.com vs .co.uk; your opinions please

[BusinessNewbie]

I've never had my own business or run a website so it's all completely new to me. I've registered both the .com and .co.uk domains but I'm not sure which one to use.

My market will be the UK but I like to dream big and would love it to become a global brand and sell internationally.

I'm leaning more to using the .co.uk though as the product will be marketed as being 'handmade in Britain'. What are your opinions on this? Would you use the .com or .co.uk? Would I need to set up 2 email addresses and divert those to the other one too? If I divert the .com domain in the early days, would I be able to use it as the international website later on if it goes well? (If that makes sense. Like how amazon has both domains?) Sorry for the newbie questions but I'm not great with technology and want to make sure I understand and get the basics right!

If your market is primarily UK to begin with, i'd use .co.uk and see how you get on.

Usually I'd assume a company isn't UK based if they use .com

If you've purchased both though, just redirect one to automatically go to the other. That way if anyone types in yourwebsite.com it'll just automatically take them to your .co.uk one anyway (or vice versa)

I agree with other answer, redirect the .com to the .co.uk I often find I put .com in as standard so even if people do that they’ll still find your site.

What is your business? Always looking for new brands! Good luck

Agree with both other posters - use the uk one - but point the .com to the uk - you only need emails for one, if there is a free email forwarder on the .com just forward them to the co.uk.

Did you get offered the .uk one rather than the .co.uk? If you don't buy it within the first year I think, someone else can.

It gets confusing the more stuff you set up and you can lose stuff easily!!

You've done the right thing buying the .com so no-one else can, just sit on it and concentrate on building the uk brand.