VAT Registration France complex?

VAT Registration France necessary? Knowing the guy, selling cheese, mostly from France, he should arrange a VAT Registration in France, it makes his life and business much easier. I live in Cornwall and in the local pub, were we play darts, after the game we drink some Guinness and Ian started to talk about the cheese business he just started. I began with his trip by car through France, Spain and Italy, even though when I understood it well, it ended in Nice, South of France. There he created and finalized his idea about French cheese (re-)selling. He was and is fully addicted to the week French cheeses, there should be about 500 different ones. If being addicted to something is the right idea to start a business is questionable, but on the other hand it works motivated. He drove through all the regions of France and tasted the most common and popular week cheeses. Of course he also enjoyed the wines with it. Every detail about the cheese was written down in his booklet, which was at the end, the encyclopedia of week cheeses and the starting point for his business. His business had to pillars, the most important one was re-selling the cheese to retailers, and the second pillar was his online shop. The risk with this pillar was the stock he needed to have. For retailers he worked on a delivery of 2 weeks after order. So he had enough time to order the cheeses in France and get them shipped to Cornwall. But for his online shop he couldn´t work with such a long delivery time. There was of course one good thing, the order had to be paid in advance. But the online shop was just in the air and you can try all keywords you can think of and type them into Google, currently you want find the online shop. An internet marketing in Thailand just started the off-page SEO activities, which normally will take about 4 till 6 months till a website reaches a top position with Google. So his stock risk didn´t exist yet. I interrupted his story and asked him how I managed the VAT issue and if he ever thought about VAT Registration France? His eyes became very big, it looked like he was surprised about this question. VAT he asked, till now I didn´t take care, I am fully focused on the cheese. I just warned him, experienced as I am in international trading business, to watch-out – I learned my lessons. He rapidly continued his story, to get rid of the stupid VAT Registration France subject. He did all the marketing and acquisition alone. Marketing was really time consuming, while it was more complicated as he thought and he couldn´t find anything useful for it in his booklet. Acquisition was much easier, he wasn´t very good in internet, but he understood when you typed in words like “cheese shop”, “supermarket”, etc. you get information about the retailers he needed to contact. He wrote a little script, using the information from his booklet, and made a planning. He wanted (and did so) to call 50 contacts a day. The first calls were not successful, he really was reading the script and everybody on the phone thought he was a call center employee. But after changing this and getting more enthusiastic about his cheese and the incredible know-how about them, he succeeded to gain interest. After one and week he had the first serious orders and he ordered all with the producers in France. They really liked him, but wanted to be paid in advance. And money was not really available with him. He went to his bank and showed them his plan, his business and the orders, all what happened was a smile and they told him to come back in about two years when his business was still alive generated real revenue and profit. The warned him about regulations of the European Union, he even didn´t listen, he needed money, no smiles and no advice. The only thing he could think of, was asking his brother, he was not married, had a good job and lived sober. His brother gave him the money, which had to be paid back in 12 months with 10% interest on top. But, he could finalize his orders and some days later all cheese was arrived and he could send them to his (new) customers, including the bills, so after spending money, there would come money in and his business was moving. He has been his whole live a bit optimistic, so he was really surprised that 2 weeks after delivery to his customers nobody had paid their bills and he had to pay his brother the first part. With millions of tricks and excuses he explained his brother that the payments were a bit delayed. A new problem came up, he continued with the acquisition and more and more orders came in. And the cheese producers still didn´t want to deliver before the money was on their bank account. For the bank he didn´t exist, his brother was angry because he still didn´t pay him back and the first customer of the new orders, started to complain about the late delivery. He was on a loop, his business seems to work, the orders and “virtual” revenue was growing, but due to a leak of money he would be bankrupt in some weeks. Sometimes one needs a bit luck and he won a good price in the lottery, enough to pay his brother all back at once, including the 10% interest, to pay all the cheese producers and to have a substantial cash flow for paying the next orders. Beside this the first customers started to pay the bills and more money came in. He was saved and happy, his idea was a success and he was in, good, business. You could see and hear how happy he was during this dart and drinking evening in our local pub. And he told me that he would check what VAT Registration France was meaning for him.