Opening up to Europe, one country at a time — the Netherlands first

Until now we shipped to France, Belgium and Luxembourg. The Netherlands joins the list, and it won’t be the last: we are gradually opening the shop to the rest of Europe, one country at a time.

The Netherlands, starting now

A Dutch customer orders exactly like a Belgian or Luxembourgish one, on the same terms: home delivery, pickup-point delivery — the map of pickup points opens straight from the cart — and, for small single-card orders, tracked letter shipping. Which delivery methods apply to which country is set out on our Shipping page, the one place we keep up to date.

Everything else follows with nothing extra to do: prices are shown including tax, with Dutch VAT applied at checkout; a damaged parcel or an order that doesn’t suit you goes back with a prepaid return label, just as it does from France; and tracking, shipping notifications and your customer account all work the same way.

Why country by country, rather than all of Europe at once

Because opening a country isn’t ticking a box. Each destination needs a carrier that delivers and collects, a rate table that holds up, the right VAT rate — including the reduced rate on books, which differs from one country to the next — delivery times we can state without guessing, and returns that don’t cost more than the order.

So we would rather open a country once it has been tested than announce it and apologise afterwards. Before opening the Netherlands we had both an outbound and a return label validated as a dry run, and checked that Dutch pickup points really did show up in the cart. It is the same rule as for our pre-orders: we only sell what we know we can honour.

What about the language?

The shop exists in French and English: the language selector sits in the footer, and our messages — order confirmation, shipping, support replies — reach you in English too. That is what lets us welcome a Dutch customer today, and a customer from another European country tomorrow, without asking anyone to read French.

What comes next

More European countries will follow, and we will announce them here once they are open — not before, and with no timetable: we won’t keep a waiting list nobody reads. Beyond the European Union it is a different job altogether — customs, declarations, paperwork — and we are looking into it seriously, without promising anything yet.

A country you would like to see next? Write to us: that list we really do read, and it weighs on the order in which countries open.

Browse the shop — and welcome to the newcomers.