What supplier & procurement work covers, and why it's different from selling

Supplier and procurement work is the buyer-side half of the channel: the systematic search, evaluation, contracting and monitoring a business runs before it hands money to another company for goods, components or services it depends on. It sits on the opposite side of the table from everything else in this Reseller & Channel pillar — where reseller programmes and distribution are about how a vendor sells outward, supplier and procurement is about how a buyer sources inward, and gets that sourcing wrong at its own cost, not a partner's.

For most SMEs the discipline comes down to three linked jobs: finding candidate suppliers in the first place, vetting the ones that look promising before signing anything, and getting the contract, VAT and customs paperwork right once a supplier is chosen. This page works through all three; the deep dives are at How to vet a supplier before you commit, Procurement basics for small businesses and Finding reliable EU suppliers.

Figures are illustrative and vary hugely by category — a textiles distributor's MOQ looks nothing like an electronics distributor's. Always confirm actual terms before assuming a category norm applies.

How to vet a supplier before you commit

Vetting a supplier means confirming, with evidence rather than a sales pitch, that the company is legally real, financially stable, able to deliver at the quality and volume you need, and not going to expose you to a compliance problem you didn't sign up for.

Start with the legal entity, not the sales contact

Verify the registered company name, country of incorporation, registration number and registered address against an official business registry — not the supplier's own website or a business card. For an EU supplier, a VAT number can be checked instantly and free through the Commission's VIES system; for a wider credit and ownership picture, a paid report from a provider such as Dun & Bradstreet or a national chamber-of-commerce register fills in what VIES can't.

Check the money before you check the product

A credit report or a short set of recent financial statements tells you whether a supplier can actually fund your order, not just promise to. A supplier with worsening payment terms to its own vendors, or a recent change of ownership, is a higher-risk bet than its brochure suggests — ask directly, and treat a refusal to share basic financials as a signal in itself.

Ask for a sample order and a reference before a full contract

A small trial order tests real lead time, packaging and quality control cheaply; a reference call to an existing customer, ideally one buying a similar volume, tests what the supplier's account management is actually like once the ink is dry. Neither step is optional for a supplier you plan to depend on for more than a one-off purchase — the deep, step-by-step version of this process, including a scoring approach, is at How to vet a supplier before you commit.

The EU due-diligence landscape SMEs actually face in 2026

The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) requires large companies to identify and address human-rights and environmental risks across their own supply chains — and its scope shrank sharply in 2026, meaning far fewer companies, and far fewer of their suppliers by extension, are directly caught by it. As adopted in 2024 the directive applied to companies with more than 1,000 employees and over €450 million in global turnover; the Omnibus I amending directive, in force since 18 March 2026, raised that bar to 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in turnover. Member states now have until 26 July 2028 to transpose the rules into national law, with the main duties applying from 26 July 2029 and reporting obligations following for financial years starting on or after 1 January 2030.

That narrower scope doesn't mean supplier-side due diligence has gone away for smaller businesses — it means the pressure now travels contractually rather than by direct legal obligation. A large buyer that is itself in scope, or that simply wants a cleaner supply chain for its own customers or investors, will often still send a supplier questionnaire, request a code-of-conduct sign-off, or ask about subcontractors two or three tiers down, regardless of whether the supplier answering it is legally required to. Being able to answer those questions quickly and honestly — a habit worth building before a customer asks, not after — has become a genuine competitive point for European SMEs supplying larger companies, even outside CSDDD's now-narrower legal net.

For how this fits into the wider EU regulatory picture, see EU regulation & VAT.

VAT, EORI and the paperwork of buying across a border

Buying from a supplier in another EU country runs on VAT reverse charge by default: the seller issues an invoice without VAT, and the VAT-registered buyer accounts for it on their own return, provided both companies' VAT numbers show as valid in VIES at the time of the transaction. Get either number wrong, or let it lapse, and it's the buyer that ends up owing the correction, not the supplier.

An EORI number is a separate requirement and covers something different: it's what customs actually checks on any consignment physically crossing the EU's external border, whether that's a shipment coming in from the UK, Switzerland, Asia or anywhere else outside the customs union. It's free to obtain from the customs authority in the country where a business is established, and one EORI number is valid across every member state. A business that only ever buys from other EU-based suppliers, with goods moving purely between EU countries, doesn't need one; a business that imports even occasionally from outside the EU does.

What that import actually costs changed again on 1 July 2026: the EU's blanket customs-duty exemption on parcels valued under €150 ended, replaced by a flat interim duty on qualifying low-value consignments from outside the EU, on top of the import VAT that has applied from the first cent since 2021. For an SME sourcing samples or small-batch components from outside Europe, that means the landed-cost calculation used a year ago no longer holds — worth rechecking before assuming last year's supplier quote still reflects the total cost. For the logistics side of getting goods across a border once a supplier is chosen, see Import, export & logistics.

Where to actually find suppliers in Europe

Most European SMEs find suppliers through one of three overlapping routes: general B2B directories, sector-specific sourcing platforms, and a distributor's own network rather than direct manufacturer contact.

General directories cover breadth, not verification

Europages lists roughly 2.6 million companies across 34 European countries and 26 languages, with an integrated request-for-quote tool that sends the same enquiry to several suppliers at once; Kompass, founded in Paris in 1944, runs a global database of around 60 million companies with particularly deep coverage in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Eastern Europe. Both are useful starting points for casting a wide net, but neither verifies a listed company beyond what it submits itself — the vetting work described above still has to happen after a directory search, not instead of it.

Distributors are often the fastest route to a workable shortlist

A distributor that already carries the category a buyer needs — electronics components, packaging, industrial parts — typically has a shortlist of vetted manufacturers on file and can introduce a buyer to two or three credible options faster than an open directory search. This is the same relationship covered from the selling side in Distribution; a distributor's willingness to make an introduction, rather than just sell its own stock, is often a sign it wants a longer-term account.

Public procurement data can double as a credibility check

TED (Tenders Electronic Daily), the EU's official public-procurement portal, publishes roughly 800,000 notices a year worth more than €815 billion and has run on a mandatory eForms standard since 2024. It's built for suppliers bidding into government contracts, not for sourcing directly — but a prospective supplier with a visible track record of winning and delivering public tenders has already cleared a level of scrutiny worth noting when vetting them for your own order.

For a fuller, region-by-region route map — including where trade fairs and sector associations still beat any online directory — see Finding reliable EU suppliers.

A supplier that won't share a VAT number, a reference customer or a recent set of accounts isn't being discreet — it's telling you what happens after you've paid the deposit.

Good sourcing is what makes a healthy reseller margin possible

A business that resells or distributes what it buys has a second reason to get supplier vetting right: every euro paid too much, or lost to a missed delivery, comes straight off the margin it can then offer its own resellers. The two disciplines are closely linked but not the same — Reseller programmes covers how a vendor structures what it sells onward; this page covers what it takes to secure that supply reliably in the first place. Get the supplier side wrong and no tier ladder or deal-registration policy downstream will fix it.

Quick answers

Do I need an EORI number to buy from a supplier in another EU country?

No — an EORI number is only needed when goods physically cross the EU's external border, such as an import from the UK or Asia. Purchases moving between two EU member states run on the VAT reverse-charge mechanism instead, once both companies' VAT numbers are verified through VIES.

Does the CSDDD apply to my small business?

Almost certainly not directly — since the Omnibus I revision took effect in March 2026, the directive only applies to companies with at least 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in global turnover. A smaller supplier can still be asked to answer due-diligence questions contractually by a large customer that is in scope, even without a legal obligation of its own.

What's the real difference between a distributor and a wholesaler?

A distributor usually holds a formal agreement with the manufacturer covering a territory or product line, and wraps in services like credit terms and technical support; a wholesaler typically buys and resells opportunistically with no such agreement and far less service attached, though the line blurs in some sectors.

How many suppliers should I vet before choosing one?

Enough to have a genuine comparison — most procurement guidance suggests at least two or three credible candidates for anything beyond a low-value, one-off purchase, so pricing, lead time and vetting findings can be weighed against each other rather than accepted on trust from a single source.