Hey everyone! Looking for some advice.
I want to try doing Amazon.ca sales. I see on the United States side you can simply add Canada into your shipping template. But I could also just switch over to Amazon.ca marketplace and start that way. I’m confused on why they give you two different options? I would be shipping everything FBM from the US.
It’s the difference between offering items on the .com site and allowing people from CA to order vs offering items on the .ca site and shipping from the US.
Selling on the .ca is much more likely to get you Canadian sales, but also more likely to annoy buyers when they find out items are shipping from another country and have to go through customs. You will also have to deal with Canadian returns in Canada, exchange rates, etc.
Selling on .com is easier in many ways, but your exposure to Canadian markets is marginal.
Gotcha. So technically I should just do both?
As for Canada returns, I assume exact same policy as US side?
I don’t mind doing this because our products are popular enough it seems worth it. I have a product I sell on .com for $50 and these dropshippers are re-listing it on Amazon.ca for $111, $116 and $118 with a 12-22 day delivery time. Plus there of course is Amazon.ca ads I assume?
Well, I have tried both, and now I do neither. The money I could have made was not worth the trouble of making it.
If you sell on .ca you will need to have a Canadian return address.
Whether to run ads or not is up to you, and out of my realm of expertise. That said, if your item is already selling on .ca for those elevated prices, there may already be a population of people delighted to get your items for cheaper.
Be sure you know what you are getting into before sinking too much into this. The hassle of international sales and shipping is not negligible.
If you sell on .ca you will need to have a Canadian return address.
Ooof good to know. Okay guess that eliminates that option.
So just to verify… if I enable Canada shipping on the US side… it will not show my offer on Amazon.ca? Or it does show my offer but says the “This item is shipped from United States” dislaimer? Right now that is already showing on the drop shippers on Amazon.ca offers
If you offer your items for sale on .com with international shipping, it will not show on .ca. If you offer it on .ca, it will show the “ships from the US” disclaimer. If you want to offer on .ca without the disclaimer, the items need to ship from a Canadian address.
You may also want to look into the program where FBA sends your stuff from the US to Canadian warehouses to sell on .ca. I can’t remember the name of the program right now. Remote Fulfillment maybe?
The Canadian market is a lot smaller than the US market. Lower population.
The bulk of the Canadian population lives close to the US border, and a significant portion of them get their shipments sent to the US.
The Canadian dollar is worth less than the US dollar and it affects their standard of living and their buying patterns. They can be a PITA trying to get you to shave shipping charges.
If you sell on .ca you must sell duty free or add the duty into your price. You will also need to figure out HST/GST collection works (the equivalent of sales tax).
If you ship from the US you will find yourself limited in carriers you can use successfully. UPS offers attractive rate via ground but high custom clearance fees which must be paid by the buyer if they buy on .com or by you if you sell on .ca.
Canada Post is erratic in delivery.
There is nothing good that I can say about selling on .ca, and not much more about exporting to Canada on .com.
On Ebay I am using Ebay International Shipping, their freight forwarder system which eliminates most problems and most of the buyers who whine and snivel about the cost of shipping.
Canadians are nice people but I really do not want to sell to them.
The entire reason I wanted to try on .CA was because of these dropshippers who keep screwing me over when they buy from me on the US side haha
How are you getting screwed though? If they are shipping your genuine product that they paid you for (paid retail too, not wholesale), where is the damage to you? The DS’ers have to figure out customs, exchange rates, shipping, returns, etc. If they are actually messing with customers and damaging the value of your brand, that is a different conversation.
If you just want to tap in to this market and not share profit the the DS’ers, the FBA fulfillment option might be your best bet.
https://sellersasksellers.com/t/us-to-canada-dropshipper-issues/4466
Also had another person using the same “service” to profit and they left negative feedback after they demanded that I ship their order faster.
Ah yes, I remember this thread.
There are ways to protect yourself from the malicious parts of this other seller’s actions, though I do understand your impulse to just sell directly to .ca customers and just eliminate this actor from your business altogether.
As your goal is less to expand your business into a new market and more about mitigating the damage/interaction with this other seller, I would say that:
Selling on .com with international shipping is not likely to make any impact. Canadians who can find this item on .ca are very unlikely to ever check .com for this item.
Selling on .ca at a lower price point would probably do the trick, but you are taking on a whole enterprise suite of hurdles, obstacles, pain points, and frustrations.
Given your situation and only the information you have provided, I still think that remote fulfillment is the best option for you right now.
Although this has been covered, I want to state explicitly that if you list on the Canadian site you cannot ship USPS for those orders unless they will definitely fall under the current threshold for collecting fees.
You would have to use a courier that allows you to prepay customs, etc. The Canadian buyer shopping on the Canadian site must not face any sort of customs / import duties or fees.
Selling on the dot com site means the international buyer is responsible for any such fees.
However, you still need to know that you must not use UPS for those – they have a nasty habit of demanding a very large sum from the buyer for collecting fees – so the fees might be around eleven dollars all told, but UPS adds fifty or more just for collecting it.
Leading to refused packages or accepted packages with demands for reimbursement, and negative feedback either way.
Gotcha, I appreciate the help. We have just so many SKUs that I can’t do FBA for everything but I’m trying to get more switched over. Seems to be the only answer.
We only use USPS and UPS so I guess that is the nail in the coffin for this whole idea haha. Thanks for the info - I had no idea about all of the customs fees related to it all!
You can sell on the dot com site, allow international and use USPS.
However, I do not encourage it. Remember Amazon’s generous return policy. Do you reallly want to pay international shipping two ways just to end up back where you started?
Offering international on Amazon is just not a good idea. (my opinion)
Seconded, wholeheartedly.
I’m of the opinion that if one has a line of goods - or even nothing more than a singular product offering - which commands profitable attention outside of the U.S. Marketplace, better it be to keep Amazon out of the mix…
Having done a lot of research into this, I agree 100%. Unless you are expecting a large volume of sales in Canada, the HST/GST hurdles are significant (as Lake correctly pointed out).
Fair enough, but you don’t have to switch everything over to FBA. Pick what you think will be your top sellers in Canada, create an FBA listing for those by copying that product and giving it a different SKU. That way you have your FBM and FBA listing available for US market. What I mean by this is say your US FBM SKU is 456-TD. When you create your new FBA sku call it 456-TD FBA so you can quickly and easily see the difference. Then you’ll have both an FBM and FBA listing for that same product.
You can then use BIL (build international listings) and it will copy over whatever FBA SKUS that you want to list on .CA. Be aware, there are export restriction for certain products for remote fulfillment and they sometimes make no sense.
Good Luck,
TJB
Agree, since we stopped shipping to Canada, due to Canada Post lack of capability during COVID, we lost sales.
We lost the 2 percent of sales we had in Canada. Yet the Canada orders come in on our own Brand Websites. I am sure they find us on Amazon dot com. On our own websites we charge $22 USD for first class shipping to Canada.
To the OP, we thought we would do better, Canada has 10% of the market compared to Amazon US. Did not work out that way. If you keep the shipment under $30 you and use USPS, you will not see any Duty or Import issues. At least that was our experience.
Never Ever use UPS, they will pick the pockets of the customer and they will be very upset. We found this out on our own brand websites.