Ecommerce Logistics in Italy for Foreign Brands

Online purchases in Italy are expected to exceed €66.6 billion in 2026, with 6% growth forecast over 2025 (Osservatorio eCommerce B2c of Netcomm, the Italian ecommerce consortium, and the Politecnico di Milano university), and about 35 million Italians buy online (Netcomm NetRetail 2026). It is a real opportunity for international brands, but ecommerce logistics in Italy is also among the most complex to manage.

Anyone who has tried to sell in Italy from abroad knows this: the rules are different. Cash on delivery matters less than people say, but it still counts in stores that offer it, the geography creates unique challenges, consumer expectations are specific, and the bureaucracy, from electronic invoicing to VAT management, requires local expertise. Shipping from a foreign warehouse with an international courier and hoping things work out is not a strategy. It is a recipe for high return rates, negative reviews, and eroded margins.

This guide is designed for international D2C brands that want to enter the Italian market in a structured way. It covers everything: from market analysis to logistics challenges, from operational solutions to choosing the right partner.

Why sell in Italy: the market numbers

The 2026 figures from the Osservatorio eCommerce B2c and Netcomm:

• B2C ecommerce value in 2026: over €66.6 billion across products and services, €42.6 billion of it in products (forecast)
• Italians who buy online: about 35 million, 24.3 million of them regular shoppers (NetRetail 2026)
• Growth: +6% over 2025, both overall and for products (forecast)
• Online share: 11.5% of product purchases (forecast)
• Sectors: beauty and pharma +8%; electronics, clothing, and food grow in line with the market (forecasts)

Besides Amazon.it, a brand can sell through its own website, vertical marketplaces, and social commerce.

The foreign brand advantage

Italian consumers still attach strong value to international brands, especially in beauty, wellness, fashion, and food categories. A French, German, or American brand that communicates its positioning effectively can make it count in Italy too.

But this advantage dissolves quickly if the post-purchase experience falls short: slow deliveries, inability to pay cash on delivery, English-only customer service, and complicated returns penalize foreign brands in the Italian market.

Italy-specific logistics challenges

Cash on delivery: how much it really matters

Cash on delivery (COD) is often described as the big difference in Italy. The data say something more precise. According to Netcomm's NetRetail 2026 survey, 94% of Italians' online purchases are paid at the time of ordering, and cash paid on delivery accounts for 1.6%. In stores that offer COD, however, its share is higher. In an analysis published in 2023 by an Italian shipping platform, based on 2022 data from its client stores that offered it, almost one in five orders was paid on delivery, with wide differences between sectors and regions.

For a foreign brand, online payment remains the foundation, and COD is a choice to make based on your own audience. If you decide to offer it, managing it from abroad is virtually impossible without a local partner who collects cash from carriers, handles reconciliations, and, most importantly, manages delivery refusals. There is no published, measured figure for COD refusals in Italy, so the number that matters is the one in your own orders.

Italian geography

Italy has an elongated shape with a mountain range running down the center. This creates logistics challenges that do not exist in more compact markets like Germany or the Netherlands:

• Distances: between the North and Sicily lies the whole peninsula, plus the Strait of Messina. In BRT's table of indicative delivery times, for example, the Express service reaches the cities of almost every region in 24 hours, and Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia in 48 hours
• Islands: delivery times to Sicily and Sardinia are longer, and some carriers charge a surcharge (Poste Delivery Business has one for Sicily, Calabria, and Sardinia); for the smaller islands, BRT adds two business days
• Remote areas: each carrier keeps a list of localities with longer times or surcharges, all over Italy. BRT's list includes more than 3,600 localities in 97 provinces, from the valleys of South Tyrol to the smaller islands
• Restricted traffic zones: ZTL zones complicate deliveries in many city centers

Each carrier has its own delivery times, surcharges, and remote areas. That is why it pays to work with several carriers and choose, area by area, the one that serves your customers best.

Regulations and bureaucracy

Selling online in Italy requires compliance with several regulations:

VAT: the standard rate is 22%, with reduced rates of 4%, 5%, and 10% for the goods listed in the law (Presidential Decree 633/1972, Article 16; from January 1, 2027, Article 34 of the VAT Consolidation Act, Testo unico IVA). For VAT, what matters is where the goods ship from. If you ship from your own country to Italian consumers, you are making distance sales of goods, and once your distance sales to other EU countries exceed €10,000 a year, Italian VAT applies, and you can declare it from your own country through the optional One Stop Shop (OSS). If your goods instead sit in a warehouse in Italy and ship from there, the sale to an Italian customer is a domestic sale, which the OSS does not cover, and moving your goods from your country into the Italian warehouse also counts for VAT purposes in Italy. You therefore need an Italian VAT number, through direct identification or a fiscal representative (Presidential Decree 633/1972, Articles 17 and 35-ter, and Decree-Law 331/1993, Articles 38 and 40; from January 1, 2027, the VAT Consolidation Act, Legislative Decree 10/2026, Articles 8, 16, 64, and 70).

Electronic invoicing: through the Sistema di Interscambio (SdI), Italy's exchange system for electronic invoices, it is mandatory for transactions between parties resident or established in Italy (Legislative Decree 127/2015, Article 1), and whether it applies to you depends on how you are present in the country.

Right of withdrawal: 14 days to notify the withdrawal (Italian Consumer Code, Codice del consumo, Article 52) and 14 more to send the goods back (Article 57), refund within 14 days of the notice, including standard delivery costs, and you can withhold it until you receive the goods or proof they were sent (Article 56) and, for contracts concluded from June 19, 2026, an online withdrawal function labeled "recedere dal contratto qui" (withdraw from the contract here) or equivalent wording (Article 54-bis).

Discounts and promotions: every announcement of a price reduction must show the lowest price applied in the previous 30 days (Consumer Code, Article 17-bis, which transposes the EU Omnibus Directive, 2019/2161), with the exceptions explained in our guide to the Omnibus Directive 30-day rule in Italy.

Labeling: the minimum information on products sold to consumers, from the product name to the instructions, must be given at least in Italian (Consumer Code, Articles 6 and 9); cosmetics, food, and supplements follow the EU rules for their sector.

This guide is not legal or tax advice, and before moving your stock it is worth having a tax advisor check your case.

Solutions: structuring logistics for Italy

Local warehouse vs shipping from abroad

The first strategic decision is where to position your stock. There are three options:

Shipping from abroad (cross-border): Advantages: zero fixed warehouse costs, single management point. Disadvantages: every order becomes an international shipment, with the delivery times and costs that come with it, COD and returns get harder, and the customer experience suffers. Suitable mainly for testing the market with very low volumes.

Own warehouse in Italy: Advantages: total control, complete customization. Disadvantages: high initial investment (rent, staff, technology), management complexity, only worth it with high and steady volumes.

3PL (Third-Party Logistics) in Italy: Advantages: variable costs, scalability, integrated local expertise (COD, carriers, regulations). Disadvantages: less direct control, partner dependency. Suitable for the vast majority of brands entering the Italian market. What a fulfillment service in Italy for foreign brands covers is explained on our dedicated page.

Strategic location: why southern Italy

For brands that choose a 3PL with a warehouse in southern Italy, for example in Campania, there are specific advantages:

• Location: from a warehouse in Campania, the South and the islands are closer than from a warehouse in the North, and the North is reached through the carriers' national networks. Each carrier publishes its delivery times by region, so ask for the areas where your customers are
• COD coverage: in stores that offer COD, customers in the South choose it more often. In the same shipping platform's 2022 data, more than one order in three was paid on delivery in Calabria and Sicily, against 13% in Veneto. A warehouse in the South is closer to these customers
• Operating costs: rents and labor costs vary from one area to another and feed into warehouse rates. When comparing quotes, what counts is the all-in cost per order

Italian-language customer service

For foreign brands, Italian-language customer service matters a lot, and it is worth deciding early who handles it, your own team, a customer service provider or, for some requests, your logistics partner. Part of the requests concern the status of the shipment, and those drop with notifications and a tracking page, as our guide to the order tracking page explains. The rest, about returns, missed deliveries, and pre-purchase questions, need a person who answers in Italian.

Italian-speaking customer service that also confirms COD orders before shipping helps catch the ones at risk of refusal. People who do this work recommend it above all for high-value orders, and no public source measures the effect: you see it in your own refusal rate.

VAT management and compliance

For the tax side, the options depend on where your stock is:

1. You ship from your own country: once your distance sales to other EU countries exceed €10,000 a year, you charge Italian VAT, and you can declare it through the One Stop Shop (OSS) of your own country, which is optional.
2. You keep your stock in a warehouse in Italy: sales to Italian customers are domestic sales, which the OSS does not cover, and you need an Italian VAT number, through direct identification or a fiscal representative.
3. Operational documents: ask the 3PL which documents it prepares (transport documents, packing lists) and agree with your tax advisor who keeps the records and files the returns.

How to choose the right logistics partner

For a foreign brand entering Italy, the logistics partner is not just a supplier, it is the face of the brand on the ground. Here are the essential criteria:

COD capability

The partner must manage the complete COD cycle: collection, reconciliation, refusal management, and reporting. Ask what happens, and what it costs you, when a COD order is refused, and how you are told. Calculate the refusal rate (COD orders refused or returned, divided by COD orders shipped) on your own orders, because there is no published, measured figure for Italy.

Multi-carrier network

A partner that works with a single carrier cannot cover Italy efficiently. You need several national carriers, to have alternatives for areas, COD, and peaks.

Technology integrations

The partner must connect to your store's platform (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop) and to the marketplaces where you sell (Amazon, eBay, TikTok Shop). Ask how the connection is made, who sets it up, and whether, besides orders flowing to the warehouse, tracking and stock levels flow back to your store.

Scalability

Volumes in Italy can vary enormously: Black Friday, summer sales, product launches. Ask the partner how its times change during peaks and what it needs from you beforehand (forecasts, promotion dates), and give it reliable forecasts. How to estimate how many orders to expect is covered in our guide to the safety stock formula for peak season.

Language support

The partner should offer a commercial contact and operational support in the brand's language (English at minimum). Also ask whether it talks to your customers in Italian and for what, for example to confirm cash-on-delivery orders before shipping.

How Tissquad can help

Tissquad runs logistics for Italian and foreign ecommerce brands from its warehouse in Campania, in the Naples area. We work with Shopify, WooCommerce, and PrestaShop stores and also handle the logistics of the orders you receive on Amazon and TikTok Shop, with the connection to the warehouse that we set up together at onboarding. In Italy we ship with GLS, BRT, Poste Italiane, and Amazon Shipping, abroad with GLS, FedEx, DHL, and UPS. We ship cash on delivery orders with carriers such as GLS and Poste Italiane, check the address before shipping, confirm orders by phone in Italian on request, and normally pay out the collections every week. We start with an onboarding call and ship as soon as your goods arrive. What the service covers is explained on our ecommerce fulfillment service page. Request a call with our team, the first one is free.