I do wonder if, in general, there could be some way to arrange a ship-when-convenient option that would pool together multiple orders for customers who are willing to wait a longer time for their orders to ship. Then once crossing the pond, have items separated out in Europe for the last-leg delivery. This might not help with customs or the sort of VAT collection that Louis Rossmann’s video mentions (in the UK only, though comments mention EU members are planning something similar), but it would at least be an improvement.
For those cheesy business diagrams where you pick two of three options, this would be as though from:
timely × cheap × reliable
You focus on cheap and reliable, with shipping windows that customers can specify out to several weeks if it is something non-urgent.
This would also dodge the added costs of a true local distributor which would otherwise need to keep local stock in the warehouse to satisfy less-patient customers.
This reminds me of how Raptor (who sells those POWER9 machines I pine for) has a similar issue with US→EU shipping. It might eventually have an in-EU reseller (Vikings GmbH), but given how that situation has been coming soon for quite a while, I imagine doing so might not be as straightforward as I hope.
If this kind of distribution arrangement is difficult to pull off for higher value items, I imagine it is even less practical for lower value items like mugs and shirts, where the relative labour cost per-item is higher.