Cross-Border E-Commerce: Why Companies Selling Abroad Grow 3x Faster

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Piotr Skobało and Adam Sobolewski discuss cross-border e-commerce and international expansion. They compare their own experience against recent market conditions and cover what to watch for when planning to sell abroad, legally, operationally, and logistically.

WHAT MAKES CROSS-BORDER DIFFERENT FROM REGULAR E-COMMERCE

Cross-border means selling from one country's territory to customers in another location — e.g. a Polish shop shipping goods to Germany from its existing warehouse, without changing its logistics infrastructure. The data shows a clear reward for boldness: companies selling cross-border grew 24% year over year in 2023, three times faster than those limited to the domestic market, and over half of companies engaged in such sales expect profit growth from international expansion.

WHAT'S EASY TO OVERLOOK: LANGUAGE, PAYMENTS, CULTURE

Customer service without the local language (a classic example: France, where the lack of French-language support is read as a lack of respect) and the absence of local payment methods (like BLIK in Poland) automatically narrow the pool of potential customers. On top of that come tax and customs differences — after Brexit, the long last mile to the UK stopped being a simple operation, because customs fees, which usually fall on the customer, made the whole process less transparent and more complicated.

MARKETPLACE CHOICE DEPENDS ON THE COUNTRY, NOT ON ASSUMPTIONS

The simplest way to enter a new market is to sell through a marketplace — but you need to check which one is locally dominant, because it isn't always Amazon. In France, Amazon has around 80% brand recognition, but the local Cdiscount holds a strong position at 55%; in Germany it's Amazon (87%) and eBay (53%); in Poland it's decisively Allegro (88%), where Amazon doesn't even make the top ten. Czechia is the exception — there, marketplaces don't dominate sales at all.

MARKETPLACE ALGORITHMS PUNISH WEAK LOGISTICS

Practically every platform tracks the percentage of shipments and deliveries completed within the declared time — missing these metrics lowers the seller's rating and downgrades their visibility in the platform's search results. This isn't just a matter of a financial penalty anymore, it directly affects sales. Fulfillment services offered by the platforms themselves (Amazon FBA, Allegro Fulfilment, Zalando Fulfilment Solutions, France's Octopia for Cdiscount) provide ready-made compliance with a given platform's requirements without having to build your own infrastructure.

FIXED VS. VARIABLE COSTS: YOUR OWN WAREHOUSE OR A LOGISTICS OPERATOR

Only around 30% of Polish companies use logistics operators (2019 data) — a topic still poorly understood in the domestic market. In-house logistics means fixed costs (rent, staffing) regardless of a given day's sales volume; a logistics operator turns them into variable costs — you pay for storage, activities (picking, packing, labeling), and handling only when there's actually work to do. This makes scaling easier during periods of dynamic sales growth.

EVERY ADDITIONAL WAREHOUSE IS A TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TIME AND STOCK

Extending the network with a foreign warehouse shortens delivery time to the end customer, but each additional location adds roughly +30% to the total inventory across the network — frozen working capital that's easy to forget in the calculation. The decision about warehouse network structure is driven by the service standard expected in a given market: in the UK, where delivery time is a strong competitive factor, some English companies are moving warehouses to the continent post-Brexit, because they can't maintain 24-hour coverage of all of Europe from a local base.

DELIVERY COST CAN REACH 70-80% OF ALL LOGISTICS

In the domestic market, delivery is usually 30-40% of logistics costs — in a cross-border model with a long last mile to some countries, that share can reach 70-80%. The answer to "does it have to be expensive" depends on the chosen model: simple marketplace sales with a long last mile, an intermediate model with a local logistics operator, or a full investment in your own warehouse abroad — each requires its own calculation before a decision is made.