If you run a brand outside the United States and you have been putting off Amazon USA, the ground shifted underneath the question in the last eighteen months. The cheap way in is gone.
Until 2025, a lot of overseas brands tested the US market the same way: ship parcels directly to American customers, keep each shipment under $800, and let the de minimis exemption carry them past duties and formal customs entry. That route no longer exists. The exemption was suspended for Chinese goods in May 2025, extended to every other country that August, and Congress has since repealed Section 321 outright for commercial shipments effective 1 July 2027. Low-value shipments now need a customs entry and pay applicable tariffs like everything else.
The practical consequence is not that selling into the US got harder. It is that the question changed. It used to be "how do I get parcels to American buyers cheaply." It is now "who is the importer, and who is the seller of record." Those are two different roles, and neither of them is automatically you.
Three roles that keep getting confused
Almost every stuck US-entry conversation comes down to collapsing three separate roles into one.
Brand owner. You. You make the product, own the trademark, and set how it should be presented and priced.
Importer of record. The legal entity responsible to US Customs for the shipment: entry filing, duties, tariffs, and compliance with whatever agency governs your category. This party carries the liability if something is misclassified or non-compliant. Amazon will not do this. Amazon has been explicit that it does not act as importer of record for FBA inventory, at any value, from any origin.
Seller of record. Whoever actually sells to the American consumer and holds the Amazon account, collects the money, handles returns, and owns the sales tax obligations.
You can hold all three. Plenty of brands do. But holding the importer role from outside the US is the part that quietly consumes a year, because it pulls in a US entity, an EIN, a customs bond, a broker relationship, and a US address that can receive and be held responsible for goods. Customs enforcement has also tightened on who may act as importer, which has narrowed the informal workarounds that circulated a few years ago.
Route one: build the US operation yourself
Register a US entity, get an EIN, post a continuous customs bond, appoint a broker, open a US Amazon seller account, and run it. This is the route that keeps the most upside, and it is genuinely the right answer for brands with the volume to justify it.
The honest cost is not the incorporation fee. It is the calendar and the attention. You are standing up a second company in a jurisdiction whose rules you do not know, then hiring or becoming the person who runs Amazon USA day to day: listings, advertising, inventory forecasting into FBA, customer messages, returns, and whatever compliance your category attracts. Supplements, cosmetics, and anything touching skin bring FDA facility registration and labeling rules that have nothing to do with Amazon and everything to do with whether your shipment clears.
If your US revenue projection does not comfortably cover a dedicated person plus working capital tied up in inventory on another continent, this route tends to stall partway through the first year.
If you do go this way, our sister company under the same parent, Vestriva, publishes free guides on the parts that trip people up first: getting an EIN without an SSN and choosing a state.
Route two: hire an agency
An agency runs your Amazon account for a monthly fee, commonly quoted anywhere from a few thousand dollars a month for advertising-only work up to five figures for full service. You keep ownership of the account and the inventory.
This solves the operational gap. It does not solve the import gap. You are still the importer of record, still the seller of record, still the one who needs a US entity and a bond, and still the one holding inventory risk. The agency is paid whether the inventory sells or not, which is worth understanding clearly rather than treating as a criticism. It simply means the incentives are not identical to yours.
Route three: sell to a US distributor
The third route is the oldest one in trade, and it is the one overseas brands most often overlook because Amazon gets discussed as a channel rather than as a market.
You sell your goods wholesale to an American company. That company buys with its own capital, takes title to the inventory, imports it, and sells it to US consumers under its own seller account. Your transaction ends at the wholesale invoice. The importer of record question, the US entity question, the customs bond question, the sales tax question, and the returns question all move to the buyer, because they are now the buyer's problems and not yours.
This is what Karimex does. We are a subsidiary of Karimer LLC, based in Reno, Nevada. We purchase inventory outright, act as the single authorized distributor for the brand on Amazon, and run the account: listings and A+ content, FBA logistics, advertising against real profitability, MAP discipline, and enforcement against sellers who should not be on your listings. Because we own the stock, keeping your pricing stable is our margin, not a line item on an invoice to you.
The trade-off is real and worth stating plainly. You sell at wholesale, so you take a wholesale margin rather than a retail one, and you hand over day-to-day control of how the listing is run. What you get back is a US market presence that starts at a purchase order instead of a company formation, with no capital of yours sitting in a warehouse in another hemisphere.
Where the Incoterm actually decides things
One detail gets skipped in nearly every version of this conversation, and it decides who carries the import burden even when a distributor is involved.
Selling to a US buyer does not automatically make them the importer of record. That depends on the delivery terms you agree. Under EXW or FOB origin, the American buyer takes the goods at your end and imports them, which puts the importer role with them. Under DDP, you deliver duty paid, which means you are arranging import into the US and the role stays with you.
So the sentence that matters in your first email to any prospective US partner is not "do you handle import." It is "on what terms do you buy, and who is named as importer of record on the entry." A partner who cannot answer that in one line has not done it before.
What to have ready before you talk to anyone
Whichever route you pick, the same short list decides how fast the conversation moves.
- Your wholesale price list, in the currency you invoice, with minimum order quantities and lead times.
- Category compliance status. For food, supplements, and cosmetics that means FDA facility registration and US-compliant labeling. Find out before you ship, not at the port.
- Your current US footprint. Is anyone already selling your products on Amazon USA, authorized or not? Check the offer list on your own ASINs. Most brands are surprised.
- Brand Registry. If your trademark is registered in the US, enroll. If it is not, start that first, because it governs what you can enforce later.
- Which SKUs you actually want in the US. Your full catalog is rarely the right opening range. Pick the ones that travel well and price well after freight and duty.
The honest summary
The de minimis suspension removed the option of easing into the US market one small parcel at a time. What replaced it is a straightforward choice: build a US importing and selling operation, pay someone monthly to run the one you build, or sell to an American company that already has one.
None of these is universally correct. A brand with a strong US following and capital to deploy should probably build. A brand testing whether Americans want the product at all is usually better off selling wholesale to someone whose money is on the line next to theirs.
If you want to see what the third route looks like for your catalog specifically, that is the conversation we usually start with. Details of the model are on how the partnership works, and if unfamiliar sellers are already on your US listings, this piece on unauthorized sellers covers what to do about it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I sell on Amazon USA without a US company?
You can open an Amazon seller account from many countries without a US entity, using proof of residence, a local phone number, and an internationally chargeable card. The harder part is import. Amazon will not act as importer of record for your FBA inventory, so you need a US entity, a customs broker acting as consignee, or a buyer who imports on their own account.
Who is the importer of record if I sell to a US distributor?
It depends on your delivery terms, not on the fact that the buyer is American. Under EXW or FOB origin the US buyer normally imports and is named as importer of record. Under DDP you are delivering duty paid, so the role stays with you. Agree this in writing before the first shipment.
Did the end of de minimis really change anything for small shipments?
Yes. The $800 exemption is suspended indefinitely, and Section 321 is repealed for commercial shipments from 1 July 2027. Low-value parcels now require a customs entry and pay applicable tariffs, which removes the cost advantage that direct-to-consumer parcel shipping from overseas used to have.
What does a distributor pay compared with an agency?
They are not the same transaction. An agency invoices you a monthly fee and you keep the inventory risk. A distributor pays you a wholesale price for the goods and takes the inventory risk. You earn less per unit through a distributor, and you have nothing at risk if the units sit.
How many SKUs should an overseas brand launch with in the US?
Fewer than you think. A focused opening range of your strongest sellers gives cleaner data on US demand, keeps the first purchase order affordable for both sides, and avoids spreading advertising budget across products that were never going to work in the market.