Home / Articles / The link the coach should have sent: a shop for one padel sleeve in the Algarve, what Portuguese law really asks of a coach who sells, the platforms that take the payment, which of them Claude can run, and a working mock-up in a vault

The link the coach should have sent: a shop for one padel sleeve in the Algarve, what Portuguese law really asks of a coach who sells, the platforms that take the payment, which of them Claude can run, and a working mock-up in a vault

By Dinis Cruz · 2026-11-02 · article v1.0.0 · newsroom v0.14.35 · ecommercepadelportugalsmall-businesstaxconsumer-lawshopifystripemb-wayvaultsclaudearticle

Abstract: After a padel lesson in the Algarve, a coach told me which arm sleeve to buy and could not sell me one. So we mapped the shop he could have had, for one product, Floky's NO STRAIN Evolution X Tapia sleeve, and built a mock-up of it in a vault, with everything but the payment and the delivery. The sleeve costs €32.95 from a padel retailer that ships to Portugal; at €39.90, with his margin shown, it is still cheaper than ordering one yourself with delivery. Selling is easy, but it is not quite "just register the profit": in Portugal the simplified regime taxes 15% of sales, not the margin, every sale needs an invoice, and online sales bring a 14-day right to cancel, a three-year guarantee and a complaints book. Health claims are the trap. For the payment, a Stripe link with MB WAY costs nothing a month; Shopify Basic is €19 a month and has an official Claude connector. Claude can write the shop, create the products and links, and prepare the paperwork; opening the accounts, refunds and handing over the sleeve stay with the person.

In short

• A coach told me what to buy and could not sell it. This is the shop he could have had.
• The product: Floky's NO STRAIN Evolution X Tapia arm sleeve, €32.95 to €35.90 from padel shops, €41.99 on the link I was given.
• The offer: €39.90 at the club, with his €6.95 margin shown, against about €45.85 to order one yourself with delivery.
• The law: register the activity, an invoice for every sale, and consumer rules online. Tax is on 15% of sales, not the profit.
• The trap: health claims. Sell it as sportswear.
• The payment: a Stripe link with MB WAY at €0 a month, or Shopify at €19, with Portuguese options in between.
• Claude can run most of it, and the mock-up is in a vault.
• What stays with the person: accounts, identity checks, refunds and handing over the sleeve.

The link I got

After a lesson I asked a coach about my arm. He recommended a sleeve and sent me a link: Floky's NO STRAIN Evolution X Tapia, a compression sleeve made with Agustín Tapia, who with Arturo Coello is world number one for a fourth season, according to the International Padel Federation. I asked if I could buy it from him, or anywhere nearby. No. I wrote about what that moment means in a solution, not a problem. This article is the practical half: what it would take for him to say yes.

The link was to Floky's Benelux shop, which sells only to the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, at €41.99. Floky is an Italian company, based in Brescia, and its own Italian shop lists the same sleeve at €35.90. Padel shops in Spain that deliver to mainland Portugal had it at €32.95 and €35.90 on 2 November, with delivery in about two working days. Floky's store finder lists two stockists in Portugal, in Lisbon and Braga, and none in the Algarve.

The offer

The coach buys five at €32.95 (delivery is free over €50) and sells them at €39.90 at the club. He shows what he adds: €6.95, for his time, the stock he holds and having it there. A student who orders one themselves pays €35.90 plus €9.95 delivery from one of those shops, €45.85, and waits. At €39.90, tomorrow, the coach is cheaper and quicker. That is the range I described as a no-brainer.

The mock-up has five pages: the shop, the message he sends after a lesson, the plan with these numbers, the setup with who does what, and the legal page. Payment and delivery are stubs, marked as such.

What the law asks

My first instinct was that selling is simple: you buy, you sell, and you register the profit for tax. It is simple, but the details matter.

• Register the activity with the tax authority, as a self-employed trader, under code 47630, retail sale of sporting goods. Since January 2025 the old online-retail code, 47910, means something else.
• Income tax is on sales, not profit. Under the simplified regime, 15% of the sales of goods counts as income, added to his other income and taxed at his own rate. What he paid for the sleeves is not deducted. On five sleeves that is €29.93 of taxable income, and €3.74 to €14.36 of tax. With a markup below 15% of the price, he would pay tax on more than he made.
• VAT: none below €15,000 a year of turnover. For a self-employed coach, lesson fees count towards that limit too; above it, 23% VAT takes most of a €6.95 margin.
• An invoice for every sale, marked "IVA - regime de isenção", within five working days. The tax authority's own portal and its app issue them for free.
• Social Security: registration is required. Contributions start in the 12th month. A coach employed elsewhere and earning above the minimum is exempt below about €2,150 a month from the side activity; otherwise the minimum is €20 a month.
• A one-off sale is not the way round it. That route is for sales nobody could foresee, and it carries 23% VAT anyway.

Selling to consumers

• Online: name, address and tax number on the site; prices with taxes; a 14-day right to cancel, with the refund within 14 days; written confirmation; a three-year legal guarantee.
• The electronic complaints book is compulsory for every seller, online-only included, with a visible link, and complaints are answered within 15 working days.
• Consumer arbitration: the site names a centre, here the Centro de Arbitragem de Conflitos de Consumo do Algarve.
• Handing it over after a lesson is probably a sale away from business premises in law, which also needs the information in writing and has the same 14 days.
• Product safety: as a distributor under the EU's General Product Safety Regulation, he checks that the sleeve carries the maker's name and address and a type or batch number, and shows them on the listing.

Health claims, the trap

Floky's page lists "reduction of inflammation" and "prevention" among the benefits, and a "30.62% reduction in overall vibrations". The figure comes from a study Floky funded, with ten amateur players, run by a lab whose lead is listed by Floky as its technical and scientific consultant. I found no published paper. The sleeve is not registered as a medical device in the EU's database; Floky sells it as sportswear.

For the coach, that matters. If he sells an ordinary sleeve as something that treats an elbow condition, EU law makes him its manufacturer as a medical device, and claiming that a product cures a condition when it does not is a banned commercial practice. The mock-up sells it as sportswear, quotes Floky's figure as Floky's, and says: if your arm hurts, see a doctor or a physiotherapist.

Where the coach's job ends

A coach employed by a club must not compete with it: the Portuguese labour code lists that among an employee's duties. My rule of common sense is the same. Do not sell what the club's shop sells; anything it does not stock is fair game. Check the contract too.

The platforms that do the rest

The shop needs a way to take money, and the coach may want a catalogue. Prices as published on 2 November 2026:

Stripe, the Portuguese gateways and Shopify all take MB WAY and Multibanco; Shopify is €19 a month on a yearly plan, €27 month to month, and MB WAY costs 1.3% + €0.30 there. Stripe's Claude connector is marked Anthropic verified.

For a coach selling a few sleeves a month, a Stripe link is the place to start: no monthly fee, MB WAY, Multibanco and cards on one link, with a QR code for the club. The Portuguese gateways are cheaper per payment but have no connector. Shopify makes sense when the catalogue grows: it handles the shop, the stock and the orders, and Shopify Payments now takes MB WAY and Multibanco in Portugal without an extra app. A Portuguese example on Shopify is the footwear brand SANJO, whose case study Shopify publishes.

Dropshipping, where a supplier holds the stock and ships to the buyer, exists for Portugal through apps such as Dropea. It does not change who the seller is: the coach is still the trader responsible for returns, the guarantee and product safety. For one sleeve he can hand over in person, a small stock is simpler.

Delivery: CTT, the Portuguese post, has a logistics plan for small businesses with no joining fee or minimum volume, and plugs into Shopify and WooCommerce.

What Claude can run

This is the shop version of the site we mapped for my brother: a repository, an agent in a Claude Code session, and a platform for what the repository cannot do.

• Shopify's connector for Claude can create a store from a chat, create products "with a title, description, price, variants, options, and inventory tracking", and read orders. In Shopify's words, it "can't issue refunds, cancel or capture orders" and "can't change settings such as your plan, payments, taxes, or domains". There is no extra fee for the connector.
• Stripe's connector creates products, prices and payment links. From December 2026 it accepts only restricted keys marked for agents.
• Wix and Squarespace have their own; WooCommerce's is in developer preview.
• What stays with the person: opening the accounts and the identity checks, payments and tax settings, refunds, issuing the invoice in the tax app, and handing over the sleeve.

That split is right. The agent writes, prepares, counts and reminds; the person holds the money, the identity and the decisions. It is also what keeps the shop easy to maintain: every page, price and step is in a repository or a vault an agent can read and update.

What this does not claim

• The coach in the mock-up is fictional; the product, prices and rules were checked on 2 November 2026 and will change.
• This is not legal or tax advice. The tax figures assume the simplified regime; the Social Security rules have exceptions; ask an accountant before starting.
• Some official pages (the official gazette, Social Security, consumer portal) did not load for checking; the law texts were read from the Public Prosecutor's consolidated copies.
• Floky did not take part, and nothing here is affiliated with it.
• Single-item delivery costs and Floky's trade terms were not published and are not known.

Where this comes from

My lesson of 2 November 2026. Floky: the Benelux page, floky.com; the FIP on Coello and Tapia; Padel Market and PadelPROShop. Tax and Social Security: Portal das Finanças on the VAT exemption and the CIRS and CIVA texts there. Consumer law: Decreto-Lei 24/2014, 84/2021 and 57/2008, and the complaints book. Regulation (EU) 2023/988. Platforms: Shopify Portugal pricing, Shopify on MB WAY and Multibanco, the Shopify connector for Claude, Stripe's MCP server, Shopkit pricing, Dropea, SANJO on Shopify. The mock-up: sgit clone sgit_public_read_e7f9bd826ee9c2bbde08946a04d5fb6260bdaf5fb38a0c5bcd0bef0cd85bffd6:8u0286g6 padel-sleeve-shop. All read 2 November 2026.

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