Is Brexit coming to Amazon?

Are you struggling to get ungated on Amazon European Marketplaces? Up until June 2017, applying for ungating in the European Marketplaces was just a case of ticking a few boxes within your UK ungating application, but NO MORE!

NOW you have to apply for EACH European Marketplace separately and it can no longer be done from within your UK ungating applications. So, is Brexit coming early to Amazon?

The new process WILL make it tougher to get ungated in Europe but nothing that, for now, you shouldn't be able to get over with a few tweaks :-)

The first thing you should do to smooth the EU path when planning your ungating project is to choose products that are listed on each European marketplace rather than just in the UK, otherwise you may find yourself needing to buy additional products.

You can apply for each European ungating by just changing the marketplace at the top of your Seller Central and doing exactly as you would for a UK ungating application - all EU applications are the same as their UK counterpart.

Remember to check ALL your EU ASINs and add the equivalent EU ASIN into the relevant comments box on each of your EU ungating applications - this will be more time consuming for you but will help ensure the Amazon representative can find the matching Amazon product easily and gives you a chance to ensure, should you product be categorized in more than one category, that you pick the ASIN that correctly matches the category for which you are applying :-)

You may still come against the new 'Business Licence' wall that has been implemented recently for sole traders. It is still worth submitting your UTR document as a different pair of Amazon eyes can sometimes product a different result.

Who knows what the future holds for selling within the EU but one thing's for sure, if you aren't ungated, you definitely won't benefit from any EU grandfathering that may, or may not, take place - you have to be IN IT TO WIN IT as the say!

Happy EU ungating!