Navigating Peak Season: Essential Omnichannel & Fulfillment Strategies for Success

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Darby Meegan

Hello. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for attending today's webinar. Navigating peak season, essential omnichannel fulfillment strategies for success. This is our peak preparedness webinar as we are approaching q four very quickly. And as you are well aware, many brands are beginning the process of inbounding inventory, checking systems, making sure that their SKUs are all lined up, ready for success. We're glad you joined us today. My name is Darby Meegan. I'm the senior director for our omnichannel branch here at Flexport, and it's my distinct pleasure to join you here from, meeting in Vegas. Before we begin, I would love to cover just a few things with you so that this webinar is the most impactful it can be for you and your company. One, on your screen, you are going to see a sidebar to your right, and on that sidebar, you can submit questions under the q and a. At the end of the presentation, we do have time set aside for q and a. We anticipate a fair amount of questions today. And so if you would like your question to be answered, please ask it as it comes to your mind. Don't wait. Make it relevant right in the moment. We may even jump in and answer as we're on a slide that is covering your specific question. In the same sidebar, you're gonna see a tab labeled docs. This is where you can download a presentation that we're going to be sharing with you today. If you want to share it internally, if you wanna review it later, if you just wanna jog your memory and think of things that you should put on a checklist for your peak, it's a great resource, and we are happy to share it with you today. I will go through a quick legal note with you. Please keep in mind that all this information is provided is based on the situation at this current time, 07/31/2025. It may not be customized specifically to your business requirements, to your brand, to what's happening in your environment. We always recommend reaching out to one of Flexport's experts to discuss the particular situation you find yourself in, as well as having a conversation with somebody who may end up being a long term resource that you can reference, that you can use, and that will be beneficial for the supply chain that you are operating. Alright. Joining today, also, me joining me today will be my colleagues, Erin Troy, who leads our customer experience team here at Flexport, and Nikhil Dandekar, director of engineering for omnichannel products. He is an extensive knowledge base for our systems here at Flexport. He's an extensive knowledge base for the integrations that we have and the marketplaces we work with, and I am overjoyed that they both joined me today to be a resource for you today. Here is today's agenda that we'll be running through. We're gonna jump in with a few, resources, thoughts, what's happening in the market for peak season 2025. The burning coal that dropped yesterday is the end of de minimis for the rest of the world, effective at the August. Thirty days for brands to respond, and they've been building inventory for peak season. Next, I'll hand it off to Erin Troy, who is doing a ton of work with her team to get prepared, with merchants directly as well as, generally, with our support team. And so it's what to expect, how to make your supply chain as best as possible this peak season, then I'll hand it to Nikhil who will go through tips and tricks from an engineering and tech expert. That's what we're gonna be covering. And then, again, as I said, drop your questions on the right side for us. That's what we're gonna be covering. It's a lot to pack in in the next twenty seven minutes. I think I'm already seventy seconds behind, so forgive me for that. First things first. Executive order came out yesterday regarding the end of de minimis for the rest of the world to be in effect on August 29. On the top right, you're seeing the whitehouse.gov executive order fact sheet that was posted by the administration. On the bottom right, if you are itching, for helpful resources imminently because this impacts your brand, there are three resources that will be published with this deck that you can go ahead and download and bookmark those links. I'll go into a few details first, but number one, if you are wondering how this affects your brands and you have very, very specific customs questions, maybe type one, type 11 clearances, you want to understand what options you have to import into bonded or anything like that, warehouses, on August 6, there is a webinar that we are hosting, and have been for quite some time in this environment that will be covering the tariffs. So go ahead and register for that webinar right now. Our custom experts will be handling that webinar, hosting that webinar, and make themselves available after that webinar to meet with you to discuss your specific scenarios. We understand this is incredibly disruptive for some brands, and we are willing to make experts across our business available for your questions. As we know that that time line is eminently approaching, we're already twenty nine days away from that date. Number two, there's a live blog that you can look for for tariff updates. We keep it up to the minute, and it is quite a labor of love for us as we are trying to help brands navigate the sea that they have found themselves in this year with an ever changing economic environment. If you've been paying attention to the last twenty four or forty eight hours, there are many trade deals that have been announced that are directly impacting the customs and duties that you pay as you enter this country. So, please, if you are importing to The United States and have questions, check our tariff blog as well. The third one, the tariff simulator. I have spent many hours on this since we've launched it in the last forty five days. It is a live simulator that shows you and updated daily, the duty rates that you pay when sourcing from other countries for your specific HTS codes. If you

Nikhil Dandekar

have not seen that yet, it

Darby Meegan

is an incredible resource. I want to start with resources because we understand that you may be in a situation where you are scrambling, but we hope that the resources that we have in place will be beneficial for your business in navigating these, difficult times. On the left, de minimis, the exemption for the rest of the world was eliminated yesterday by an executive order. This is for goods entering into the country, via postal means, not international postal, but through packages, and it was a qualified exemption for packages under a declared value of $800 where duties would not be paid, whether by air or land. These pack or sea, these packages could be delivered to end consumers across America. This is a major impact to the supply chain. Estimates say that over 30% of all packages that are shipped to end consumers were delivered under the de minimis exemption from the rest of the world and China. Impacts on this season that we foresee, one, is is that you how brands may experience higher costs as they have already landed inventory outside of The United States to take advantage of the de minimis exemption. And so moving that inventory may result in higher costs. Second one is is there are potential delays as brands are moving inventory in bulk, that previously was trickling into the network. Three, impacts on peak season. A positive out of all this is the consumer will get a better delivery experience. Many of these packages take eight to twelve days to deliver, and these customers will be seeing a domestic experience shipping with five to seven days for economy packages. Inventory has been building in the tariff environment, so we understand that this is probably the worst case scenario for many brands, but we do anticipate you should call your three p l's today and understand your forecast. Erin gonna be going into that here in a minute, but the forecast that have been been provided and the new business that they may be acquiring, you just want to make sure that if you're in that situation, you're able to provide clear data packs to be able to get a solution in place in the next twenty nine days, but also, b, if your three p l is currently able to service some of these brands, just make sure that your forecasts are shared. Give them realistic forecasts from a personal standpoint. I would say share with them the last two years before this year's forecast of actuals so that they can compare actuals to your forecast and anticipate any rises or misses based on your historical data. So one, audit your shipments. If you're using this service, look at the products that you are shipping into America. Look at the products that you're shipping across America. Understand the customs and legal requirements that are now attached to your brand if you're taking advantage of the t 86 clearance for de minimis. Two, explore fulfillment options. Hopefully, you sent emails yesterday to network contacts, or you were doing that this morning to understand how you can get a provider in The United States. The cost for these packages is quite high. I believe it is an $80 minimum of tariffs that must be paid on these packages. Three, consolidate your orders. Type one, type 11, cadences are possible for some brands. It is a very specific customs clearance for entering The United States. Reach out to your customs professional. Reach out to our team here at Flexport. My email is dmeegan@flexport.com. If you send me an email, I am capable of getting you in touch with a customs expert who can help you with that. Ensure that your documentation for entering United States in bulk is clear. Again, you may not have cleared bulk customs in quite some time for your shipments. It is worthwhile noting that you, may be experiencing a completely different process to get into United States in bulk. And then five would be if the circumstances have led to you, needing a logistics provider, partner with one who is very good at customs, partner with one who is very good at handling volume spikes, and is capable of meeting your forecast. This is a very disruptive thing. This will end up impacting domestic parcels. This will end up impacting domestic warehousing. This could cause port delays as people are trying to enter via trucking or ocean freight into The United States. This is incredibly relevant to anyone even if you have not been taking advantage of this. Please, again, my employment to you is reach out to your provider, provide them clear forecast and accurate forecast as best as you can so that they can plan for your business, and they can work with their carriers as well. I have beaten that horse into the ground, it feels like, but, again, I cannot stress how impactful this will be to the peak season. Additionally, as we've talked I will go to the next slide. Sorry. As we've talked, consumer behavior is hard to predict, and this poses another means of potential cost increases for consumers as the tariff exemption through de minimis is one that had suppressed prices on some products. Morgan Stanley has forecasted year over year growth suppressed from last year of 5.7% to 3.7% of this year. It is interesting because employment is doing well. Consumers, however, confidence is dropping. So this peak, one of the strongest considerations is we don't know what's going to happen. Many analysts across the industry are saying maybe it's gonna be the same. Many are saying it could be softer than last year. With that being said, number one thing a logistics professional can do is service their customers. Our customers often are our marketing and ecommerce teams, work with them to understand key goals for sales, work with them to understand contingency plans on softening demand, review even the Prime Day forecast and results that Amazon shared as an example of what's happening with consumer behavior. Walmart also had a major deal. Read those press releases and understand how that has impacted year over year to get an insight into what's happening in the market and what consumer behavior may be doing. Two, evaluate your stock positions. Many brands and your competitors have rushed in inventory or held off inventory in this period because of tariffs. They tried to thread a needle or perhaps they wanted to wait it out. That means that some of your competitors may be in an over inventory position in trying to, over market in order to generate cash flow. There may be brands that have tighter inventory positions and will ramp marketing later in the year. The number one thing you can do is to monitor your competitor, monitor retailers in your space, and understand the strategies they're deploying on a daily basis, and adjust your strategies with your marketing team dynamically. The big plug there is make sure your logistics team is sharing those results with your three p l, with your carrier providers so that they understand the push and pull of your forecast this year. I don't mean to sound doom and gloom. I'm meaning to say, we're logistics professionals. Nimbleness is part of our job and just evaluate what's happening. Three, costs. FedEx has announced a larger peak season than last year. And in recent history, we have yet to see some from other carriers yet hit the market. However, it is perhaps a sign of things to come. Perhaps FedEx is merely, the only one to lead this way, but evaluate your logistics costs. It's very hard to change carriers in the middle of peak, but perhaps augment your carrier pool with multiple carriers so that you can insulate. Many of the regional and hyperregional carriers never institute peak season surcharges. It's worthwhile to consider that they may be, a strategy you can unlock. Two or four, evaluate your carrier operations performances with the tariffs changing week by week with the de minimis changes. This slide was not yet updated from yesterday. There could be carrier congestion, and that was pre de minimis forecasting. So follow that closely. The last is consider servicing international consumers from your domestic supply chain via a DDP and DDU shipping option. There's a lot on this slide, a couple sources on the bottom. These are just some considerations for peaks and forecasts we find ourselves in in 2025. And with that said, here's our network. We have five warehouses across United States totaling over 5,000,000 square feet. Within striking distance of over 80% of the population in two days or less. We'd love to chat with you about what that may mean for your peak season, augmenting your supply chain, adding a second node, adding a third node against it, what you already have in your network, or potentially even just helping you understand, what a distributed logistics network in The United States could look like for you. With that being said, I'm gonna hand it off to my colleague, Erin Troy, who will join me on stage with what to expect, how to prep, and the nitty gritty details, not just the pie in the sky stuff that I've shared. Erin, I'll hand it off to you.

Erin Troy

Thanks, Darby. Yeah. Welcome, everyone. As Darby mentioned, my name is Erin Troy. I'm your director of customer experience here at Flexport. So I run both our account management and our customer support teams. As we jump in, we'll start first and foremost with how we've been preparing from a Flexport side for this peak. So, peak planning has is a full year exercise for us. We start in q four of the prior year where we start gathering a repository of lessons learned. And then in q one, we're reviewing that, we're making immediate adjustments, and then we're also building our roadmap for the next year as well. So it's a full year event. Right now, we're really kicking up the gears on this, as well. You know, it's funny it's July, but we're we're fully preparing for peak right now. We're going through a couple different exercises in terms of labor planning, in terms of carrier RFPs. We do carrier RFPs every year to ensure we have the best offering around speed, quality, and price for our merchants and that we can, to ensure we can minimize any price changes for our merchants. We also go through an aggressive labor planning exercise as well where we're making sure we have enough labor to to four times our capacity through November and December. So we're starting to hire now on some teams because we're gonna see that peak, inbound peak hit in September. So we're scaling support, we're scaling inbound so that we're well prepared for that volume to increase in the next few weeks here. So hard to believe it, but as Darby mentioned, we're only about a month out from September, and that's, again, where we consider our peak to start. Couple other things with scaling is just our time of coverage. Right? Most of our sites do some type of night shift right now, but we're gonna scale to twenty four hours across all of our sites, and then seven days a week for support as well. So as that volume increases, we're bringing in headcount. We're planning rigorously. This is where those forecast that Darby mentioned really come into play. The better forecast we can get from our merchants, the better we can align on what we need from carrier capacity, labor, even equipment at sites. Right? Those are all important things that go into to peak planning here. As we talk about what is important for our merchants and the dates that are gonna be important for you all, a lot of dates on the sheet, we're gonna email this out. So please don't feel like you have to absorb it all right now. But a couple key things I just wanted to highlight here. First, in general, SLAs are gonna be extended, for certain dates as we get closer to as we go through our cyber five, and our inbound peaks. This is because we wanna make sure we're hitting all of those deadlines. We're making sure we've planned enough, for inbound and outbound allocation that we're prioritizing inbound and outbound SLA. So you're gonna see on the bottom right here, removals and disposals, which usually take around fourteen days, are gonna take up to thirty days. Again, we wanna make sure your outbound orders get out on time. And so you'll see that in some of the comps here. The key thing I wanna make sure we're focusing on with these SLAs are number one, anything that goes through proper replenishment or needs additional touches, that's gonna take a little bit longer than going direct into receive. And so if you have something that's gonna need there are those services, make sure you're keeping track of those deadlines so we could get the inventory in and we can get it processed. Secondarily, our ecommerce deadline for inbound is November 7. So we wanna make sure we're we're really tracking that one closely because that's making sure that inbound is at our, cross one of our cross docks, we are able to get it to our downstream sites. We're able to get it fully received and available for sale for that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, those sales dates. And so November sub November 7, that's our last inbound for BFCM. And then November 21 is any inventory that you need in stock for a Christmas deadline. So our Christmas cutoff right now is 12/23. We don't have the actual carrier cutoff quite yet. That's that'll come out in the next few weeks, and so you'll get an additional email. Again, another plug, any emails you get from us here saying peak prep, please make sure you're opening them. Please make sure you're tracking our blog posts because we'll continuously update you with with more information as we get closer to peak. But, those are the big ones. Make sure you get your inbound in early November 7 through BSCM, November 21 for Christmas cutoff, and then your carrier cutoffs will be communicated here in September. We'll send this out in an email, so it'll be good. In terms of what to expect from a customer service standpoint, so we've done a ton of work the past year and a half prepping our customer support teams as we've gone into these one p l buildings across the five nodes that Darby showed. We've also hired on-site support. So we've hired a plethora of folks across all of those buildings to make sure we're optimizing your experience as a merchant, getting you closer to your inventory, getting you closer to the process. And with that, we've also expanded our coverage on support. So we're gonna have chat, seven days a week coming, up in peak here. So November 11 is our date for for that. We also launched a phone line as well. So our phone line, you can call in and they'll make sure they get, your ticket looked at and get you as many answers as possible. As we get closer to peak, we're gonna be adding different features to that phone line that help get you closer to, contacting the actual site that your inventory is in as well. But there's a bunch of different ways you can contact support. I would recommend always going back to the contacting support page that's in help center. That's gonna have our latest and greatest. It's gonna have anything that, we roll out here soon for support before peak, and we'll also make sure to include those in peak comms as well. But done a ton of work here. When we talk about SLAs for those tickets, just one last final note from my side. We classify those, based on urgency. And so critical issues are considered urgent. Those are your outbound orders, your highly severe or impacting merchant operations or customer satisfaction. Those SLAs are gonna be around five hours of getting you first response high as significant issues that require timely resolution, but do not, immediately disrupt operations. That's gonna be ten hours, and then your routine your routine tickets are gonna be closer to twenty hours. We're constantly working on driving that SLA down as we hire more folks, as we get more around the clock coverage for support, and, hopefully, you're able to experience that as we we head into peak here. Just another shameless plug on my side. As you're submitting those tickets and you're engaging with support, a couple of things that are super critical, for success here. One is make sure you're super clear in what's needed and provide as much information as you can. Right? This is an inbound issue. This is my PO. This is the delay or gap I'm seeing. As more clarity we can provide in that ticket, the less questions back and forth that support reps gonna have to ask you. Secondarily, if you have an additional issue and you have an ongoing ticket, open a new ticket for that issue. It allows us to track communications. It allows us to make sure we're keeping track of SLAs and getting back to the merchants in a timely manner. So as you as you start to to hone in on peak, making sure you're diving into your business, please make sure we're focused on those two things first and foremost, and we'll make sure we're driving the best customer experience as possible. So with that, you should be pretty well prepared on what to expect from our end for peak. I'm gonna hand it over to Nikhil to talk through some Flexport tech tips and tricks.

Nikhil Dandekar

Hey. Hi, everyone. As Darby and Erin introduced me, I'm Nikhil Dandekar. I'm one of the directors of engineering here at Flexport, and let's jump into how to make beak super successful for all of you. Now, hopefully, you're at a point in the process that you've already gone ahead and done your forecasting for me. But in case you haven't, we have a few order reports here, order and shipment reports that we make available in our portal that you can pull down. You can look at it at the SKU level. You can look at it at the quarter level to make sure you're doing your forecasting right. A few tips and tricks from us that I think will help you out. First off, look at whether you've introduced any new SKUs into the same SKU segment. So maybe you're talking about new colors. You're talking about new sizes, which means that your per SKU demand might change, but there's a chance that your overall demand for that SKU segment goes up. Something to look at. The other thing to look at is have you introduced new channels or marketplaces where you're now selling that could change things? And, of course, see if you have any new SKUs coming in that you need to, like, hang your hat off of some of your existing SKUs to figure out what demand's gonna look like. Another thing worth looking at in terms of forecasting is also the timing. Are there certain SKUs that that do really well at certain parts of the peak timeline? If so, it's worth even noting that down and sharing that with your three p l so that they can be ready for it. For account managed merchants, we highly recommend that you communicate your anticipated changes in volume, even noting the timelines, noting skew details, if you can, to your Flexport team or to your three p l. Trust me. They'll love you for it. Another one worth talking about here in terms of, forecasting is if you have any brand partnerships coming up, if you're gonna be suddenly pushing out a social media campaign, anything of that sort, You could maybe have backlogged items that you've promised your customers that you now wanna fulfill, if you're gonna do a really large promo. All of that, we love to hear about it. The more information we have, the better prepped we can be for you and for your customers. So please send us all of those notes across. If it's not us, if it's a different three p l, do the same for them. They'll love you for it. They're from there on, talking about getting ready for the dates that we have for inbounds. Erin already spoke about them. We will send them across to you. But to put a fine point on that communication piece, please make sure that you've whitelisted our domains so that you get emails from us. Please do make sure that, like, you check through your inbox. If you see any of them in the junk mail folder, pull them out. I'd also say, to Erin point, it might be worth it to, like, bookmark our blogs and to follow along. Last, if you have an account, please go in. Make sure that you have the correct email on your account and not just a group alias that goes nowhere. So make sure that you've done all of that so you can continue to receive communications from us throughout week in a very timely manner, and you can react to it. Of course, be aware of the timelines that Erin just spoke about so that you have all of your inventory in. Make sure that you've created your inbounds. Make sure that you've created your inventory records if you haven't already. And all of this, we are focusing a lot on inbounds because a successful outbound peak all depends on your inbounds getting in at the right time in great health. So make sure with that you've updated all of your product details. If you have any HAZMAT items, tag them early. Our compliance team goes in, checks them out, and then verifies them and approves them. If you have new items coming in, make sure that you've set up your dimensions. Unless you've set up your weights and dimensions, we can't ship them out because we don't know how large the item is. If you feel, like, you're gonna be bringing in items that are really large, we also have some SCIOC guidelines, that you wanna be aware of, so please go look at our help center. For those of you who are using our APIs, please there are there are variants of everything that I said on the API side as well. If you're not going through the portal, please reach out to us, through CS, and we'll get you engaged with our right solutions engineer to help you build that out in case you haven't already. Lastly, when it comes to physically inbounding the plan, a couple of things to note. So first off, try to make sure that you're meeting all of our inbound requirements. So make sure that your items are correctly labeled, with the right codes. If you're using a freight of rep, make sure that you have pallet tables applied so we can route it correctly. Package your units correctly. So, like, if you have apparel, make sure it's a clear plastic bag. If you have fragile items, put it in a bubble wrap, all of that. The reason why we say this is because that is one of the drivers, of delays on inbounds because it takes us more time to then bring them into compliance for us to be able to ship them out. Finally, manage your reserve replenishments to account for peak volume, because we usually, we take care of it for steady state. But if you think you're going to be doing something abnormal, you may want to set up additional replenishments. Again, for a car managed merchants, we take care of this once you send us the forecast. Like I said before, a successful outbound all depend on successful inbounds. The one thing that I will note there are a few points here that you can go look at later, but the most important point that I'll harp on is make sure that all of the service levels so if you wanna have a one day expedited, two day expedited, international, make sure that you've tested all of them out and you aren't bringing something in the new in the peak. So if you wanna have one day expedited, even though you think you're gonna have a volume today, just go ahead and enable it, test it out, make sure that it works with your marketplaces. Amazon, TikTok, Walmart, all are known to have guidelines around how they expect tracking to look like, and how fast they expect those tracking updates to come in. If there's some misconfiguration on your end, there's a chance that you could get penalized for it and not realize it until much later, and you don't want that to happen to you and Pete. So enable all of that early and test it out. If you're going via APIs, the exact same thing still holds true for you. You want to test out those integrations end to end beforehand and not turn on a new service level or don't try to turn on a new marketplace really close to peak. Or if you really have to do that, please reach out to us for help so we make sure that we help you do it the right ways. But with that said, I think I'll pause and maybe move on to q and a. So with that, I'll invite Erin and Darby back on stage to take on questions.

Darby Meegan

Excellently delivered, Nikhil. I'm question here, Nikhil. I'll probably let you answer it first. You are the data guy after all. Summarizing it a bit, it says, how can brands better partner with their three p l for new seasonal products, highly volatile products, and how can they forecast them?

Nikhil Dandekar

I think the the way we usually recommend that people do this, is that we try to hang like I said, like, you can hang your hat on existing skews that you have even if they're seasonal. If you have some forecast from your previous years, we can use that. The second thing, even knowing that it's gonna be volatile is actually a helpful signal for most three p l's because then we can plan for it accordingly. So I think those are the two things. Look at your closest parallel skews. Even if they're spiky, that's still good data for us. We can use that. To Darby's point, if you have a track record of about two years for the other SKUs, we can kind of build a forecast off of it. And then, like I said, even knowing that it's a new spiky SKU is immensely helpful for us. We can kind of

Darby Meegan

plan around that. Love it. Erin, I'll ask you this one. What are some common fulfillment bottlenecks brands see with their three p l's? How can they mitigate it?

Erin Troy

Yeah. The biggest one I think you'll see coming into into peak is just in mountain bottlenecks. And so I think we've all kinda drove this one home, but the better we can have our SKUs labeled correctly, we've had the information uploaded in the seller portal. We're tracking we're checking the seller portal for any problems that we're seeing and resolving those quickly. Right? So when something comes in and it's non compliant, it'll it'll prop up as a problem in your seller portal. And if you can resolve that quickly, the site team can then resolve it as well. And so getting into the network smoothly, I think, is the biggest bottleneck that we typically see, and that's why we start that process, you know, so much earlier so we can resolve those issues and we can get them rectified so that your items are available for sale. But, please make sure you're you're monitoring that, problems tab because that's something we work very closely with to get those issues resolved.

Darby Meegan

I'll add a little bit more of a general answer. If your three PO provider doesn't provide a simplified portal reporting directly available at your fingertips, a very common request would be to ask for an end of day wash on any orders that have not fulfilled, any orders that have stocked out, any orders that may be split shipping. So another way to do that is to request directly, in your email from your provider, those orders or issues coming up, again, if they do not have a self serve portal. There is a question about how will de minimis impact FedEx low value shipments? Does the 80 minimum apply if you have an account with FedEx? The answer is specific to the brand. There are ways, type one, type 11, clearing them in bulk. They have the potential to delay your packages significantly. The answer is if you are clearing under a t 86 clearance for de minimis treatment, it is probably not going to be able to enter America under the t 86 clearance according to the executive order. The answer there would be is either to land the goods in America or potentially clear it under a different means and pay the full value tariff. There is one big exemption, and there's a ton of different caveats, but the exemption is is if it's a bonafide gift shipping from a citizen to a citizen and not a business to a citizen, there are, impacts to that. So if you are shipping to a friend, it is some exemptions apply. Another one, it says, my provider is infamous for consistently failing to pick up my orders. Are there insights or solutions you recommend? A few here. One would be is troubleshoot why. I think asking the question why are they having issues, prepping them, making sure they know that your order volume is what it is. Many times, brands, don't understand that their three p l's are using drop trailers, which are pre positioned carrier trailers at a facility that get filled throughout the day and then picked up every day. What happens when those trailers are full and there are no more drop trailers? They can schedule impromptu pickups if they have that relationship with the carrier. The number one thing I would say is work with your provider to understand the situation they have with picking up your parcels and make sure that they have the capacity. And if not, I would consider understanding your options. Can you augment your supply chain with other providers? Can you, this is judgment day. Peak season, specifically, is where most brands make most of their money. So I would say reach out to them, try to plan ahead. And if they cannot give you the peace of mind you need, consider reaching out to another provider to see if there are options still remaining for you yet in the year. The next one, Erin, I'll send this one to you. If a merchant has inventory in d two c storage, are we able to move it back to reserve storage so they can avoid peak and long term storage fees for slow moving SKUs?

Erin Troy

Yeah. Right now, unfortunately, this is not a product we have built out. It's something I think we're looking at in 2026. It's always good to work with the support team, though, to see how we can optimize the storage, make sure we're optimizing everything we have at our disposal. But right now, unfortunately, it's not part of our product stack.

Darby Meegan

Totally makes sense. A really great question coming in. Some things are certain in today's environment and some are not. We have seen announcements that Vietnam will have a 20 duty, but our tariff at Flexport, the tariff simulator, still shows AIPA as 46%. Is this a matter of waiting for a formal federal federal register announcement or similar to make updates? Yes. That is specifically what is happening. Our team scours the official reports. Often, the details are the devil, and the devil is in the details. We rely on the official announcements for how these tariffs, these customs, these enforcements will occur, and we update there. There are many things that enter the market, many announcements that enter the market, even misreporting by news, and we rely on our experts scouring the actual customs border announcements, rule changes, etcetera, in order to get the most specific and clear answers. We would hate to have speculative things in our tariff simulator that then do not become true, and people have planned their supply chains. Thank you for using the tool. I think it's a pretty fantastic tool. Certainly, many, people have used it. If you have specific questions, you can reach out, and a customs expert can perhaps guide you through what we're seeing and what we anticipate, with the caveat again until those rulings become final and they enter the federal register, they are not in effect. So thank you for that question. It is a great one and shows just how things are happening in the market so quickly. We are coming at five minutes over, and we've answered most of the questions. Again, a final plug, if there are specific situations that you would like to get in touch with us on, whether it's the three people on this call or any number of logistics experts at Flexport, we are more than happy to reach out to you and have a conversation. You can reach me. My email's already in the chat, dmeegan@flexport.com. Send me an email. If I can't be helpful for you, I will find somebody who can help you out. We've appreciated your time today.