How a direct-to-consumer beauty brand used Remire’s employer of record services to enter five new markets simultaneously, saving $280K in entity setup costs and launching every market on schedule.
Industry:
E-Commerce / Consumer Goods
Team Size:
140 FTE across 7 countries
Headquarters:
Amsterdam, Netherlands
EOR Countries
5 — Germany, UAE, India, South Africa, Mexico
Remire Products:
Employer of Record, Payroll Management, Locally Compliant Benefits, Onboarding, Compliance’, Offboarding
The company is a direct-to-consumer beauty and personal care brand headquartered in Amsterdam. Built on a subscription model with a strong social commerce presence, the brand had grown from a single-market operation to a 140-person team across the Netherlands, the UK, and the US within four years of launch.
Following a strong Q4 2024, the board approved an aggressive multi-market expansion plan: launch operations in Germany, the UAE, India, South Africa, and Mexico simultaneously within Q1 2025. The plan called for 44 full-time hires across these five markets: country managers, performance marketing leads, customer success managers, logistics coordinators, and local operations staff.
These weren’t short-term roles. The company needed committed, locally employed full-time staff who could build market presence, manage local supplier relationships, and represent the brand on the ground. The problem was that the company had legal entities in exactly three countries. It needed to employ people in five more, all at the same time, all within eight weeks.
The company’s Chief People Officer ran the numbers on entity setup across all five markets. The math made the decision easy, but the alternatives were hard.
The CPO put it plainly to the board: setting up five entities simultaneously would cost nearly $300K upfront, take six months the company didn’t have, and leave the people team managing annual filings, audits, and statutory requirements in five countries where they had no expertise. For a brand that needed to be selling in Germany by March, that timeline was a non-starter.
The alternative, hiring contractors instead of full-time employees, was ruled out immediately. The roles required people who were genuinely committed to the brand, eligible for local benefits, and protected by local employment law. Country managers and operations leads hired as freelancers wouldn’t have the standing, the motivation, or the legal protections the company needed to build real market presence.
What they needed was a way to employ people legally in five countries, fast, compliantly, and without building permanent infrastructure they didn’t yet need.
The CPO’s search led to Remire, a global hiring platform that helps companies hire, pay, and manage employees and contractors across 60+ countries, including through employer of record services that allow companies to legally employ people in markets where they have no entity. Three factors closed the decision:
Remire’s employer of record services had established legal entities and in-country compliance infrastructure in Germany, the UAE, India, South Africa, and Mexico. The company could legally employ people in all five markets through Remire’s entities from day one, no registration required.
Remire committed to having employees employment-ready within 5–10 business days per country. For a brand with a board-approved Q1 launch deadline, that was the only timeline that worked. The first four hires, the German and UAE country managers, were employment-ready in 7 days.
Remire handled every statutory benefit in every market: German employment contracts with appropriate notice periods, UAE labor cards and end-of-service gratuity, India’s PF and ESI contributions, South Africa’s UIF and leave entitlements, and Mexico’s IMSS and aguinaldo. The CPO’s team didn’t need to become experts in five employment law regimes; Remire’s in-country teams already were.
Instead of managing payroll in five countries through five providers, Remire’s payroll management consolidated all 44 employees into a single monthly cycle with one approval and one invoice covering EUR, AED, INR, ZAR, and MXN.
Remire’s EOR rollout ran in parallel across all five markets, completing in under eight weeks from signed agreement to fully staffed teams.
01
Remire’s compliance team delivered a country-by-country employment guide within the first week: contract types, probation rules, mandatory benefits, notice periods, and termination requirements for each market. The CPO’s team had a complete picture of what employing people in each country actually meant before a single offer was extended.
02
Remire generated employment agreements for each country tailored to local law. German contracts included works council notification provisions and statutory notice periods. UAE contracts covered labor card registration, end-of-service gratuity, and MOHRE compliance. Indian contracts accounted for PF, ESI, and the Shops and Establishments Act. Each contract was reviewed by Remire’s in-country legal counsel before issue.
03
New hires received a digital onboarding flow collecting personal details, tax IDs, bank accounts, and signed contracts, all through Remire’s employer of record platform. Benefits enrollment, work permit registration where required, and statutory documentation were handled in parallel. The German and UAE country managers were employment-ready in 7 days. All 44 hires across five countries were fully onboarded within the eight-week window.
04
Remire processed monthly payroll for all 44 employees in local currencies with correct statutory deductions, employer contributions, and benefits administration for each country. Germany’s income tax and social insurance, the UAE’s WPS-compliant payroll, India’s PF and ESI, South Africa’s PAYE and UIF, and Mexico’s IMSS contributions are all handled automatically. The People team approved one consolidated payroll run per month.
05
Remire’s local teams managed ongoing compliance across all five countries, annual statutory filings, employment law updates, benefits renewals, and employee documentation. Employees in each market had access to local HR support in their language and time zone for payslip queries, leave questions, and benefits clarification, without routing every question through Amsterdam.
Within the first six months, every market was live, every hire was in place, and the financial case for EOR over entity setup had proved out decisively.
44
Full-time employees hired across 5 countries
8 wks
From board approval to fully staffed teams
$280K
Saved in entity setup costs across 5 markets
8 days
Average time from offer to employment-ready
5/5
Markets launched on schedule with no compliance incidents
$90K+
Estimated annual savings vs maintaining 5 dormant entities
The $280K in avoided entity setup was the headline, but the ongoing savings told an equally important story. Maintaining five dormant entities, each with annual filing requirements, registered agents, local accountants, and compliance oversight, would have cost an estimated $90,000 per year. Through Remire’s EOR model, those costs simply didn’t exist. The company paid for headcount, not infrastructure.
The speed impact was equally significant. The German and UAE country managers were on the ground and operational before competitors who’d announced similar market entries had finished their entity registration paperwork. In e-commerce, six months of first-mover advantage in a new market is a meaningful commercial edge.
Perhaps most importantly, the People team’s capacity wasn’t consumed by compliance administration across five unfamiliar employment regimes. Instead of becoming accidental experts in German works council law and South African UIF contributions, the team stayed focused on their core strengths. They hired the right people, built onboarding programs, and supported culture as the company doubled in size.
For a fast-moving e-commerce brand, market timing is everything. Waiting six months to register entities in five countries while competitors move wasn’t a compliance decision; it was a commercial one. Remire’s employer of record services removed that constraint entirely.
The company employed 44 full-time people across five countries in just eight weeks. It did so without registering a single legal entity. There was no local legal retainer in any of the five markets.
And the People team did not need expertise in five different employment law regimes.
. The $280K in setup savings funded two additional country manager hires. The six months saved went into building market share.
Entity setup makes sense when a market is proven and permanent. Until then, EOR is the infrastructure that lets you move at the speed the market demands.
“The board gave us eight weeks to be operational in five countries. Every advisor we spoke to told us that was impossible if we were setting up entities. Remire made it possible. Our German country manager was in contract negotiations with local distributors by week three. Our UAE lead had signed the first retail partnership by week five. Remire handled everything legal and payroll-related behind the scenes, and our team just got to focus on building the business. That’s exactly how it should work.”
Confidential — D2C Beauty & Personal Care Brand, Amsterdam
Enter New Markets Without the Entity Setup Wait.
Remire is a global hiring platform that helps companies employ full-time teams in 60+ countries through employer of record services: no entities, no delays, fully compliant.
