The Operational Fix Every EU and UK Brand Needs Before Expanding to the US

This is part two of an ongoing series for international brands. Read part one here.

Expanding into the US is one of the most attractive growth moves available to European brands, and one of the most humbling. The market is massive, genuinely open to quality products, and willing to pay premium prices when the value is real. But scale and receptiveness don’t guarantee success. Complex tax jurisdictions, stringent regulatory requirements, demanding consumer expectations, evolving trade environment, and intense seasonal volatility create a landscape that’s easy to misstep in, and the brands that stumble rarely get a second chance to make the same first impression.

What separates those that scale from those that quietly exit often comes down to the operational decisions made before the first order ships.

Why Building In-House Doesn’t Make Sense

The instinct to own your logistics is understandable. Control feels safer. But in the US, building a proprietary fulfillment network from scratch means committing millions in capital expenditure¹ before a single order ships, absorbing months²  of lead time to get operational, and taking on the full burden of compliance, carrier management, and returns infrastructure in a market you're still learning.

Experienced fulfillment partners have already solved these problems at scale. They bring established networks, integrated technology, and hard-won operational expertise, converting what would be a fixed infrastructure cost into a variable expense that scales with revenue. For brands that want to test the market, iterate quickly, and preserve capital for brand building and customer acquisition, the case for partnership over ownership is straightforward.

How Distributed Fulfillment Changes the Economics

Distributed warehousing fundamentally changes the delivery speed equation. Rather than shipping every order from a single coastal entry point, strategic inventory placement across multiple fulfillment centers enables 2–3 day ground delivery to the vast majority of the US population, improving transit times while dramatically reducing transportation costs by enabling regional rather than national shipping for most orders.

For instance, shipping from Los Angeles to New York via 2-day air typically costs $23–$72 per package. Ground shipping from a Midwest fulfillment center to either coast runs $8–$18. For brands shipping 1,000 packages per month, that gap translates to $18,000–$64,000 in monthly savings while simultaneously improving delivery speed and customer satisfaction.³

Note: All figures are pulled from stated UPS rates. These can be significantly reduced through Stord Parcel.

For growing brands shipping 1,000 packages per month, shifting to regional fulfillment could reduce transportation costs by $18–$64 per package, saving $18,000–$64,000 monthly, while also improving delivery speed and customer satisfaction.

But before goods reach a fulfillment center, the economics are shaped further upstream. Ocean freight remains central to any US entry strategy, and costs vary widely. On major Europe-to-US trade lanes, a full container in 2025 typically runs $2,000–$6,000⁴ before fuel surcharges, port fees, and inland transport. Timing shipments strategically, choosing between Full Container Load (FCL) and Less Than Container Load (LCL), and leveraging consolidation programs through fulfillment partners can meaningfully influence total landed cost.⁵

For brands importing at volume, Foreign Trade Zones (FTZs) introduce another layer of strategic flexibility. These designated areas allow imported goods to be stored or processed with deferred or reduced customs duties until they enter US commerce, a meaningful advantage for brands managing high-value inventory or uncertain demand timing. A UK luxury goods brand could store inventory in an FTZ near a major port, deferring duty payments until items are actually sold, improving cash flow and reducing exposure on slow-moving SKUs. A European electronics brand importing components could perform light assembly within the FTZ, potentially qualifying for more favorable tariff classifications than fully assembled imports would attract.

As brands establish their US footing and begin to scale, fulfillment complexity tends to grow in a different direction, outward, across channels. Seamless omnichannel fulfillment becomes increasingly important as brands consider retail partnerships or physical locations alongside their DTC operations. More than a third of US consumers have placed orders online for in-store pickup,⁶ reflecting strong demand for options beyond home delivery. Fulfillment infrastructure that supports shipping to stores, buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), and in-store returns of online orders adds the flexibility brands need to meet customers wherever they shop. Providers with integrated B2B systems, distributed networks, and end-to-end inventory visibility allow brands to manage orders across channels efficiently, optimize stock placement, and scale omnichannel operations without the fragmentation that typically accompanies rapid growth.

Underpinning all of this is technology. A fulfillment provider with an integrated, full-stack commerce enablement platform delivers real-time inventory visibility across multiple locations, a capability that becomes essential as operational complexity grows. Knowing exactly what's available, where it's located, and how quickly it can reach customers enables more accurate delivery promises and reduces costly overselling. This visibility extends to inventory performance metrics, helping brands understand which SKUs to position where, how much safety stock to maintain, and when to initiate replenishment, particularly valuable for European brands navigating ocean freight lead times and unfamiliar demand patterns in a new market.

Ultimately, the right fulfillment partner doesn’t just execute logistics, it absorbs the operational complexity that can quietly overwhelm brands in an unfamiliar market. 

How Stord Powers US Market Entry for EU and UK Brands

What separates capable fulfillment partners from the rest comes down to a handful of core operational areas. Stord’s commerce enablement platform is built around exactly these — combining distributed fulfillment infrastructure, integrated technology, and operational expertise to enable brands to launch and compete in the US without building expensive logistics networks from scratch.

Delivering Speed and Reliability at US Scale

Competition in US e-commerce is defined by execution. Consumers accustomed to Prime-like experiences don't just prefer fast, predictable delivery, they expect it, and brands that miss that bar rarely recover the relationship.

Stord’s strategically located fulfillment centers enable 99% US population coverage in under 2 days, paired with 99.9% order accuracy, helping brands meet the fast, dependable delivery standards that many retailers struggle to achieve consistently. Inventory can be positioned in new regions in weeks rather than months, without fixed capital investment, while Stord One Warehouse orchestrates the entire flow from receiving and storage to picking, packing, and outbound shipping, with real-time visibility across all fulfillment nodes.

Preparing for Peaks and Plateaus

The US retail calendar is highly seasonal, with demand spikes around back-to-school, Cyber Week, and the holiday period. Fulfillment partners absorb this volatility through flexible staffing and shared infrastructure where capacity scales up during peak periods and contracts during slower months, allowing brands to pay only for the space and labor they actually use. This model helps avoid the capital trap of building warehouses sized for peak demand that remain underutilized for most of the year. For EU and UK entrants, it also simplifies inventory strategy where brands can stage inventory closer to demand centers, rebalance stock dynamically, and respond to regional sales patterns without managing multiple standalone facilities.

Stord enables that with Stord One Commerce, a platform that connects order, inventory, and fulfillment data across multiple facilities and sales channels, integrating with existing ERPs, marketplaces, and warehouse systems to give brands a unified operational view of their e-commerce operations. The platform provides real-time visibility into inventory and order status across locations and helps orchestrate workflows and routing decisions from a single system, reducing the fragmentation that often accompanies multi-state expansion.

Navigating Regulatory, Customs, and Trade Complexity

For many EU and UK brands, the bottleneck isn’t demand but the operational weight of customs procedures, documentation requirements, and multi-party coordination – each a potential source of delays, misclassification, or unexpected fees.

Tariff volatility, tighter customs enforcement, and the gradual erosion of de minimis-led parcel shipping are making direct cross-border fulfillment harder to rely on as a scalable strategy. What once served as a low-risk way to test US demand now exposes brands to higher duties and less predictable landed costs, prompting a shift toward bulk importation and localized distribution.

Stord supports this shift by helping brands bring products into the US in bulk and then store and ship them locally, rather than sending individual orders from overseas. Inventory is brought into the US through consolidated freight, positioned within Stord’s distributed network, and delivered locally, reducing repeated customs touchpoints while improving cost control and delivery performance. By connecting inbound logistics, inventory placement, and fulfillment execution within a single operational framework, brands can adapt to evolving trade conditions without rebuilding their logistics strategy from the ground up.

Enabling Sales-Tax Readiness

US sales tax bears little resemblance to the VAT systems EU and UK brands are accustomed to. There is no single national rate; a patchwork of state and local jurisdictions governs what’s owed, each with its own rules on sourcing, taxability, and economic nexus thresholds. Liability can shift based on where inventory is stored, where an order ships from, and where the customer lives, making clean operational data just as important as tax logic.

Stord’s platform helps brands operationalize compliance through the infrastructure and visibility it provides. Stord One Commerce connects inventory, order, and fulfillment workflows across locations, giving brands a unified view of where goods are stored, shipped from, and delivered which are critical inputs for managing state-by-state obligations. By integrating with existing ERPs, marketplaces, and third-party tax engines, the platform enables consistent transaction-level data to flow into compliance systems, supporting accurate calculation, collection, and reporting without manual reconciliation. Combined with distributed fulfillment and real-time inventory visibility, this approach helps EU and UK brands scale into the US while keeping tax management embedded in day-to-day operations rather than treated as a separate, manual process.

Turning Returns Into Repeat Business

Online return rates in the US commonly reach around 19% of orders,⁷ making reverse logistics a core operational function rather than an edge case. US consumers expect the process to be frictionless, and brands that fall short risk losing the repeat purchase before they’ve had a chance to earn it.

Stord integrates returns into the same infrastructure used for outbound fulfillment, connecting customer-initiated returns, warehouse processing, and inventory updates within a unified platform. Flexible return methods combined with domestic processing enable faster inventory recovery, lower shipping costs, and a post-purchase experience that meets US consumer expectations without requiring a standalone reverse-logistics operation.

Branded Packaging as a Growth Lever

In the US, packaging is part of the product. The unboxing moment has become a brand touchpoint in its own right, shaped by years of DTC growth and a social media culture that rewards presentation and perceived premium value. Arriving in plain, generic materials can quietly undercut even the strongest brand positioning, particularly when competing against digitally native US brands that treat every box as a marketing surface.

Stord Unbox embeds branded and semi-custom packaging directly into the fulfillment workflow through configurable packaging programs and kitting capabilities, allowing brands to introduce custom inserts, messaging, and presentation elements at scale, turning each shipment into a retention and acquisition moment without compromising the speed and efficiency required for nationwide distribution.

Turning Opportunity Into Lasting Success

The US market is attractive to EU and UK brands for good reason. It’s massive, remarkably open to quality products and new brands, and offers premium pricing when the value is genuine. But scale and receptiveness alone don’t guarantee success. Brands need the operational backbone to actually deliver on what American consumers expect.

The smart path is measured, not rushed. European brands that pair strong products with reliable fulfillment partners avoid the capital risk, compliance missteps, and delivery failures that derail market entry. They convert fixed infrastructure costs into variable expenses that scale with revenue. They gain months of speed to market. They focus resources on brand building and customer acquisition rather than warehouse operations and carrier contracts.

The US market rewards brands that take operations as seriously as products. For those willing to invest in both and work with partners who already understand the terrain, the opportunity isn’t just big. It’s achievable.