Quick answer: You do not need a second Shopify store to sell abroad. Shopify Markets adds local currency, local pricing, translated content, and duties at checkout to the store you already have. Build one parent market per region and use submarkets for each country so settings inherit instead of duplicating. Collect duties at checkout (DDP) and ship on a DDP label, or your buyer gets charged twice. A separate store only wins when you need a different catalog, a separate legal entity, or separate inventory pools.
Most brands open a second Shopify store for international sales. Then they spend the next year regretting it.
Two stores means two catalogs. Two inventory counts. Two app bills. Two theme updates. And two sets of reports that never agree.
Meanwhile, the real reason international orders fail has nothing to do with store count. It is landed cost. A buyer in London sees $60 at checkout. Then a $19 customs bill shows up at the door. She refuses the parcel.
Shopify Markets fixes that inside your existing store. This guide covers how to set it up. What duties and DDP really require. How to price per country. And the three cases where a separate store does win.
What Is Shopify Markets, In Plain English?
Shopify Markets is a setting inside your current store that lets you sell to other countries without cloning anything.
One store. One product catalog. One inventory pool. One admin.
Each “market” you create controls what buyers in that region see:
- Currency they are charged in
- Prices for that country, set as a percent or a fixed number
- Language on the storefront
- Domain or subfolder for that region
- Duties and import taxes shown at checkout
- Which products are available there
You do not duplicate anything. You add a layer on top of what you already have.
Why This Beats The Second Store
Here is the honest cost of running two stores:
| What you manage | One store with Markets | Two separate stores |
|---|---|---|
| Product catalog | 1 | 2, kept in sync manually |
| Inventory | 1 shared pool | 2 pools, oversell risk |
| App subscriptions | 1 set | 2 sets, roughly double |
| Theme updates | Once | Twice, every time |
| Customer data | Unified profiles | Split, breaks retention flows |
| Reporting | One source of truth | Two exports, one spreadsheet |
The hidden killer is the app bill. Most scaling Shopify brands run 15 to 25 paid apps. Clone the store and you clone that spend. Before you go near a second store, run a Shopify app stack audit on the one you have.
How Should You Structure Markets And Submarkets?
This is the piece most guides miss, and it changes how much work you sign up for.
Shopify used to treat a market as just a list of countries. Not anymore. You now build a parent market and hang submarkets underneath it.
Here is the rule that matters. A submarket inherits everything from its parent by default. You only override what actually differs.
A worked structure for a US brand going into Europe:
- Parent market: Europe. Set the theme layout, the product catalog, the language, and the base pricing rule once.
- Submarket: Germany. Inherits all of it. You override currency to EUR and add Klarna.
- Submarket: Netherlands. Inherits all of it. You override to add iDEAL.
- Submarket: France. Inherits all of it. You override the language to French.
Compare that to four separate top-level markets. Four theme setups. Four catalog assignments. Four sets of pricing rules to keep in sync. Same result, four times the maintenance.
Backup region. Shopify uses this to decide what a buyer sees when they do not match any market you built. Set it deliberately. Most brands leave it on default and never look, then wonder why a buyer in Chile saw a broken price.
Catalogs. A catalog is the set of products plus custom pricing you assign to a market. This is how you hide a SKU from one country without deleting it. Restricted ingredients, licensing limits, or stock you simply do not want to ship 6,000 miles.
Per-market theme layout. You can pick a market inside the theme customizer and rearrange sections just for that region. Different hero, different bestsellers, different trust badges.
One warning. Keep the two jobs separate. Use a translation app for text and images. Use the theme customizer for layout and structure only. Mix them and nobody on your team will know where a string lives six months from now.
Why Do International Orders Actually Fail?
Not because of language. Not because of currency. Because of surprise money.
Three things break cross-border checkouts:
- Unexpected duties on delivery. The buyer paid you. Then the carrier asks for more. Refusal rates spike.
- Prices that look weird. A converted price of £47.83 reads like an import, not a brand.
- Payment methods that do not exist locally. Cards are not the default everywhere.
Everything below is aimed at those three problems.
What The Data Actually Says (And Who Paid For It)
You will see big conversion numbers quoted across every guide on this topic. Local currency lifts conversion by X. Y percent of shoppers abandon foreign-currency carts.
Here is the part nobody mentions: almost all of those figures come from research Shopify commissioned itself, or from case studies Shopify published about its own merchants. Shopify’s international sales figures, for example, are based on a sample of 567 brands in research it commissioned from EY.
That does not make them false. It does mean they are vendor-sourced, measure self-selected brands that already chose to expand, and should not be used as a forecast for your store.
What to do instead: treat your own analytics as the only reliable number. Sessions by country. Failed checkouts by shipping country. Add-to-cart rate from non-US traffic. That data is small, but it is yours, and it is not selling you anything.
The BORDER Framework For Cross-Border Setup
We use a six-step order so nothing gets missed. The order matters. Jumping to pricing before your catalog data is clean is the most common failure we see.
B – Bracket your markets. Pick 2 or 3 countries. Not 40. O – Own the landed cost. Decide DDP or DAP per country. R – Reprice per market. Currency, rounding, and margin adjustments. D – Document the catalog. HS codes and country of origin on every SKU. E – Establish local trust. Domain, language, payment methods, hreflang. R – Read the margin monthly. Per-country contribution margin, not blended.
Let us walk through each one.
B: How Do You Pick Which Countries To Sell To?
Do not open every country Shopify offers. Open the ones already knocking.
Where to look:
- Google Analytics sessions by country, filtered to product pages
- Failed checkouts by shipping country
- Customer service tickets asking “do you ship to…”
- Organic search impressions from non-US locations
- Instagram or TikTok follower geography
Pick the top 2 or 3. For most US D2C brands that means Canada, the UK, and Australia. Same language. Good spending power. Shipping lanes that already work.
Rule of thumb: a country needs enough demand that you would put a person on it weekly. If nobody will own it, do not open it.
O: How Do Duties And DDP Actually Work?
Most guides skip this part. It is the part that decides whether your international orders stick.
DDP vs DAP In One Line Each
DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) means you take on the import costs. That covers duties, import taxes, and broker fees. You collect that money at checkout. The buyer sees one total price. Parcels move faster.
DAP (Delivered At Place) means you only cover shipping. The buyer pays import costs to the carrier at the door. Some carriers add a collection fee on top.
For consumer brands, DDP wins almost every time. DAP is how you get refused parcels and one-star reviews.
What Shopify Needs Before It Can Calculate Duties
Shopify sets three rules to collect duties at checkout. Your carrier must support DDP labels. Your store must not use Shopify Fulfillment Network. And your products must have HS codes.
HS codes are required on all international orders. No HS code? Shopify falls back to the product description and category. No description or category either? Duties are not calculated at all. Even if you turned the setting on.
That last part is the trap. The setting looks active. The math just does not run.
The Carrier Constraint Nobody Warns You About
Buy labels through Shopify’s own carrier accounts and only four carriers print DDP labels. Canada Post (US destinations only), DHL Express, DHL Express Canada, and DHL eCommerce.
Pick any other carrier on an order where you collected duties and Shopify will not sell you the label. You buy it outside Shopify, or you refund the order.
So answer one question before you flip the switch. Can my carrier print a DDP label to this country? If not, your setup breaks at fulfillment, not checkout.
One more trap. Collect duties at checkout, then ship on a standard label, and your customer gets charged duties again at the door. Double charged. That is a refund and a lost customer.
De Minimis: The Threshold That Changes Everything
De minimis is the order value below which duties do not apply. Every country sets its own.
Shopify’s own examples show how wide the range is. Canada sits at $20 CAD. Mexico is $50 USD for duty and $117 USD for tax. Australia is 1,000 AUD for duty and 0 AUD for tax. Japan is 10,000 JPY. Switzerland is 5 CHF.
There is a special rule for Canada too. Goods shipped there from the US face duties at $150 CAD or more, and import taxes at $40 CAD or more.
Two thresholds matter most for US brands:
- European Union: VAT applies on orders at or under €150 EUR. Above €150, import VAT and duties both apply.
- United Kingdom: VAT applies on orders at or under £135 GBP if you have entered a UK tax registration. Above £135, import VAT and duties both apply.
Low-value goods taxes apply in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, the EU, and the UK. You usually remit them through a tax return. You need to register. Shopify does not do that for you unless you use Managed Markets.
One more thing US brands keep missing. Since August 29, 2025, de minimis no longer applies to shipments into the United States. Duties and import taxes hit all US imports, whatever the value. If any part of your supply chain ships into the US from overseas, that cost is now yours to model.
A Fee Note Worth Reading Twice
Shopify charges a fee to calculate duties and import taxes. On February 2, 2025, that fee dropped to 0.5% for all merchants. It applies no matter which payment provider you use.
Temporary means check it. Never build a margin model on a promo rate.
R: How Should You Price For Each Market?
Straight currency conversion is the lazy option. It also quietly eats your margin.
How Shopify Builds The Displayed Price
The math is simple. Take the product price. Multiply by the conversion rate. Add the currency fee. Then round.
Shopify’s example: a $10.00 USD product at a 0.867519 rate, plus 1.5%, lands at €8.81. Turn rounding on and the buyer pays €8.90.
That currency fee is 1.5% or 2%. Which one depends on where your store is based. It hits every transaction.
Your Three Pricing Levers
Dynamic rates use the current market rate. The conversion fee is baked into the price the buyer sees.
Manual rates let you lock the exchange rate yourself. The fee comes out of your payout instead.
Rounding cleans up the endings. Prices land on clean numbers instead of $10.27.
Then layer on price adjustments. Take a $20.00 USD product. A manual rate of 1.3 plus a 20% bump lands at 32.00 CAD. A rate of 1 plus a 50% bump lands at 30.00 CAD.
How we actually set this:
- Use manual rates in volatile currencies so your prices stop jumping week to week
- Use price adjustments to cover shipping and duty gaps, not blanket markups
- Turn rounding on everywhere, always
- Set fixed international prices on your hero SKUs, where a clean price point matters most
Know your real floor before you touch any of it. Read our breakdown of contribution margin for ecommerce and cost per order. A market can look great on revenue and lose money on every single unit.
Worked Example: A US Skincare Brand Shipping To The UK
Assume a $60 USD product, $22 landed product cost, shipping to the UK.
| Line item | Amount (USD) |
|---|---|
| Product price shown to UK buyer | $60.00 |
| Product cost (COGS) | -$22.00 |
| International shipping | -$14.00 |
| Payment processing at 2.9% + $0.30 | -$2.04 |
| Currency conversion fee at 1.5% | -$0.90 |
| Duties calculation fee at 0.5% | -$0.30 |
| Contribution margin | $20.76 |
| Margin % | 34.6% |
That is before ad spend. At a $25 international CAC, the order loses $4.24.
Now apply a 15% UK price adjustment. Price becomes $69, and the percentage-based fees rise slightly:
| Line item | Amount (USD) |
|---|---|
| Adjusted price | $69.00 |
| COGS | -$22.00 |
| Shipping | -$14.00 |
| Processing at 2.9% + $0.30 | -$2.30 |
| Currency conversion at 1.5% | -$1.04 |
| Duties calculation at 0.5% | -$0.35 |
| Contribution margin | $29.31 |
| Margin % | 42.5% |
At the same $25 CAC, the order now makes $4.31. That 15% bump is the line between a market that pays for itself and one that quietly drains cash.
Note: UK VAT is charged on top and passed on. It is not margin either way. But you are legally on the hook to file it.
D: Why HS Codes Decide Whether Any Of This Works
This is the boring step that breaks everything downstream.
Every SKU needs two data points:
- HS code (the product classification customs uses)
- Country of origin (where it was made, not where you ship from)
Customs duty is built from five inputs. The declared value and shipping cost. The product category, set by the HS code. The country of origin. The destination country’s tariff rates. And any trade treaties that apply.
Here is the key part. A tariff is decided by the product and where it was made. Not by where you sit. A US brand selling a product manufactured in Vietnam is treated as importing from Vietnam.
Trade treaties like USMCA and the EU-UK agreement can lower or remove duties. Shopify includes them by default. But customs may ask for a certificate of origin to prove it.
Messy catalog data? Fix it before you open a market. Our guides on catalog enrichment and SKU management for multi-channel sellers cover the cleanup.
The practical sequence:
- Export your product CSV
- Add HS codes in bulk, at least to 6 digits
- Set country of origin per SKU, not per store
- Set a default country of origin as a safety net
- Spot check 10 SKUs against your supplier invoices
- Re-import and confirm zero blanks
E: How Do You Make A Market Feel Local?
Currency is table stakes. Trust is the actual conversion lever.
Domain structure. This is the one place we disagree with most guides on the topic.
The common advice is one domain per country, like myshop.de and myshop.fr, because each can rank on its own. That is true. It is also the reason it usually fails for a growing brand.
A new ccTLD starts at zero. Zero backlinks, zero history, zero trust. You are not splitting your authority so much as starting from scratch four times, and then paying to build links into each one.
Subfolders like yourstore.com/en-gb keep every link you have ever earned working for every market. Google handles geotargeting through hreflang, not through the domain.
Our line: subfolders for almost every brand under $20M. Consider country domains only when you have a local team that will actively build links and PR in that country. If nobody is doing local link building, a ccTLD is a liability, not an asset.
Hreflang tags. Get these wrong and Google shows UK buyers your US pages. Or worse, treats them as duplicates. This is a real traffic leak. Our guide to hreflang SEO walks through the fix.
Language. Translate your top 20 pages properly. Raw machine translation on a checkout page reads like a scam site.
Local payment methods. iDEAL in the Netherlands. Klarna across Europe. Interac in Canada. Cards alone leave money on the table.
Shipping promises you can keep. “7 to 12 business days” beats “fast international shipping” every time. Vague promises create tickets. International tickets are expensive. Our post on customer support KPIs shows which ones to watch.
Returns policy that names a country. Buyers want to know where the parcel goes back to before they buy. Not after. Start with our ecommerce returns management framework.
What Country-Specific Rules Will Break Your Checkout?
Two traps here. Both stop orders cold, and neither shows up in a setup tutorial.
Trap 1: No Shipping Rate Means No Checkout
If a market has no valid shipping rate set for it, buyers in that region cannot complete checkout at all. Not a higher abandon rate. A hard stop.
Activating a market and configuring its shipping zone are two separate jobs. People do the first and forget the second, then assume the market is just not converting.
Check it yourself. Add a product to cart with a test address in that country and try to reach the payment step.
Trap 2: Countries That Demand Extra Buyer Data
Some countries will not clear customs without an identifier from the buyer. Shopify collects these natively at checkout, so you do not need a custom build.
| Country | Field required | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil | CPF or CNPJ number | Customs and shipping labels |
| China | Resident ID number | Shipping labels |
| South Korea | Personal Customs Clearance Code (PCCC) | Shipping labels |
| Italy | Codice Fiscale and PEC | Invoices |
The mistake to avoid: if you already hacked your checkout to collect these, remove that customization. Shopify’s native field plus your custom field means the buyer types the same number twice. That is a conversion killer on a page where you can least afford one.
Shopify also has more of these fields in early access by request. If you are opening a market not listed above, ask support before you assume you need a developer.
R: What Should You Review Every Month?
Blended reporting hides dying markets. Track these per country:
- Contribution margin per order
- Refused or undelivered parcel rate
- Return rate against domestic
- Support tickets per 100 orders
- Duty collected against duty invoiced by the carrier
- CAC, measured separately per market
Shopify says to do one check in particular. When your first carrier invoice lands, compare what you charged at checkout against what customs actually charged. Then repeat that check every so often.
Most brands never do this. Then they find a 4% margin leak six months in.
Kill rule: if a market cannot turn a positive margin in 90 days on real orders, close it. Move the attention elsewhere. Two profitable countries beat nine break-even ones.
When Does A Separate Store Actually Beat Markets?
Markets is right for most brands. But not all. Here is the honest counter-case.
Use A Separate Store When:
You need a truly different catalog. Not different prices. Different products. Different brand names. Different formulas. Cosmetics and supplement brands hit this all the time, because ingredient rules change by region.
You need a separate legal entity. A local company with its own tax number, bank account, and books. Your accountant will push for a clean split. They are usually right.
Inventory must be truly separate. Markets shares one inventory pool. Sell out, and every market shows out of stock at the same moment. If you run regional warehouses with their own stock, that shared pool is a real problem.
You license the region to someone else. A different operator runs it. Different team. Different P&L. Different store.
Stay On Markets When:
- Same products, different prices
- Same team running both
- One inventory pool, or a 3PL that handles both
- You want unified customer data and retention flows
- You are testing a country before committing
The test: is the only difference price, currency, and language? Then you do not need a second store. Is the difference catalog, entity, or inventory? Then you probably do.
If you are already weighing a platform move alongside expansion, our Shopify Plus migration checklist covers what changes at that tier.
Should You Use Managed Markets Instead?
Shopify offers a managed version where a third party becomes your merchant of record.
Managed Markets runs on Global-e. Global-e becomes your merchant of record. They handle duties, tax filing, commercial invoices, and carrier setup. Support still runs through Shopify, not Global-e.
A merchant of record is the company legally selling to the customer. It has to follow local law.
Act as your own, and you handle everything. Tax registration. Tax filing. Local payment methods. Fulfillment.
That is the trade. You give up margin. You lose the tax registration headache.
Shopify’s own example uses a 3.25% Managed Markets fee and a 1.5% currency fee. A $249.53 USD subtotal becomes £185 GBP after rounding. Outside estimates of the all-in cost run higher, and they vary a lot. Check the current Shopify international pricing page before you model anything.
Worth knowing: B2B orders are not compatible with Managed Markets.
Rough guide:
- Under 200 international orders a month: Managed Markets usually wins. Tax registration overhead is not worth it yet.
- Over 500 international orders a month, concentrated in 2 or 3 countries: self-managed usually wins. Register in those countries and keep the percentage.
- In between: run the math on your actual mix. There is no universal answer.
What Does A Realistic Rollout Look Like?
Not a big bang. A sequence.
Weeks 1 to 2: Data cleanup
- HS codes on every SKU
- Country of origin on every SKU
- Confirm carrier supports DDP to your target countries
- Audit product-level margin
Weeks 3 to 4: One market live
- Create the market, set currency and rounding
- Set price adjustments to protect margin
- Turn on duties at checkout
- Update shipping, returns, and tax policies
- Place three real test orders yourself
Weeks 5 to 8: Localize and measure
- Translate top 20 pages
- Add hreflang
- Add local payment methods
- Compare duty collected against the first carrier invoice
- Review per-market contribution margin
Week 9 onward: Expand or kill
- Positive margin and clean fulfillment? Open market two.
- Not there? Fix or close before adding complexity.
Also sell on marketplaces? Line this up against our Amazon global selling guide so the two channels do not fight for the same stock. Then keep your feeds clean with our Google Shopping feed optimization checklist. Country feeds need the same HS and origin data.
What Usually Goes Wrong?
From the rollouts we have run, in order of frequency:
- HS codes missing on half the catalog. Duties silently do not calculate.
- Duties collected, standard label shipped. Buyer pays twice.
- Straight conversion with no price adjustment. Market sells, brand loses money.
- Every country opened at once. Nobody owns any of them.
- No hreflang. Google serves the wrong version and rankings dilute.
- Returns policy not localized. Support drowns in “where do I send it” tickets.
- Blended reporting. A losing market hides inside a winning average.
- Market activated, shipping zone never set. Checkout is dead and nobody notices for weeks.
- Four top-level markets instead of one parent plus submarkets. Four times the upkeep for the same outcome.
- Custom checkout fields left in place. Brazilian buyers type their CPF twice and leave.
Every one of these is an operations problem. Not a platform problem. Shopify Markets works fine. Execution is what breaks.
Who Should Own This Internally?
Cross-border work touches catalog, finance, fulfillment, support, and SEO. That is why it stalls.
The work that needs a real owner:
- Catalog data (HS codes, origin, translations)
- Pricing rules and margin monitoring per market
- Carrier and DDP label management
- Tax registration tracking and filing calendars
- Localized support and returns handling
Most scaling brands do not have five spare people. That is the gap a dedicated ecommerce team fills better than a rotating agency. Cross-border work is ongoing upkeep, not a project with an end date. Our comparison of a dedicated team versus an agency lays out the trade-offs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a separate Shopify store to sell internationally?
No. Shopify Markets lets you sell to other countries from your existing store with local currency, local pricing, translated content, and duties collected at checkout. A separate store is only worth it in three cases. A truly different catalog, a separate legal entity, or separate inventory pools.
What is the difference between DDP and DAP on Shopify?
DDP means you take on import duties and taxes and collect them at checkout. The buyer sees one total price. DAP means the buyer pays the carrier at the door, often with an added fee. DDP causes fewer refused parcels. It is the better default for consumer brands.
Does Shopify charge a fee for calculating duties?
Yes. Shopify charges a fee to calculate duties and import taxes at checkout. On February 2, 2025, that fee dropped to 0.5% for all merchants. It applies whatever payment provider you use. The rate is temporary, so check the current one before you build a margin model.
Do I need HS codes to sell internationally on Shopify?
Yes. HS codes are required on all international orders. Without one, Shopify falls back to the product description and category. With no HS code, description, or category, duties are not calculated at all. That holds true even when the setting is switched on for that country.
What is the de minimis threshold and why does it matter?
De minimis is the order value below which a country charges no duties or import taxes. It varies a lot. The EU applies VAT on orders at or under €150 EUR. The UK applies VAT on orders at or under £135 GBP. Since August 29, 2025, de minimis no longer applies to shipments into the United States. Duties now apply to US imports at any value.
Should I use Shopify Managed Markets or manage it myself?
Managed Markets makes Global-e your merchant of record. They handle tax filing, duties, and customs paperwork for a fee. It usually wins under roughly 200 international orders a month. Above that, with volume in two or three countries, registering for tax yourself and keeping the fee usually wins. Note that B2B orders do not work with Managed Markets.
How do I stop currency conversion from destroying my margin?
Use manual exchange rates to steady your prices. Add per-market price adjustments to cover shipping and duty costs. Turn rounding on. Shopify’s currency fee is 1.5% or 2%, based on your store’s location. Build that into your margin per market instead of tracking one blended number.
What are submarkets in Shopify Markets?
A submarket sits inside a parent market and inherits its settings by default. Build a Europe parent market with your theme, catalog, and pricing rules, then add Germany, France, and Netherlands as submarkets. Each one only needs the settings that actually differ, like currency or a local payment method. It is far less upkeep than four separate top-level markets.
Why can’t customers in my new market check out?
The most common cause is a missing shipping rate. Activating a market and setting up its shipping zone are two separate steps. Without a valid rate for that region, buyers cannot complete checkout at all. Test it by adding a product to cart with an address in that country and trying to reach the payment step.
Do some countries require extra information at checkout?
Yes. Brazil requires a CPF or CNPJ number, China requires a resident ID, South Korea requires a Personal Customs Clearance Code, and Italy requires a Codice Fiscale and PEC. Shopify collects these natively. If you previously customized your checkout to capture them, remove that customization or buyers will be asked for the same number twice.
Should I use country domains or subfolders for international SEO?
For most brands under $20M, subfolders like yourstore.com/en-gb are the better call. A new country domain starts with no backlinks and no history, so you rebuild authority from zero in every market. Subfolders keep every link you have earned working across all markets, and Google handles geotargeting through hreflang. Country domains only pay off when you have a local team building links and PR in that country.
The Bottom Line
You almost certainly do not need a second Shopify store. You need clean HS codes. A DDP call for each country. Prices that protect margin. And one person watching per-market margin every month.
Start with one country. Get it profitable. Then add the next.
Ready to expand without adding operational chaos? AcquireX builds dedicated offshore teams that own cross-border work end to end. That covers catalog management and HS code cleanup. It covers marketplace management and performance marketing in each new market. Not a vendor you manage. A team that runs it.
