Originally published E-Commerce Efficiency on by https://www.sdbj.com/transportation/logistics/e-commerce-efficiency/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=e-commerce-efficiency at San Diego Business Journal
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CARLSBAD – E-commerce fulfillment and third-party operations company ShipCalm predicts that U.S.-based fulfillment will be central to businesses in a changing and challenging market.
CEO Greg Moser said that ShipCalm’s growth equips the company to support its partner retailers through economic headwinds, including recent tariffs.
“The business community struggles in high volatility,” Moser said. “I think everybody’s still on edge, wondering what’s going to happen next. That will take some time to change.”
ShipCalm focuses on solving operational challenges for e-commerce businesses, which Moser said are good at marketing their products, but need assistance with the physical logistics around their products. ShipCalm offers what Moser describes as a “three pillar approach” to help these “digitally native brands” – a software platform that provides intelligence for business owners; physical infrastructure in the form of warehouses where ShipCalm stores, inventories and fulfills products; and professional services.
“We are meeting the modern brand where they are,” Moser said. “30 years ago, brands were beholden to their distribution channels and existing retailers. In the last 10 to 15 years, it’s become easier to start a brand. The commerce landscape has gotten much more complicated, and I would say our primary differentiator is our relentless focus on the founders of these companies and supporting them in being successful.”
ShipCalm customers are typically small to mid-size D2C companies making between $1 million and $100 million in revenue. Currently, the company works with about 150 businesses and collaborates with Amazon and Walmart.
In 2023, ShipCalm morphed its business model from third-party logistics to third-party operations, added a suite of professional services to complement warehousing and consolidated customer data for decision-making.
“We want to be the Shopify of operations,” Moser said.
U.S.-Based Fulfillment Helps with Challenging Market
According to Moser, recent tariffs posed a major obstacle to ShipCalm’s partner retailers.
“The first couple of weeks of April were chaos, and now I would say we’re in an organized chaos,” Moser said. “People, generally speaking, have solidified their strategies, whether that is changing their product mix or their sourcing…We just hope that it stays a little bit more predictable.”
Moser said that companies selling directly to consumers could adjust prices more easily as the economy shifted. However, companies that rely on partner retailers, with longer sales cycles, have a harder time adjusting prices to accommodate tariffs.
“A lot of brands became paused, and they stopped placing orders,” Moser said. “This has thrown off global supply chains quite a bit, because when you stop manufacturing new goods, even for a month, it creates an accordion effect, which was challenging and problematic.”
While companies reevaluate manufacturing locations, global capacity presents a dilemma. Larger businesses tend to take up capacity when moving to less expensive manufacturing sites, leaving small and mid-size businesses to work with the excess, if any.
“The big guys get that capacity first, and the little guys tend to struggle to find some, so it’s much harder for them to change where they might be sourcing from, just because of pure capacity constraints,” Moser said.
ShipCalm supports small and mid-size businesses with this shift by doing more assembly in its facilities, driving down unit economics, properly classifying customs and duties and creating storage capacity by stockpiling inventory.
“One of the things that we’ve heard from our customers is a decent amount of frustration,” Moser said. “But I would say there’s much more frustration around the speed of adaptability. If you know that changes are coming in 2026, for example, no big deal. You have plenty of time to plan. When the change is happening tomorrow, and it gets announced today, that’s the most challenging. Nobody saw it coming.”
Moser said that ShipCalm experienced some losses as the company adjusted to the new tariffs. Some partners based in Europe decided to pause operations with the U.S. during the disruption. Moser estimated that about 10% of ShipCalm’s partner retailers will experience long-term impacts from tariffs.
For a long time, U.S. businesses took the cost of Chinese manufacturing for granted, said Moser. The disruption of tariffs has urged companies to reevaluate where they base fulfillment and manufacturing.
“I think that being thoughtful about your sourcing is an important part of doing business, and it’s not often something that early-stage retailers think about,” Moser said.
Continued Company Growth
In a strategic move to boost e-commerce fulfillment and third-party logistics, ShipCalm acquired River Source Logistics (RSL) in 2024. The move more than doubled its customer base and moved its operations to Los Angeles. ShipCalm’s new, larger warehouse offers three times the capacity of its original facility and supports cost reductions and scaling. ShipCalm also has warehouse locations in Indianapolis and Chicago and has been growing at around 87% year-over-year, Moser said.
RSL’s understanding of the Amazon supply chain, in particular, has been a boon to ShipCalm.
ShipCalm also has plans in the works to advance AI warehouse automation and AI customer service support. The technology’s major benefit, said Moser, is speed.
“Another benefit with AI is that everybody has gotten better at predicting,” Moser said. “Predicting what’s going to sell, predicting costs…all of that insight in has gotten way better.”
Moser said that ShipCalm is also embarking on an “aggressive acquisition strategy,” hoping to expand to the Mountain Area, Texas and the Northeast.
“We’ll know that we’ve accomplished becoming a global leader in third-party operations when our brand name is synonymous with emerging consumer brands,” Moser said. “Much the way that Amazon or Shopify are ubiquitous with emerging consumer brands these days—we’d like ShipCalm to be alongside them in that discussion.”
ShipCalm
FOUNDED: 2017
CEO: Greg Moser
HEADQUARTERS: Carlsbad
BUSINESS: Third-Party Operations
EMPLOYEES: 150
REVENUE: 87% year-over-year growth
WEBSITE: www.shipcalm.com
CONTACT: [email protected]
Born and raised in San Diego, Madison takes great pride in local storytelling. Her coverage at the San Diego Business Journal includes tourism, hospitality, nonprofits, education and retail. An alumna of San Diego State University’s journalism program, she has written for publications including The San Diego Union-Tribune and The San Diego Sun. At the 2024 San Diego Press Club awards, Madison was recognized for her exemplary profile writing. She was also a speaker for the 2023 TEDx Conference at Bonita Vista High School. When she’s not working on her next story, Madison can be found performing music at a local restaurant or on one of San Diego’s many hiking trails.
Originally published San Diego Business Journal