This subject pops up every now and then, the complaints and answers are always the same.
It puzzles me how Italy made knives often cost the double in Europe than in the US, like any other Spyderco knife.
As an engineer and businessman this really gives me an itch, I need numbers to analyze this situation as it doesn't make sense in my mind.
For example, a knife that I really want to have now, the Salt 2 black blade:
From the US to my door (Portugal) - 61€
From France to my door - 104€
From a brick and mortar shop - 120€
My big question is: who is the EU importer? I'm in Hungary right now and a brick and mortar shop told me I'd need to wait 4 to 5 weeks for an Aqua Salt and 1 week for a Salt 2 (because that one was already on the way). This is longer than buying directly from the US! And in the end it costs the double!
I'm missing something, I'd like to know what it is...
sal wrote:Hi Jumpin'Spyder,
Thanx much for the input. Europe comes with it's own set of challenges; Each country has different laws, VAT taxes really affect prices, and most are handled by a distributor, that may not want to deal with the low quantities of Sprints.
I'll bring this up with the Sales Manager and Export lead. We're always pen to suggestions on ways to improve our distribution in Europe.
sal
Hi sal, I tried to contact you about this subject a while ago but couldn't get an answer. I'm willing to start a business importing Spyderco knives into the EU if we could get around what is causing these price tags. VAT doesn't explain these prices, nor I feel acceptable to wait 5 weeks for a knife to travel inside the EU. Poland has 23% VAT which is higher than France (20%) and Germany (19%) but has better prices on some Spydercos, France has good prices on others, but Germany (with the smallest VAT) has always high prices.
For those that don't know, there is a common market inside the EU, which means I can put a knife in the mail in any EU country and ship it to any other EU country without any additional taxes or paperwork. There are EU countries with low VAT and low import taxes that are often used for these kind of import/export businesses, it takes more knowledge than I have right now to optimize a distributor on a large scale, but even on a small scale of 1 knife only the numbers baffle me.