Sometimes you have to wonder why exactly Europe is so ignored by The Pokemon Company. While the true numbers are not available, anecdotally places like France, the Netherlands, and Germany receive far less Pokemon product relative to their population and Pokemon fanbase when compared to the United States.
Customers are constantly going into shops only to find that they have nothing available or what they do have is ridiculously expensive. You would assume those are problems that The Pokemon Company would want to address since it discourages their fanbase. Having ridiculously high prices or completely unavailable product does nothing except hurt the hobby. No cards means no engagement. No engagement means people leave the hobby. Exactly the opposite of what The Pokemon Company wants.
So why is it that Europe seems to be getting ignored? Well, let’s speculate on that a bit…
Language and population size for one! Printing cards in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Polish, etc. adds on costs. These cards can’t be sold in other markets like English cards can be sold across English speaking countries and really the world. So for example Italian card printing has to be tuned to a population of just 60 million people, which is one fifth of the American market. And those cards can’t be sold in France or the United States or China. Those Italian cards are “stuck” right where they are. So you have to print carefully and it seems that The Pokemon Company has a policy of under printing for non Japanese and non English cards.
So you have increased costs, a smaller market, and cards that can’t be sold elsewhere. Matching demand to how much product you print is not easy across so many languages.
Now let’s consider EU regulations, taxes, tariffs, and fees. The EU has endless regulations regarding… everything. From labor laws to environmental laws operating in the EU is no joke. And to top the general regulations off there are endless taxes, tariffs, and fees. The Italian corporate tax is 37% for example. What you may find interesting is that the EU and American average corporate tax rate are almost identical at about 21% while the corporate tax rate in The Pokemon Company’s home market of Japan is about 23%.
But it’s really the add ons that get you. Labor laws are harsh from the perspective of the employer throughout the EU and the costs do add up. For example EU countries have higher minimum wages than the United States in general and have better benefits which include paid vacation, sick leave, and maternity/paternity leave. EU countries also have stronger unions and more social programs which increase costs. Anyway the point is the EU is a high cost zone with a fragmented and more limited trading card market.
Another thing to think on, The Pokemon Company seems to have a focus on its traditional markets of Japan and the United States, leaving fewer resources for Europe. That could mean there’s fewer euros for advertising, fewer employees assigned to the EU, less interest from corporate overall. We can’t actually know, not unless we were actually inside The Pokemon Company, but the general idea seems to check out. Europe just does not seem to have anyone’s attention.
The barriers to entry for The Pokemon Company in Europe are serious and expensive. The territories may have commonalities thanks to the EU, but Europe is still fragmented by language and specific country level labor and corporate laws. Austria’s labor laws are not the same as France’s labor laws. It just is not as simple as shipping product into a country and telling some random company to sell it. For The Pokemon Company to have outposts in each country requires specific knowledge of that country’s laws and labor systems. It requires participation in numerous social programs and a commitment to its employees to not fire them whenever they feel like, unlike the United States.
That’s a hell of a lot to ask for from a company that’s already seemingly overstretched with side projects and its traditional markets. Italian Pokemon cards just aren’t high priority in the end. If you’re in the EU and reading this, you’re not getting a bunch of Pokemon Centers anytime soon.