Those participating in the Central Europe program have so far only known Poland as an external storage location for the German Amazon Marketplace. Now, Germany’s neighbor Sweden and the Netherlands will follow as an independent marketplace. For a successful start as a seller on the new marketplace, there are of course a few things to keep in mind.
1. Start on Amazon PL: upload listings on the polish marketplace
In order to be able to sell products in Poland, you need to place your listings on amazon.pl first. To do this, go to Seller Central in the International Listing Setup section and click on Sell Worldwide.
SPACEGOATS extra tip: Make sure that the Polish marketplace is linked here. Only then will you have access to your listings.
Now you can upload your listings. You have two possibilities: Upload in bulk or individually.
Bulk upload of product listings on Amazon Poland
To upload multiple products at once, go to First Steps under Set Up International Listing and select the country of origin of your products, for example Germany.
When you click on Continue, you can enter your SKUs, save and continue, and you’ll land on the page where you can adjust the prices.
Be careful: Poland – just like Sweden – does not have the Euro. So you have to enter your prices in Polish zloty.
If you haven’t done any further research or don’t happen to be an expert on currencies and exchange rates, we recommend using a feature of Amazon. It will suggest prices in zloty based on your euro prices on this page.
Then click on save and continue. After about 48 hours your listings will be online in Poland.
It is important that you unlink your products afterwards by clicking on the respective button in Seller Central. This link can only exist for one marketplace at a time. Otherwise you would not be able to keep your listings and link them to other marketplaces.
Uploading listings individually to the Polish Amazon marketplace
In the area where you manage your inventory, you can click on a single listing.
Then enter “Poland” at the bottom, save and click continue – and you’re ready to go.
2. Polish registrations and licensing for the start on amazon.pl
If you want to sell on amazon.pl, you first have to take care of the packaging licensing. This is because the registration requirement in Poland applies from the very first product.
Therefore, it is necessary to carry out the registration in Poland before the actual sale. The only alternative is not to export to Poland or not to sell there at all.
Besides packaging, tax is of course also an issue, because you need a Polish tax number to sell in Poland.
Deputy system and service providers
In Poland there is a deputy system. This means that for certain registrations you need certain identification numbers, which only people from Poland have – or a Polish representative.
So your first step for most sellers is to look for a deputy directly in Poland or to ask a service provider like Certify in Germany if they can do the registration for you abroad.
Mandatory for selling in Poland: Packaging registration
Only when your packaging is properly registered, you can start selling. After that, you must of course report how much you have actually sold in the course of a year, i.e. how much packaging waste you have ultimately produced. The costs for the packaging are then calculated on this basis. In addition, there are the costs for registration and the service provider or representative. All in all, in most cases this is all in the really low three-digit range.
Registration of the estimated packaging quantity in advance
Nevertheless, you should give as accurate an estimate as possible when registering in advance. If you declare too little, you will pay a penalty later – and if you declare too much, logically you will have paid too much.
Depending on the product and target audience in each country, you can use other marketplaces such as the UK as a guide for the amount of products sold and packaging produced.
Submit information about sales and packaging
Once you have found a service provider for the registration, they will of course need some information from you. This is your company and contact details and information about your sales: How much of what product is sold where? Also, the business channels can play a role – which data and information you have to provide, you will find out directly from your service provider.
The type of product is important as well because certain properties have to be registered separately. With electrical appliances or batteries, for example, there is more to consider than just the packaging registration.
Packaging registration and BDO number
Your service provider will then apply for the Polish registration number, also called BDO number, for you. You will receive the number in a letter.
Include Polish registration number in the invoice system
All information must then also be correctly noted on invoices.
On each invoice that goes to Poland, the BDO number must be found. Unfortunately, many sellers do not know this. This is even more annoying if you are already successfully registered, but run into problems because of such a formal error.
Therefore, always write the registration number on the invoice and set it directly in the billing system as a fixed component.
Register actual packaging quantities and pay fees
Then there is only one thing left to do: pay the corresponding amounts to the authorities. By the way, these are peanuts compared to the penalties for not registering – so it’s worth it!
Tax registration for sales and warehouses in Poland
If you already participate in Amazon’s Central European Program for the German or other European marketplaces, you have to be registered for taxes in Poland anyway. Even if you have not sold your goods in Poland before but the products are stored in a warehouse within the Polish borders, your goods must be registered in this country.
Your obligation is therefore to register your goods for VAT and to submit an advance VAT return on a regular basis.
SPACEGOATS extra tip: You want to sell or store goods in Poland, but without the hassle of tax registration? Come on board and we’ll take care of it!
3. Amazon Poland: Starting difficulties and initial restrictions on amazon.pl
Officially, Poland became the eighth European Amazon marketplace as early as March 2021. However, the platform only really went live in August – and even that doesn’t mean that everything will run smoothly right away.
The Polish marketplace is still a bit limited in terms of some features for sellers.
No advertising and PPC possible on Amazon Poland yet
Do you want to advertise your products? The current situation on amazon.pl is still really bleak. It is not yet possible to place coupons or ads or set up PPC campaigns.
But there is a glimmer of hope: Lightning offers and 7-day deals are already displayed in Seller Central. While clicking on them leads to an error page, all indications are that Amazon will enable these types of deals very soon.
Focus on listing and content
So what’s left if you don’t have any ways to promote your products? The actual content has to come in.
Many sellers focus too much on paid campaigns and ads, forgetting to craft the core of what is being promoted. However, a successful campaign can only be built on the solid foundation of a good listing with good content – after all, you want your target audience to be convinced on the product page and not click away immediately.
Optimize texts for search
Without advertising, it is especially important that your SEO content is properly designed. This means that all text modules of your product listing should be optimized so that your target group can find your product.
Use A+ content correctly
If you also have the opportunity to use A+ content, you should definitely do so. And not only that: this A+ content should also be designed in the best possible way. You can find more information on this topic in this article.
Translation on a professional level
An important point in the content of your listing is of course the language. With an automatic translation or with a suboptimal tool, errors creep in incredibly quickly, which can sometimes have serious consequences and even lead to blocked listings.
Therefore, you should definitely invest in a professional translation and adaptation of your texts. With a service provider such as eFly, you also get a professional keyword research, which helps with the search optimization of your texts.
This will continue to pay off when the advertising functions are activated in Poland. Because although paid campaigns attract customers to the product page, you still have to convince them to buy there – and really good content can do that.
Stay ahead of the competition
Especially in the early days of a new marketplace, it’s worth doing things right from the start and focusing on quality content and texts from the very beginning.
Many sellers are lulled into believing that Amazon’s automatic translation is completely sufficient. So, with professional texts, you can stand out from your competition.
Inventory planning for Poland is missing
Another obstacle lies in the currently already exhausting topic of inventory.
In Seller Central, inventory planning is still missing at the moment.
Although there have been several shipping centers in Poland for a long time, they belong to the German marketplace and are therefore also listed in the DE inventory.
SPACEGOATS extra tip: You can recognize a DE-Warehouse within Polish borders by the fact that the address is written in English, for example Saxony-Anhalt instead of Sachsen-Anhalt. This means that the goods are only temporarily stored in Saxony-Anhalt and then transported by truck to a Polish warehouse.
Incidentally, the same applies in Sweden and Holland: Inventory planning still has to be done via DE.
In any case, it is advisable to monitor and check the inventory and Account Health on a daily basis, as there have been frequent problems around storage capacities and the like in the past months.
We can only hope that these initial stumbling blocks of a new marketplace will soon be eliminated and that we can take off together on amazon.pl!