www.electragolf.co.uk, Amazon and eBay

We wrote last summer about how we will move all our product lines to be available exclusively on our own website rather than third-party reseller sites like Amazon and eBay. 

Our explanation was the increasing costs and compliance made these uneconomic platforms, even if we accounted for their 15-20% fees as a marketing budget. Obviously, we aren't going to outsell Amazon, but we are able to source products they cannot, even at their scale. 

Here's the explanation why our product lines have decreased on Amazon across their European sites and will remain active on www.electragolf.co.uk:

1 - EPR - a mandatory tax on packaging and disposal costs and all items that contain batteries like GPS units and rangefinders. We've removed all lines for sale in Belgium, Italy, Netherlands and Germany and any products with batteries from all EU marketplaces.

2 - Shipping costs - increased to reflect on the EU's version of the de minimis tariff regime which are now non-compliant with Amazon's decision to monitor shipping fees. It's now not worth shipping clubs and sets into the EU.  

3 - Shipping choice - we prefer to use Royal Mail and Parcelforce, but these are now only options if Amazon does not offer its own service. Based on experience, if Amazon Shipping doesn't collect next-day Prime orders it's our fault as a Seller-Fulfilled-Prime supplier. Make that make sense?

4 - Trademarks. This is a thorny one. We sell only original and unused new golf clubs from all the major brands available from our UK + US wholesalers. We have no desire to open showrooms, ranges or fitting facilites that are requirements of these brands in the UK to submit a "brand authority" to Amazon. We are unrestricted as to what we sell on our own website and value the flexibility and non-exclusivity that has.