Pricing floor · US vs Germany
Break-even price
The list price below which a unit stops making money — worked out separately for each marketplace, because the two floors are rarely the same number.
Why the two floors diverge
Three separate mechanisms push the German floor higher than the American one, and they compound:
- VAT sits inside the price. A €30 shelf price on Amazon.de is €25.21 of revenue. The same €30 in the US is €30 of revenue. That alone moves the floor by roughly the VAT rate.
- Fulfilment costs more per unit. Cross-border European fulfilment carries higher labour and logistics costs, and since 17 April 2026 a 1.5% fuel and logistics surcharge applies on top in the German store.
- Return rates are higher. Apparel and footwear in particular return far more often in Germany than in the US. Every returned unit costs you a second fulfilment fee and a written-off cost of goods.
The trap nobody models: tier cliffs
In categories that price in whole tiers — clothing, beauty, grocery, vitamins — the floor price is not a smooth curve. It can jump.
Take Amazon.com clothing. At $20.00 the referral rate is 10%. At $20.01 it becomes 17%. Your break-even price is not "somewhere around $20" — it is a specific number either comfortably below the threshold or comfortably above it. Landing between the two is where sellers lose money without ever seeing a red number in their dashboard.
If your answer lands within a few cents of a tier threshold, move it. Either price below the cliff or well above it. The middle is the expensive place to be.