Faire, marketplaces & platforms
Creoate is a wholesale marketplace that puts independent brands in front of retailers in the UK and across Europe, with the usual marketplace arrangement: you list a catalogue, shops order and pay through the platform, and the platform takes a cut and handles the credit. The part that makes it a different decision from a domestic marketplace is the border.
Cross-border wholesale is not harder, but it is different in ways that show up on the invoice rather than in the listing. Freight is the obvious one. Customs paperwork, tax registration, currency and lead-time expectations are the ones that catch brands out, and each of them has an arithmetic answer you can work out before you list.
What listing on a cross-border marketplace gets you
The same two things any marketplace sells — demand and credit — with a third attached: a route into a market you could not have reached with a line sheet in your own language.
Demand, because shops in Lisbon and Lyon are not going to find your Shopify store. A marketplace with a European retailer base is a shortcut past several years of relationship-building.
Credit, because the platform pays you and then waits for the shop. That matters more across a border, where chasing an unpaid invoice in another jurisdiction is not a realistic use of a small brand's week.
And translation, in the broad sense: currency handling, local payment methods, and a buying experience in a language your line sheet is not written in.
What it does not do is make the logistics disappear. The box still has to physically get there, and you are still the one packing it.
The costs that only show up across a border
Five, in the order they will surprise you.
Freight per case rather than per pallet. A single case going three countries away costs real money. Domestic parcel rates do not travel.
Customs paperwork. A commercial invoice, a tariff code for each product, a country of origin, and — for many categories — a compliance statement. This is admin, not cost, but it is admin that stops a shipment dead when it is wrong.
Duty and import tax. Who pays depends on the shipping terms you choose, and the terms you choose determine whether a boutique receives a box or a bill. More on that below, because it is the single most common way a first cross-border order goes badly.
Tax registration. Selling business to business across a border usually means the buyer accounts for the tax, provided you have collected and recorded their registration number. Get that number at account setup, not at invoice time.
Currency. If you price in dollars and the platform settles in another currency, the rate moves between the order and the payout. Small on one case, noticeable across a season.
Work it through on one case
The candle: twenty-four dollars retail, twelve wholesale, six to a case, landed cost five dollars twenty a unit.
A case invoices at seventy-two dollars and costs thirty-one dollars twenty, leaving forty dollars eighty of gross contribution.
Now cross the border. Suppose commission takes eighteen dollars of that first invoice and international freight on a single case is twenty-four dollars. If you absorb the freight, you are at minus one dollar twenty. The case loses money.
That is not an argument against the channel. It is an argument against single-case orders across a border, which is a different and fixable thing.
Set a cross-border minimum that makes the freight rational. Four cases is two hundred and eighty-eight dollars of invoice and one hundred and sixty-three dollars twenty of gross contribution; freight on a four-case carton might be thirty-eight dollars rather than four times twenty-four. After a first-order commission of roughly a quarter, you are somewhere near fifty-three dollars — thin, but positive, and reorders at a lower commission rate are comfortably profitable.
The lesson generalises: on a cross-border marketplace, the minimum order is the lever that decides whether the channel works, not the price. The reasoning behind where a minimum should sit is in wholesale vs retail price.
Get the shipping terms right or nothing else matters
The mistake that ruins a first international order is sending it with duty unpaid.
A boutique in another country orders four cases, is delighted, and then receives a demand for import charges plus a courier handling fee before the box is released. That shop will pay it once and never order again, and they will tell the two other shop owners they have coffee with.
Decide before you list which of two approaches you use.
Delivered duty paid, where you pay the import charges and build them into your freight policy. Cleaner for the buyer, more admin for you, and it requires knowing your tariff codes so the charges do not surprise you either.
Delivered at place, where the buyer pays on arrival — acceptable only if it is stated plainly at checkout and repeated in the order confirmation. Some experienced trade buyers prefer this and have their own arrangements. New ones do not.
Either way, put the policy in writing in three places: the listing, the order confirmation, and the packing note. Ambiguity about who pays duty is the most common cause of a first international invoice being disputed.
How to decide whether the market is worth it
Before building a European listing, check three things.
Does your category travel? Heavy, fragile or liquid products struggle on cross-border parcel freight. A candle is heavy and fragile; a tea towel is neither. If your unit is dense and cheap, the freight will eat the margin no matter how you set the minimum.
Does your product comply? Labelling rules differ by market and by category — ingredients, safety marks, language requirements, responsible-person details for cosmetics. Find out before you list, because a compliance problem discovered by a customs officer is expensive.
Can you hold a lead time across a border? Shops plan around dates, and a package that takes three weeks because it sat in a customs queue costs you the reorder. Quote honestly: two weeks is credible, five working days is not.
If those three check out, the cross-border route is often less competitive than your domestic one, which is exactly why it is worth the setup. The European market is also served by Ankorstore, and the commission-free domestic model by Tundra.
What to keep constant across every market
One wholesale price. The candle is twelve dollars, converted at whatever the day's rate is, not twelve at home and fourteen abroad to cover freight. Freight is a freight policy, not a price rise, and buyers who shop across platforms compare.
One case pack. Six is six everywhere. Your packing table and your carton dimensions are the reason, and both are the same regardless of where the box goes.
One line sheet, translated if you can. The same products, the same retail prices converted, the same lead times.
And one list of every stockist, wherever they are. The platform owns the order record; you should own the relationship record. If that list is short and you want to know which retailers would plausibly carry your category in a given market, paste your store link into WholesalePilot and look at the preview of retailers and distributors stocking comparable products.
Questions brands ask about cross-border wholesale
Do I need a local tax registration to sell into another country? For business-to-business wholesale, usually not, provided you record the buyer's registration number and the platform handles its side. Confirm for your own market rather than assuming.
Should I hold stock in the destination market? Not until the order volume justifies it. Once you are shipping several cartons a month to one region, a fulfilment partner there usually beats paying international freight per order.
What lead time should I promise? Add a week to your domestic promise and say so plainly. Buyers plan seasons and prefer a date they can trust.
Is a marketplace the only way into a new market? No, but it is the cheapest way to find out whether demand exists. Once you have five accounts in a country, direct outreach to their neighbours gets much easier, and the method is in how to start wholesale.