Markets/ Europe
One market on paper. Thirty in practice.
Europe is a single set of product rules and a few dozen separate commercial markets. The paperwork travels across borders. The distributor almost never does. A partner who covers Germany well is usually no help at all in Spain.
Who is thereOur own people in seven countries. Partners in twenty three more.
On the ground
Seven countries we run ourselves.
Each of these is covered by someone who works in the local language and knows how the trade there actually buys. That is where our distributor introductions come from, and it is why the pitch that lands in Warsaw is not the one we send to Munich.
Germany
The specifier reads the technical file before anyone discusses price. German documentation is not a courtesy here, it is the entry ticket.
France
Almost nothing gets quoted in English. Distributors want a French datasheet and someone who answers inside the working day.
United Kingdom
Buyers move quickly and drop you just as quickly. The UK now runs its own approvals and its own importer of record, separately from the EU file.
Italy
A dense field of small specialist distributors, most of them strong in one region only. Coverage gets built piece by piece.
Spain
Trust is built before terms are discussed, and the calendar matters. A quote sent in August waits for September.
Poland
The way into central Europe, with buyers who compare Chinese suppliers openly and negotiate hard on landed cost.
Belgium
Two commercial languages in one small country, and distributors here often carry the Netherlands with it.
The rest of the bloc, through partners.
Countries we cover with a partner we have worked with before, not a name pulled off a directory. They open the door and work the leads locally. We stay on the file, so you deal with us rather than with a chain of agencies.
- Netherlands
- Ireland
- Portugal
- Austria
- Switzerland
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Norway
- Finland
- Czechia
- Slovakia
- Hungary
- Romania
- Bulgaria
- Greece
- Croatia
- Slovenia
- Estonia
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Cyprus
- Malta
The route to the buyer
The paperwork is shared. The channel is not.
Clearing the rules once lets you sell anywhere in the bloc. Actually reaching buyers means building the channel country by country, in each language.
National distributors
Most categories still move through distributors who cover one country, sometimes one region within it. Very few genuinely sell across the whole bloc, whatever their website says.
Buying groups
In several trades, independent distributors band into purchasing groups. Getting listed with the group matters more than any single member.
Specifiers
For technical products the brand is often chosen by an engineer, architect or installer who never buys anything. The distributor simply supplies what was specified.
Public tenders
A large share of infrastructure and institutional buying goes through formal tenders, with their own qualification rules and timelines.
Which of these applies to your category is the first thing we work out. That is the market and channel map.
Before you can sell
Conformity comes before conversation.
A European distributor will not discuss terms before they know the product can legally be placed on the market and that someone in the bloc is accountable for it.
CE marking
Your product has to meet the directives that apply to it, with the technical file and declaration of conformity to prove it. Self-declaration is enough in some categories and not in others.
A responsible person in the bloc
Someone established in the market has to be the legal contact for the product. Whether that is your distributor, an importer, or your own entity changes the balance of power in the relationship.
Product and packaging obligations
Depending on what you make, this can cover chemical restrictions, electrical waste, batteries and packaging recovery. Each carries registration and reporting.
Trademark
File before you show the brand publicly. Europe is first to file, and a squatted mark is expensive and slow to unwind.
Working out which of these apply to your product, what they cost and how long they take, is export readiness.
Trade shows
The trade show still decides a lot here.
Europe has an unusually strong trade show culture, and in several industries the flagship event is where distributors genuinely choose new lines. It is also where exhibitors waste the most money, because the famous show is not always the one your buyers attend. Which show is worth your budget depends entirely on your category, and it is a question worth answering before the deposit goes in.
How we pick a showWhat we do here
Delivered, with local specialists, or on request.
No agency in this category publishes this. We would rather you knew before the first call than found out after the contract.
The first move
Is Europe right for you?
This page describes the market. It deliberately does not tell you whether to enter it, because that answer depends on your product, your price and your capacity. Working it out properly is market selection.