08/28/2026
Global Markets For Canaduan Business
A little bit of a long post this morning but let me explain to you what it means to be a small business in Canada where you want to get your product to the widest audience possible.
In 2018 we decided to start manufacturing small furniture items that could be packed and shipped across Canada and United States, essentially all of North America. Since that time we've shipped things to Nunavut, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico and all points in between. It's been amazing and we've probably shipped 15 or 16,000 parcels.
Fast forward to today when suddenly our United States market has been cut off because of tariffs. People can still buy a product but they are going to pay a ridiculous amount on tariff and shipping costs which will go into the pockets of the United States Treasury.
Shift to other markets everyone says. Okay shipping to the EU has also become almost impossible because of cost plus new packaging regulation laws which came into effect this month. You have to register in every single EU country at a cost of a thousand Euros per year and certain feed per parcel coming in. This is for packaging recycling declaration and other stuff which I am really not clear on. Plus we have to have a responsible person in the EU who will be in charge of products entering that market. So that becomes onerous for a small business in Canada. Anything that the government does to increase trade with the EU is focused on companies that generate millions in revenue per year. That's not us.
To Australia, almost impossible because just the shipping alone is extremely expensive in any method we've investigated. They are also introducing packaging laws and then we get into things like taxation and other regulations into that market. So to ship a parcel to the United States was let's say $30 to ship that same parcel to Australia would be $90+ and it would take 4 weeks to get there. You want it faster you can double that rate.
So that's the reality we are faced with and although we love our Canadian market we will now be busting our buns to increase our brand awareness locally even more!
Stay tuned for more!
