Hi,

We are small but successful and profitable online retail company with
offices in the US.

Lately, we were thinking of expanding into Europe. We can do it now,
by shipping from States to EU, but we were more thinking of opening a warehouse in Europe, hiring people in europe signing
distributors over in Europe and doing it strictly within Europe (treat
US and EU businesses as separate).

I have a few questions if anyone could give me some direciton to how to start reseaching or what i need to do to start a business in Europe I would appreciate it.

1) What shipping company is widely used in Europe?

2) How would we (and do we need to?) register a company in Europe? Do
we need to incorporate it in one of the countries? I was told
Netherlands has one of the lowest taxes in EU.

3) Would it be hard to open a business account in Europe? What are the procedures?

4) What are top 3-4 merchants that accept credit cards online in
Europe. What currency should we accept? Euro? UK pounds?

5) What is preferred payment over the internet in Europe? Credit card, cheque?

5) Customer Service & Language issues - how would we go about this?
Should the site be in English or should we add French, German,
Spanish, etc.

6) Marketing – what we do in US – just get listed on Yahoo, and
pay Google and Overture. What should we do in Europe?

7) Also, I was thinking maybe at first of opening up a small just for
the UK (as it is English speaking and all) and then gradually
expanding into the rest of Europe. If we do it this way, should we
have different domains – i.e. .com for US, .co.uk for UK, .de for
Germany? Or can we use .co.uk for all of the Europe? Would users say
in France be turned away if a domain is with .co.uk?

Any other help you can provide us with doing business in Europe would
be really appreciated as it will help us to decide. Thanks a lot!!!

OK, first I should point out Europe is a big place consisting of a lot of countries. I think just wanting to export to Europe may be simplifying it a bit. The first issue you have is that every country has a different language, and although English is widely spoken, it would be a lot easier in my opinion to start with an English speaking country as you have suggested. Secondly, countries have different legal requirements for opening companies, tax, and employment so again choosing a single country to operate from initially would be a good idea.

Once you have chosen your preferred country to operate from (and my recommendation would be the UK), you should do some research on the requirements for foreign companies setting up there. You should be able to get most of this from Google - the UK government has just about everything online. There are also business organisations that will assist you - try Business Link at http://www.businesslink.gov.uk as a starter.

To answer some of your specific questions:

1) In the UK there are hundreds of shipping companies, each with their own specialities and quirks.

2) Depends on the country - they all vary. For the UK have a look at http://www.companieshouse.co.uk for registering a Limited Company.

3) Could be tricky, but some UK banks have USA operations so contact the office in the US first for advice.

4) Worldpay is probably the largest, followed by the likes of Protx and Secpay.

5) Credit and debit card, though some sites also accept cheques. Depending on the product you may also want to consider Paypal and Nochex.

5 again) Generally English. If you're planning on going into non-English countries then you will be best off translating the site.

6) Pretty much the same, depending on the products.

7) .com can cover the US and Europe, but individual language sites would be better off having the country's domain. Definitely start with .co.uk for UK.

Hope that helps. The invoice is the post.. ;)