It's natural for a US-based direct-to-consumer brand to want to focus on the huge home market first before even considering selling internationally. But given the millions more potential customers to be found abroad, at some point it becomes madness not to want to reach a more global audience.
Today I'm making the case for the UK as a first destination.
The UK has several core advantages which make it a strong choice for US DTC businesses pursuing international expansion. List below, but I've saved the very best advantage for the end of this article as you really need to visualise it for it to sink in.
You can consider each of these points and find somewhere else which performs as well or better than the UK.
Singapore ranks higher on ‘Ease of doing business’ (2nd vs 8th for the UK).
Finland has higher internet usage (98% vs 97%).
Ireland has a higher GDP per capita ($100k vs $47k).
Australia and New Zealand also speak English, while Canada is right next door to the US.
Most European countries benefit from being in the EU, and plenty of places have tax treaties with the US.
What makes the UK stand out is that it performs well on all of these measures in combination, while being large enough to matter. Were it a 51st state, the UK would be the US’s largest in population terms, which at 67 million people in 2024 falls just short of the combined population of California and Texas.
Other countries in the Anglosphere, while sharing many of the UK's strengths and its cultural affinity for the US, are behind because of population and geography.
Australia's population is 26 million, New Zealand has just over 5 million while Canada's is 39 million. Combined, they're barely as big as the UK.
Australia, New Zealand and Canada all have very geographically dispersed populations, which means they suffer from higher shipping rates (carriers often levy 'remote surcharges').
Australia and New Zealand also suffer from being extremely remote from everyone else. You may think of the Antipodes as being regionally close to places like South-East Asia and Japan. But the distance from Sydney to Singapore, for example, is about the same as London to Chicago. Sydney to Tokyo is similar to London to Houston. Realistically you won't be able to use Australia as a gateway to Asia should you be interested in trying that in future. The UK meanwhile is only a short flight away from tens of European capitals.
Population and geography aren't everything, and in time you can of course expand your operations to cover many of the world's countries. But these factors do matter immensely to smaller brands making the initial effort to sell abroad.
If you're going to do your research, create new processes in your business for handling international customers, and be on top of the reporting and tax situation, you want the biggest potential impact for each dollar you put in. If you're going to ship a load of inventory to a foreign 3PL, you want to minimise the transit time and shipping charges relative to the number of people you'll later be able to serve.
I mentioned at the beginning of the article that the UK's biggest strength, from the perspective of a US brand, needs to be seen to be appreciated.
I'm talking about British people's obsession with online shopping.
That data point for 2023 is 26.6% for the UK and 15.6% for the US. That's a huge difference - and a real boon for brands trying to cut through to reach their customers directly.
Year after year, the UK has been right up there when it comes to the adoption of online shopping. Part of this might ultimately be down to geography and the lower shipping charges I mentioned earlier, which act as a low barrier for customers weighing up online purchasing versus a visit to the shops. It's normal to get items you've ordered online delivered in a day or two, even without using Amazon Prime.
I wonder if this chart might also have something to do with the layout of US and UK towns and cities. Anecdotally I've noticed a lot of 'out of town' shopping locations in the US - large stores to which you drive and load up. Whereas there are still plenty of High Streets ('Main Streets') in the UK where people might go for more 'discovery' shopping.
We have the large retail parks too but if I'm right and they're less common than in the US, perhaps this encourages us to purchase larger items online.
Or perhaps Americans just love getting in their cars that much more. In the UK it seems we prefer to thumb a screen.
