Businesswoman’s shop tangled up in Brexit red tape
A BUSINESSWOMAN has stopped selling goods to customers in EU countries because Brexit has made it much more complicated to do so.
Sally Stephenson, whose Pencil Case shop in Cowbridge sells stationery items and school uniforms, has announced that from this week she will only sell items online to people resident in the UK.
After a career in corporate marketing, Ms Stephenson fulfilled a dream by setting up her own business in 2014.
The shop she took over also sold school uniforms, so she decided to sell them too, supplying clothing to the local comprehensive and 11 primary schools.
Everything was going well until the UK left the European single market and customs union at the beginning of 2021.
It became more difficult to import goods from France and Germany, because suppliers insisted that, as a result of the need to engage in postBrexit form-filling that had previously been unnecessary, Ms Stephenson would have to buy a larger quantity of items in each consignment.
Now, having increased the proportion of goods sold by her shop online during the pandemic from between 3% and 4% to about 33%, she has reached the conclusion that the bureaucracy just isn’t worth the hassle.
In a message sent to customers in the EU, Ms Stephenson wrote: “Unfortunately we are no longer able to deliver outside of the UK because the new export rules postBrexit are too complicated and costly for a small business like ours to manage.
“If we didn’t go through all the new processes and just sent the parcel out as normal, the customer would have to pay local import duties and taxes before the parcel could be handed over.
“We have no idea what that cost would be in each country, so we are unable to advise during the [online] checkout process.
“I don’t want our customers to have any nasty surprises when the delivery arrives – and they could refuse to accept the parcel and send it back to us.
“We set up the website to allow international customers to place orders with us for ‘click and collect’ only, as a few of our local customers have family abroad who like to buy gifts online for them to collect.
“I’m really sorry about this – it’s a direct result of the UK Government choosing to leave the EU’s single market and customs union – something that I campaigned long and hard against.”
Bridgend-based Daniel Lambert, one of Wales’ largest wholesale wine importers, tweeted his support for Ms Stephenson, stating: “This is something that everyone should be worried about. Why, you ask? Because this damage to exports is costing the UK economy billions.
“I have managed to export, but it is very expensive and complicated when it should be straightforward.”
Ms Stephenson told us: “Before we came out of the single market and customs union, I could pack up goods and send them from the post office in Cowbridge without any worry. It was as simple as that.
“Now it’s a complete nightmare. “I looked at the details of the export regulations on the Royal Mail website, and it was so complicated that after reading a few paragraphs I decided it wasn’t for us.
“Mine is a small business which consists of me, someone who runs the shop four days a week and a part-time employee who works for one day.
“We’re a workforce of just two full-time equivalent employees, and there’s too much to do to get bogged down with these post-Brexit regulations.
“I could send parcels off to EU countries and let the customers have to pay the person who delivers them, saying it’s their problem, but that’s not the sort of company I want to run.”
Ms Stephenson said she had raised the issue with her local Conservative MP Alun Cairns: “He seems to be in denial about the implications of Brexit and leaving the single market and customs union.
“He’s not been prepared to acknowledge that the problem I have outlined to him exists.”
Mr Cairns did not respond to a message we left for him.