dropshipping : do i need to register in country of manufacture ?

[Yann2021]

Hi. I a B2B business based in Europe. My products are made in country A. Normally I import into Europe, and export from here to country B. In some cases, my customers in country B are found close to country A. So I am looking at ways to avoid importing into Europe (paying customs), and exporting to country B where my customer needs to pay customs all over again.

If I were to get products made in country A, and ship to country B. This I guess would be dropshipping. The customer in country B would be responsible for the import.

But do I need to have some sort of company registration in country A (country of manufacture) ?

Thx

[JoesIdeas]

I guess it depends on what you mean exactly by "do I need to have some sort of company registration" in country A.

In Shopify, no.

In my experience (ran a store for 7 years, kept inventory in 4 different countries, manufactured in 3 different countries):

- We registered our company in the US

- We registered VAT in the European countries we stored inventory (I believe this was a requirement triggered by Amazon Seller Central, we stored our inventory with Amazon FBA)

- We did not register anything in the countries we manufactured (USA and a couple Asian countries. We did not manufacture in Europe)

[Yann2021]

Hey there. Thanks for the insight.

In the case of the Asian countries you manufactured in : did you send direct to consumers/businesses ? and if so, who did you put on the commercial invoice as the sender ? Did the manufacturer appear anywhere on the paperwork or did you just put your address in the US ?

Thanx

[JoesIdeas]

No we sent either to one of the Amazon locations or our warehouse.

You might be able to ask the manufacturer to customize the information. They may do that, but they also could include their business information and try to cut you out 🙂 ... depends how trustworthy they are.

Another thing I've seen done is you send it to broker, that then can repackage the cartons with your branding / check to make sure all your information is included as you expect. I believe the term you'd search for is "freight forwarder", but there could be others. Been a few years since I handled logistics there.

[Yann2021]

Thanks for all the tips