Drop Shipping Decline for US Customers
Sherwin Xia, co-founder of Trendsi, on building the Shein for Utah moms
This points to a structural shift in US ecommerce, where cheap overseas parcel shipping is no longer a reliable growth engine for small sellers. Trendsi is built around that reality. Drop shipping is useful for testing a style with almost no upfront inventory, but once shipping slips past roughly 10 to 14 days, the seller takes the brand damage. That pushes more volume toward US stocked inventory, wholesale buys, and private label manufacturing.
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Trendsi already treats drop shipping as the top of the funnel, not the core business. The company says successful sellers usually use it for only 10 to 20% of inventory, then move winning items into wholesale and custom product lines, where inventory is steadier and margins are better.
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The reason is operational, not just economic. Trendsi says overseas shipping is already near the acceptable limit at about 10 days, and extra customs steps push orders into the range where shoppers forget the purchase. In fashion, where repeat buying depends on trust and fast gratification, that makes slow parcel fulfillment much less workable.
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This is also the path larger cross border players are taking. Shein has been building US warehouses and shifting more best sellers into bulk domestic fulfillment, while keeping some direct from overseas shipping where the item price leaves enough room for duties and delays. Small sellers do not have Shein's scale, so they feel the squeeze sooner.
The next phase of the market looks more hybrid. Drop shipping stays as a product discovery tool for long tail SKUs and higher ticket items, but the center of gravity shifts toward local inventory, faster fulfillment, and more owned product. That favors supply chain platforms that can move a merchant from testing a trend to stocking winners and manufacturing exclusive goods on the same system.