Every brand entering European marketplaces chooses between three classic routes. The brochures describe their services. To compare them fairly, ask: who carries the work, who keeps control, and who earns when nothing sells?
Route one: own accounts, in-house team
You open seller accounts on each marketplace, in each country, and staff the operation yourself.
Who carries the work: you, all of it. Listings and translations, advertising, pricing, stock planning, customer service in the buyer's language, seller-performance metrics, VAT registrations, compliance paperwork, and every marketplace support ticket.
Who keeps control: you, fully. Every login and every decision is yours, down to the last data point.
Who earns when nothing sells: nobody, but the payroll runs anyway. The real cost of this route is organisational. A European marketplace operation is a second company inside your company: the daily work of listings, stock, advertising and profit across multiple marketplaces and a dozen countries. It is the right route when Europe is core strategy and you are ready to hire for it.
Route two: the classic agency
An agency works inside your accounts. It builds the listings and runs the campaigns. It advises on pricing.
Who carries the work: shared, and that's the catch. The agency does the marketing work, but the accounts, the legal registrations, the VAT numbers, the compliance and the liability stay yours. You have hired hands, not handed over the operation.
Who keeps control: you, formally. In practice you now manage an agency on top of a marketplace operation.
Who earns when nothing sells: the agency, because most agencies work on retainers or fees that run regardless of outcome. Right when you already have the infrastructure (entity, registrations, logistics, service) and only lack marketplace expertise.
Route three: the distributor
You sell pallets to a distributor. After that, the products are its problem, and its asset.
Who carries the work: the distributor, for real. This is the simplest route on your side.
Who keeps control: the distributor. Pricing, presentation, which marketplaces and which countries are no longer yours. Nor is the customer data. When a brand later wants its European presence back, it often finds its own products competing against it at prices it never chose.
Who earns when nothing sells: you already got paid. Once. The distributor's margin, and the brand's future on the platform, are the price. Right for pure volume where brand control is secondary.
The fourth route: a partner who sells for you
The model we run at K6 combines the parts brands actually want from each: the distributor's simplicity on your side and an agency's accountability, with ownership that never moves. How we work sets out the same arrangement step by step, from first conversation to live listings.
- Who carries the work: K6, through its own marketplace accounts and one system that keeps listings, stock, advertising and profit connected instead of in four spreadsheets. K6 runs the seller accounts. Tax, import and product responsibilities are agreed for the actual stock route.
- Who keeps control: you. The plan covers marketplaces, products and rules, and we agree it with you before anything goes live. Your stock remains your property while it sits in our facilities, and how the brand appears stays under your approval. The exit is agreed up front, so it is never a negotiation on the way out.
- Who earns when nothing sells: nobody. No retainers, no hourly billing. K6 earns a percentage of net sales and never buys your stock, so a pallet that does not move earns us nothing. K6 earns by selling it well. Our incentive is the same as yours.
Choosing honestly
If Europe is core strategy and you will staff it: own accounts. If you have the infrastructure and lack only expertise: an agency. If you want one-off volume and the brand's marketplace future is negotiable: a distributor. And if you want Europe run seriously without building a second company, while keeping the brand, the fourth route is for you.
Whichever route you pick, the next question is which marketplace to open first, and in what order. That question has its own guide: the expansion order that works. If you would rather have the answer for your own range, the Brand Review is free and comes back in writing within five working days.