just missing out on sales. So

don't do that. Don't try and be cheap like

I was trying to do. But mind you, I didn't even know that person existed and

I just thought I could do it myself. But now I'm going to say to you, don't

be cheap. Spend the money, get it done, get it

done fast and get your Amazon account live and making sales.

ASAP because ultimately you're winning the end

with that strategy. Now guys, this is the reason why it's

actually great to expand internationally. I

was talking to a client last night and he didn't know this information so

I'm going to share it with you right now. And that is that if

you're operating, let's say in the USA and you want to open up your listing

in the UK, did you know that the

listing reviews transfer over to

the UK listing as well? And at this point, your

mind should be just blowing up if you didn't know that. Because he

thought, my client thought, that if he had to go to a new territory,

he had to start from zero again. And as I always say,

reviews equals money. So that way, you might

have great sales in USA, you might have 3,000 reviews, you

then open up in the UK, your listing is going to show 3,000 reviews.

So straight away, people are going to trust that product even

though you haven't been in that territory before, right? And that is

very, very powerful. Now, I mentioned before about the fact that

I'm in Japan. Let me tell you a secret. I

don't do the sales in Japan. I

outsource Japan. Now, what does that mean? What I've done

is I'm responsible for shipping my product

into Japan, but I have another company in Japan who

helps import the product, so they deal with all the customs. They

also deal with Amazon, the listing. the

listing creation, the language

conversion, because I know absolutely nothing except for

when I used to do Kyokushin Karate.

That's the only thing I know about Japan, apart from

the fact it's also a beautiful country. But I don't know anything about selling products

in Japan because it's so unique. So I've just

given the whole product to someone in Japan who can essentially

just take care of the whole thing for me. Now, of course, that

does come with costs because they also need to make money as well.

So my margin is reduced, but I don't have to deal with

really anything. The other interesting thing, though, about

shipping into Japan, which I hate, is

the fact that you have to prepay your taxes on

the sales. So think about this. In

Australia, when you make a sale, you

charge a GST. And at the end of the quarter, you

then report the GST and pay the government whatever they're

owed. In Japan, you have

to nominate a value of what you're going to sell

your products for. They then tell you, well,

based on that, you're going to have to pay X amount of GST or

tax, sales tax. And they're going

to ask you to pre-pay that sales tax when

you import the goods into Japan. So guys,

maybe the opportunity for you when you're expanding into international markets

is to actually outsource the sales and

the local distribution to someone who's specialized in

that particular area. And that's something that I've utilized now

into Japan. The other thing to think about when expanding into international

territories is that Amazon may require you

to meet certain criteria. Now, for example, in

India, I'm not in India. You

have to have someone who's local in India in

order to have an Amazon account and products live in

India. Right? Unlike me being

based in Australia, I can have an Amazon account live and active in

USA, in Canada, in

Mexico, without having to actually live or have someone

locally based in those markets. So there is

a lot of nuances with each territory that you're

going to have to think about before you commit to

going into certain marketplaces. So guys, I hope you found

this really, really interesting into my insights into

expanding across the globe. If you are someone who's

an inventor, you're already selling on Amazon in a particular marketplace,

you're a brand owner, and you're thinking about scaling your

business across the world, that is my specialty. That

is what I've done to now $50 million across

the world. So if you want to tap into some of that expertise to

help you save money, to do it the right way, the most

efficient way, whether that be you want me to mentor you

to do that or potentially you want me to actually

just do it for you in some sort of a partnership distribution

type model, then reach out to me. You'll find the details somewhere

around this video. You can DM me, put a message there, or

come into my community. I'd love to talk to you, and we

can take things into the stratosphere. That would be awesome. I'd

love to help you. Thanks for tuning into Amazon Ecom Secrets. If

you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is

to give a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and

make sure to subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss an

episode. You can also find more at I'm

Matthew Fraser on all social media platforms. Thanks