Every brand that tells me they are planning to launch in Australia has the same conversation with me. They have seen the revenue projection. It looks reasonable. They have an existing product catalog that requires no modification. They are already shipping to the UK. How different can Australia be?
Very different. And the revenue is rarely worth the setup cost unless you go in knowing exactly what you are doing.
What makes it hard
Start with the market size. Australia has about 26 million people. The UK has about 67 million. The US has 340 million. Amazon Australia launched in 2017 and has been growing, but it remains a fraction of the scale of US and UK marketplaces. The revenue ceiling for most product categories is genuinely lower, not just proportional to population but constrained by lower Amazon Australia market share compared to local alternatives like eBay and local retailers.
Shipping time expectations create a secondary constraint. Australian customers have historically tolerated slower shipping because the country is geographically enormous and alternatives are limited. But the baseline expectation for Prime delivery in Australia is different than the US. FBA in Australia requires inventory in Australian fulfillment centers to achieve Prime badge status. That means physically moving stock to Australia. For heavy or oversized products, the freight cost to Australia from the US or UK is significant and directly eats into margin on every unit sold.
GST registration adds an administrative requirement. Australia's Goods and Services Tax is 10% and requires registration and periodic filing. Amazon collects and remits GST on third-party marketplace sales in most cases, but the specifics depend on your business structure and where you are incorporated. Get advice before you launch, not after you have already started selling.
The FBA mess problem
The Our Place Australia FBA operation was described as "still a mess" as of Prime Day 2025, meaning it was unable to reliably create inbound shipments. This is more common than people expect. Australia Amazon FBA accounts have their own supply limit structures, their own account health metrics, and their own inventory classification rules. These do not inherit from your US or UK account. A brand with a well-established US FBA relationship starts from zero in Australia. Supply limits are conservative. Account history does not exist.
For Our Place, which was managing 7 to 8 warehouses globally and executing a complex Prime Day operation simultaneously, the Australia setup was consistently deprioritized because the operational bandwidth required to set it up properly competed with US Prime Day preparation. That is the right call for a $200M business with a $2.3M first-hour Prime Day in the US. But it illustrates the tradeoff: Australia requires dedicated attention that most operations teams do not have available when they are managing a more valuable marketplace at the same time.
What "properly" looks like
Doing Australia properly requires a few things that most half-implementations skip.
Dedicated inventory allocation. You cannot put Australia on automatic. Someone needs to own the inventory position in Australian FBA specifically, with visibility into on-hand stock, open inbound shipments, and days of supply by SKU. This is a separate task from US inventory management, not an extension of it.
AU-specific listing content. Australian consumer language differs from US language in ways that matter for conversion. Unit measurements (metric, not imperial), electrical standards (240V/50Hz, which matters for appliances), and regulatory language all need to be adapted. Copying US listings into an Australian catalog is a way to generate returns.
GST registration and compliance. Sorted before launch, not retrofitted.
A realistic volume target. Before committing to a full AU launch, model the expected monthly revenue based on competitor ASINs in your category on Amazon Australia. If the number is below $10,000 per month at a realistic market share, the operational overhead of maintaining a separate marketplace with dedicated inventory and compliance requirements probably does not justify it.
When the math works
The math works when you have an oversized or heavy product that ships economically from an Asia-Pacific manufacturing base, meaning you are not paying double freight to ship from the US to Australia. It works when your product category has demonstrated meaningful demand on Amazon Australia, which you can verify by looking at competitor BSR data and review velocity. It works when you have a team member who can own the marketplace without taking time away from US operations.
It also works as a tariff mitigation play. When US tariffs hit a product category, Australia and EU expansion can absorb revenue while the supply chain restructures. In that context, the bar for Australia launch lowers because the opportunity cost of not launching is higher.
For most brands in most situations, Australia is the fourth or fifth marketplace expansion, not the second. Get the UK right first. Then think about Australia.
