35% Cost Reduction — LCL from China.

A direct-to-consumer brand sells home goods on Amazon FBA and Shopify. Its inventory came from suppliers in Shenzhen, China. The brand shipped 100% of that inventory by air. The team did this because they thought ocean freight meant booking a full 20ft or 40ft container. So they never priced the middle option that sits between a parcel and a full container.

That belief was expensive. Air freight is billed on chargeable weight, which is the actual weight of a box or its volume weight, whichever is greater. Home goods are bulky and light. A carton of cushions or storage bins fills a lot of space and weighs very little. So most of the $8–12 per kilogram was paid for air, not for product.

At those rates freight ate 22% of the cost of goods sold. Annual freight spend had climbed to $380K. Each new SKU made it worse, because a bigger box costs more to fly than a small one. Raising prices began to look like the only lever left. On a marketplace where buyers compare in one click, that lever is a risky one to pull.

The volume itself was modest. The brand moved 8–10 CBM per month, which is well short of what a 20ft container holds. Buying a full container would have meant ordering months of stock at once. That ties up cash in stock and adds storage cost at both ends of the lane. For a brand funding growth out of its own margin, that trade was not on the table.

Speed was the other constraint. Amazon rewards sellers who keep stock flowing and penalizes the ones who run dry. Air freight was costly, but it was fast, and fast is what kept the listings live and the reviews coming. Any move to ocean had to protect that rhythm. A cheaper lane that caused a stockout would cost far more than it saved.

Onboarding started at the supplier, not at the port. Suaid Global collected carton sizes, weights and product details for every SKU in the plan. That data set the booked volume for each sailing, and the same figures fed the FBA carton records. Suppliers then received a booking calendar with the cargo cut-off for each consolidation. Cargo that missed a cut-off waited for the next slot instead of being flown at short notice.

Documents were the second workstream. Ocean imports into the United States need a security filing before the cargo is loaded at origin. Each shipment also needs a commercial invoice, a packing list and the bill of lading, all matching each other. Licensed customs broker partners filed the security data inside the window and prepared the entry. Product classification was agreed once, up front, and reused on every shipment, which removes a common source of delay.

The lane then ran on a fixed rhythm. Every two weeks cargo was received and measured at the origin CFS, loaded and sailed. On arrival in Los Angeles the container was deconsolidated and cleared. Drayage partners moved the cargo to the prep facility, where cartons were labeled to FBA standards and delivered against booked appointments. The same steps, in the same order, every cycle.

The brand followed each shipment by milestone: received, loaded, sailed, arrived, cleared, delivered. Milestone updates replaced the daily chase calls that short air bookings used to need. The plan was also tuned during the first cycles. The 70/30 split was not fixed on day one. SKUs moved between ocean and air as the forecast showed which ones really needed the speed.

Peaks got their own treatment. Seasonal restocks were booked earlier against the same 45-day cycle, so the brand paid ocean rates for demand it could already see. Air stayed open for launches, and for anything the forecast missed or a supplier delivered late. A short review each month set booked volume against sold volume and reset the next cycle. That review is what kept the split honest as the catalog changed.