Import apparel and accessories
from Europe to Canada

The buying model changed and it changed in your favour. Wholesale marketplaces — Ankorstore, Orderchamp, Faire's European catalogue — put thousands of European brands behind one login with minimums a small boutique can meet, which is a different world from the days of trade fairs and territory-wide minimums. Alongside them sit the stock and multibrand distributors such as Brandsdistribution and BigBuy, useful for branded overstock rather than current season, and the manufacturing regions that still matter: knitwear and footwear in northern Portugal, leather and tailoring in Italy, and the Spanish supply base around Galicia and the Valencia region.

The consequence for a buyer is a many-suppliers, small-order pattern, which is exactly where a European address earns its keep. Twelve brands shipping to twelve destinations is twelve freight bills; twelve brands shipping to one address in Spain, Italy, France, Germany or Portugal is one consolidated shipment with one set of documents. It also lets you order the way the platforms are designed to be ordered — small, frequent, reactive to what actually sells — instead of forcing every buy into a container-sized decision.

Two facts decide most of the cost. First, the de minimis that applies to European shipments is CAD 20, not the CAD 150 duty / CAD 40 tax figures that dominate search results — those come from CUSMA and cover courier shipments from the United States and Mexico. Using them to cost a European import is the single most common planning error we see. Second, and much more useful, CETA means goods of genuine EU origin can enter at 0% duty when the exporter includes the CETA origin declaration on the invoice. Without that declaration your broker falls back to MFN — roughly 16–18% on clothing, 16–20% on footwear, 8–11% on leather goods, and usually 0% on electronics and cosmetics — so the declaration is worth more than any freight negotiation you will have this year.

On tax, GST is 5% federally with provincial sales tax on top depending on the province of the importer, so the combined rate lands between 5% and 15%. GST/HST registrants generally recover import GST as an input tax credit. To import commercially you need a Business Number with an import/export (RM) account, and a customs broker is normal practice. We handle the European side: consolidation, commercial invoice, packing list, and chasing your suppliers for the CETA origin wording before the goods move.

Apparel is the category where customs treatment hits hardest, and where doing the paperwork properly pays best. Textile duty rates are among the highest in most tariff schedules — think roughly 12% into the UK on cotton garments and 16–18% into Canada — which makes preferential origin the single most valuable document in your file. Where an agreement exists between the EU and your market (the TCA for the UK, CETA for Canada, the EU agreements covering Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Israel), genuine EU-origin goods can enter at a preferential rate when the supplier issues the origin declaration. That is why we chase suppliers for origin wording during intake instead of treating it as an afterthought: on a textile order it is often worth more than the entire freight cost.

The second thing to plan is labelling. Selling apparel in your market usually means meeting local rules on fibre composition, care instructions, country of origin and the language they appear in. European labels are not automatically compliant elsewhere, and relabelling is far cheaper decided before an order than discovered after it lands. Operationally, apparel is light but bulky, so shipments price on volumetric weight — folded flat-pack goods consolidate well, hanging garments and footwear boxes do not. Tell us the format when you order and we will pack to reduce volume rather than simply boxing what arrives.