International · 6 min read
Don’t go to ‘Europe’. Go to one country. Here’s how to choose it.
Stijn Belmans · certified EADPPPublished · Last updated
Short answer
Don’t go for “Europe,” but choose one country instead. Europe is a single regulatory market, not a commercial one: distribution, payment habits, purchasing culture, and price expectations vary by country. Score five or six candidate countries objectively across five dimensions, such as demand fit and competitive density, instead of choosing based on intuition, a random distributor, or a single trade show.
Every expansion conversation we have starts the same. Someone says "we want to go to Europe", everyone nods, and six months later there’s a translated website, one trade show, a distributor in a country no one consciously chose, and no revenue.
Europe is a single regulatory market. It is not a commercial one. The rules governing your product are largely harmonized across the twenty-seven; almost nothing else is. Distribution structures, payment habits, purchasing culture, price expectations, decision speed, and the competitive landscape: everything changes at the border, sometimes drastically.
Germany and the Netherlands are neighbors but buy completely differently. Spain and Italy look similar on the map but aren’t. Poland behaves like neither.
The first strategic decision is therefore not should we go to Europe. It is which one country should we enter first, and why.
Four ways to choose poorly
By size. Germany is the largest economy, so Germany. This is the most common mistake and the costliest. Germany is also the most competitive, the most documentation-heavy, the slowest to trust a new supplier, and the most likely to already be occupied by three established players doing what you do. Largest market means toughest defense.
On language. Everyone speaks English in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, so let’s start there. Not a bad instinct — it genuinely reduces operational friction — but language ease is a cost factor, not a demand signal. Easy to sell into is not the same as wanting what you sell.
Who emailed you first. A distributor reached out, seemed enthusiastic, and now is your European strategy. You’ve outsourced your most important market decision to incoming luck and to someone whose interests only partially align with yours.
Where the founder would like to go. More often than people admit. It’s not automatically wrong — a genuine personal network beats any spreadsheet — but it should be a deliberate reason, not a disguised one.
A framework that holds
Score your candidate countries on five dimensions. Keep it to five or six countries, and be honest rather than optimistic. The number at the bottom isn’t the point; the point is the discussion you’re forced to have to arrive at it.
1. Fit to question — does the problem you solve here exist in this form?
Not ‘is there a market for this category.’ Instead, ask specifically: does the thing that makes your product better than the local alternative actually exist in this country?
If your advantage is cost price, it will land harder in price-driven markets. If it’s product sustainability, look at markets with high labor costs where replacement is expensive. If it’s a sustainability certificate, Northern Europe pays more for it, while Southern Europe is less consistent.
2. Competitive density — who already owns this, and how strong are they?
Count the established players and, more importantly, assess how entrenched they are. A market with two dominant local players and long-standing distribution relationships is far heavier than a fragmented market with six mid-sized competitors, even if the latter is smaller.
The best first market is usually not the largest. It’s the one where you can establish a real presence within eighteen months, because a visible reference customer in a small country beats invisibility in a large one.
3. Market Entry Route — how does a company like yours actually reach a buyer here?
This varies more than anything else on this list. Some markets run on decades-old distribution networks that are effectively closed to newcomers. Some are direct-sales markets. Some are dominated by two or three platforms. In some countries, the industry federation is the real gatekeeper.
If you’re wrong here, the rest doesn’t matter, because then you have a great product with no path to a buyer.
4. Regulatory and operational costs — what does it cost to operate legitimately here?
The EU harmonizes much, but not everything. VAT thresholds and procedures, packaging and extended producer responsibility, language requirements for labels and manuals, sector-specific national rules, and labor law if you plan to hire.
Some of this is genuinely light. Some of this is a six-month project. Figure out which one it is *before* you commit, not after.
5. Your unfair advantage — do you have something here that you don’t have elsewhere?
An existing customer. An old colleague. A supplier with a European office. An investor with a network. A shared language. A diaspora community.
Consider this carefully. In practice, a warm approach to a mediocre market almost always outperforms a cold approach to an excellent one, because the first sale is the hardest, and a warm introduction removes most of that challenge.
What we would effectively do
Score six countries. Keep two. Do it on paper, with the people who will execute it, because the disagreements are where the useful insights lie.
Go next. Physically. Two weeks, both countries, fifteen meetings. Buyers, distributors, competitors’ customers, the industry federation, the chamber of commerce. Nothing you can read replaces sitting in a European buyer’s office and hearing what truly matters to them. Based on our experience, that one trip changes the ranking in roughly half of the cases.
Pick one. All in. One country, one market entry route, one full compliance dossier, twelve months, a real budget. Trying to enter three countries halfway is the most reliable way to fail in all three — you spread yourself too thin, learn nothing conclusive, and conclude that Europe doesn’t work.
Build your compliance dossier *before* you sell, not after. No matter which country you choose, your buyer’s due diligence will look roughly the same: data processing, appointed EU roles, product documentation, suppliers. Build it once, and it serves every subsequent country.
Set a decision date. After twelve months, you’ll either double down or stop. Write down now what evidence would justify each outcome. Expansion projects rarely fail loudly; they usually just never end, draining budgets and attention for years.
What no one tells you
Your first European country is, above all, not a revenue decision. It’s a learning decision.
The first market teaches you what European buyers truly want, how long their actual purchasing process takes, which parts of your product need adjustments, and which of your assumptions were wrong. That knowledge is what makes the second and third countries affordable and quick.
The right criterion for the first choice is therefore not ‘where can we earn the most.’ It is ‘where can we learn the most, the fastest, at a survivable cost’ — and that is often a smaller, more accessible, less glamorous market than the one your board wants to hear.
Where we come in
Chuyenso is Belgian, and this is one of the things we do most often: providing independent advice on which countries fit a company, based on its actual DNA rather than market size tables — and then doing the work to prepare the organization for it, culturally and technically.
Our founder has fifteen years of entrepreneurship behind him, led companies across multiple sectors, taught strategy and business, and is certified EADPP under the European GDPR framework. We are independent: we represent no distributor, no country, and no agency, so we have no reason to favor one market over another.
Strategy Session — 60 minutes, €295. Bring your shortlist and reasoning along. We’ll evaluate them, point out what we think you might have missed, and send you a written summary with three actionable steps within 48 hours.
EU Scan — three sessions over three weeks, €1.950. Market selection, regulatory exposure, and a 90-day plan with responsibilities and budget.
We prefer to work on-site and travel for it. Start with a free 25-minute introduction if you’d like to see if we’re the right fit.
Chuyenso — literally: digital transformation. We help businesses outside Europe become Europe-ready: legally, technically, and commercially.