And no, "taxes" or "different curency" just doesn't explain it. (I do calculate the Rate of exchange in of course). The exact same Laptop I was searching for example is ~300$ cheaper in the US than in germany -WTF!
Actually, often it does.
For example, let's assume there's an electronic product for 200 USD available in US (end user price).
As a reseller, I might be able to buy it for 150 USD.
150 USD is about 140 - 145 EUR right now (you always have to pay an exchange fee on top of the exchange rate).
Shipping can be VERY expensive. For example, shipping 100 GCW Zeros to me is about 600 USD shipping costs. So about 5 EUR shipping costs on top of it.
Then we are already at about 150 EUR I have to pay just to get the product to my place.
Then there's WEEE registration, which is 500 EUR per product. Let's assume I order 100 products, then it's another 5 EUR per product.
That adds up to 155 EUR.
The product also needs to have CE. If I have to do it myself, a test is about 2000 EUR. That would be 20 EUR per product. Often (with huge products), the manufacturer has done that. He still has to do that additionally, so he WILL increase his price a bit compared to the reseller price in US.
So let's assume this is 5 EUR, which would add up to 160 EUR.
A product sold in Germany HAS to have a German manual included! So it needs to be translated - this also is often done by the manufacturer, but he'll probably also add that to the price. Let's assume it's 2 EUR, so we'd be at 162 EUR.
162 EUR. Then you, as a reseller, need to make some profit as well.
Thanks to our social system, loans are a LOT higher than in the US, the profit per product needs to be a lot higher as well.
Usually, you calculate with at least 20 - 25% profit.
Let's use 20%. That would be 195 EUR then.
Add 19% VAT on top, and we'd have 232 EUR.
So yeah, 232 EUR for a product that costs 200 USD in the US. The profit for the reseller would probably be about the same.
Oh, and if the reseller wants to sell via Amazon, add another 15%, as that's what amazon takes as margin...
The reason for the high prices in Germany are mainly because of increased fixed costs (rental, social system, etc.) as well as other bureaucratic stuff.