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Vicki Damgård-Schmidt started her webshop Dekoria.dk as a hobby in 2010. This is where she sold custom size curtains and other home decor accessories. Vicky’s insight and the knowledge about this particularly strong niche market turned her business into a huge success. She launched her webshop in Norway after no more than a year as a webshop owner. This abrupt success made it possible for her go from being a full time employee to being a full time entrepreneur.
Today she says that she’s made twice as much money in Norway as through her Danish webshop. She believes she’s cracked the code for success on the Norwegian market and she’s gladly sharing her valuable experience in this blog post.
A strong market
Vicki has some family in Norway and therefore insight into the Norwegian e-commerce market. This insight was the foundation for Decoria’s decision that Norway should be the first country to expanded to:
I saw a market which was hungry for more online shops. The offer for online shopping in Norway is scarce and this was the potential I wanted to take advantage of, says Vicki.
At the same time, Norway is a rich country, meaning that Norwegians have a high purchasing power. Because of Norway not being a part of the European customs union, there isn’t very high competition from international webshops. This makes Norway a very attractive market.
A trustworthy company profile
However, the above-mentioned is obviously not enough. Vicki is giving three good pieces of advice, which have helped her webshop in becoming a success in Norway.
The first two are concerning your webshop credibility.
A Norwegian domain gives your brand more credibility with the customer, and having a Norwegian address gives them peace of mind when doing business with you. I’ve had good experience with not translating my webshop to Norwegian from the beginning. The languages are quite similar, Denmark has generally a good reputation in Norway, and Danish design is well known in Norway as well, says Vicki.
The process of getting a .no domain is more complex than getting a .dk or a .com domain and it’s something you have to apply for. Having a company and an address registered in Norway is a requirement as well.
Another option for obtaining a Norwegian domain more quickly is to use a local agent service in Norway. We at Shipmondo have good experience with 1-domain.
Minimal customs clearance: A collective invoice
Convenience is the focal point of the buying experience, when the Norwegians shop at Dekoria’s webshop.
It’s all about making it convenient for the customer. Therefore I do the customs clearance for the customers myself, says Vicki.
Dekoria is using their own shipping agreement with GLS through Shipmondo’s platform and this is the case for their shipments to Norway as well. They usually send a large shipment or a pallet to Norway, which then gets split up in Oslo and dispatched from there. GLS has weekly pick ups at Dekoria. This means that they only need to go through customs clearance once a week, thus cutting down the costs of shipping to Norway significantly.
Transporting goods by pallet this way is also called a bulk shipment or bulk split. This type of shipments require a single consolidated invoice for each customs clearance/pallet. The advantage of using consolidated invoice is that the entire batch is being cleared at once, thus reducing the customs clearance handling costs.
Companies with smaller shipping volumes in Norway can easily get started by registering under the VOEC scheme. Then you can send single shipments without dealing with customs. Read more about the new VAT rules for export to Norway, in effect from 1 April 2020, and the benefits of registration under the VOEC scheme. This will surely make it easier to sell to the Norwegians.
