La Montagne Verte: the classic shisha, reinvented across Europe

El-Badia is the brand La Montagne Verte sells shishas with across Europe. We spoke with Nayef Hattar, Amazon EU Marketplace Manager, about what it takes to bring a private label onto the European marketplaces with the Pan-European programme while holding logistics, tax and margins together.

First things first: what a shisha is

A shisha, or hookah, is a water pipe. Flavoured tobacco is heated with charcoal and the smoke passes through a vase full of water before it reaches the hose. It isn't a disposable product: it's an object you assemble, take apart, clean and keep for years, built from steel, glass and silicone.

El-Badia is the brand of La Montagne Verte, a Paris company on rue Saint-Denis founded in 1991 that has become one of the biggest names in the sector in Europe. The catalogue runs to over 1,000 models, from mini formats to luxury lines, plus everything that goes around them: heat management devices, charcoal, hoses, bowls and mouthpieces.

Part of the catalogue belongs to other people. El-Badia distributes over 200 brands across Europe, and for several of them it is the sole distributor and official partner, including well-known names such as Quasar and Hooky. The distributed brands also include Kaloud, Steamulation, Wookah, Moze, Oduman, Maklaud, TSAR, Adalya, Al-Fakher, Blackcoco's and Mashisha.

The other part of the catalogue is its own: the El-Badia line, with models like Celeste, C7 and the portable P1, a globally patented model, the 320° charcoal made from coconut shells and the ARC V3 heat management system.

---

Interview with Nayef Hattar, Amazon EU Marketplace Manager at La Montagne Verte

How is the company organised?

There are 14 of us, and each one follows a different area: webshop, local sales, the physical shop and product design.

And who looks after Amazon?

I choose which products to list, I create the listings, I take the pictures, and I also handle the Amazon financial reporting and reconciliation.

It's just me: the entire Amazon operation is in my hands.

Why don't you put the whole catalogue on Amazon?

Only the own-brand products go on Amazon: modern, innovative models designed specifically to stand out from traditional designs.

We are distributors for over 200 brands across Europe, but on Amazon we chose to stay on our own line of trademarked products, some of them patented too.

---

"I had studied all the theory. Then came Seller Central."

How did the start with Amazon go?

I had a lot of theoretical knowledge about Amazon: I had studied the whole FBA operation before I even joined the company. Then we got to the practical part and it was another story, because Seller Central throws up problems all the time. Errors in the flags, specific regulations to respect, pictures to redo, new fees. At the beginning the real challenge was getting used to those sudden changes.

Then our category makes everything harder. There are regulations that block our listings from time to time: in the Netherlands it happens in waves, in Belgium they blocked everything.

---

The OSS nightmare loop

Then you moved to FBA and switched on the Pan-European Program.

That's where the logistics, and the accounting especially, became a mess. To push on FBA and Pan-European we opened VAT numbers in the various countries, and once the goods started sitting in different warehouses the taxation got a lot more complicated: following inventory and stock allocations wasn't as simple as running the webshop anymore.

If you remember, when we first got in touch we couldn't even track the products: for some reason, as soon as we started shipping to Germany, Amazon was keeping our goods in the Czech Republic and in Poland.

It turned into a proper nightmare loop for the OSS.

Then we started using ZonWizard around August or September last year, so it's been almost a year now.

It was basically hitting the jackpot, honestly, especially for managing the local VAT and the OSS.

With the monthly reports you can see even a single sale being moved. We've reached the point where everything finally sits in its place.

---

One single person

behind a private label sold across the whole of Europe in Pan-European, with each country's tax to close every month.

---

Every hat on the same head

How do you keep on top of it all?

With the amount of work and problems that come up on Amazon, on standard Seller Central alone you can't keep up on your own. With ZonWizard everything is together now, centralised.

Even for a simple stock check it's faster than Seller Central: I get the notifications that tell me which products to act on. Same for the claims: if there's a problem with a stock allocation or with a reimbursement, now I can follow the whole flow.

It cuts out a lot of dead-end searching when you're after a figure, and it saves me plenty of the human errors that, with the numbers we do, are always around the corner.

And on the cost side?

It helps me a lot to calculate exact costs and margins. Amazon's interface is complex and scattered everywhere: you have to hunt for every detail, put it back together with the rest, pull out the Excel sheets.

I personally use the Profit Table and the Financial Report view to check, just to make sure everything is in its place and that every SKU matches the one in our internal system.

---

Without ZonWizard: several hours a month

lost rebuilding the numbers by hand from various reports for the accountants and the management.

---

With ZonWizard: everything in one place

Local VAT, OSS, costs, margins and profits sit together, and those hours on Excel have gone back into the business.

---

The Future of La Montagne Verte

What is the next step?

We're planning it right now: we want to expand to other marketplaces in the EU and internationally.

It will be a big jump, so we're taking our time to organise the logistics properly. Almost certainly we'll ship from Europe at first, just to get the products into the market; only later will we be able to dedicate our own FBA stock, separate from the Pan-European operation.

On new markets, especially outside Europe, our European hero products might not have the same success. So at first we'll run tests, going by trial and error.

You told us you found a real partner in ZonWizard, not just a way to save time, but to grow. Tell us about it.

Yes, no doubt about it, a hundred percent. It keeps us moving at a pace we couldn't have imagined, far faster than what we could manage checking everything by hand.

---

Thank you La Montagne Verte

Thank you, Nayef

Thanks for telling us the unglamorous part of a Pan-European launch: the blocked listings, the closed country, the goods that end up where you never sent them. Stories like this are exactly why we keep building ZonWizard alongside the people who use it every day.

It was very interesting for me too, and it was great to finally get to meet.