The Tariff Reality Check: How to Actually Survive the China Shipping Crisis
Let me be honest with you - the tariff situation is hard, and we need to stop pretending it's some kind of opportunity. If all of your fulfillment is out of China and your main market is the US, this isn't about making money right now. It's about surviving.
I saw Sean Frank's LinkedIn post recently about how 2025 is the year of survival for a lot of physical goods retailers, and he's absolutely right about how to handle this situation. Let me share the real conversations and strategies I've been having with my clients over the past few weeks.
The Customer Communication Crisis
Here's what's going to kill your business faster than any tariff: pissing off your customers with unexpected costs. Nothing is worse than having customers get hit with surprise duties at delivery. I've seen brands lose entire customer bases over this.
You have two main options for handling this:
DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid): Your customer pays the tariffs when the package arrives. If you go this route, you absolutely must have clear messaging on your website about potential duties and taxes. Don't bury it in fine print - make it obvious.
DDP (Delivered Duty Paid): The customer pays tariffs at checkout, and your team purchases a DDP shipping label. This obviously really hurts your conversion rate because customers see the full cost upfront, but there are no surprises.
Here's something critical that most people don't realize: there are actually two types of possible tariffs depending on how you ship. If you send via postal services like China Post or HK Post, the tariff will be 54% but with a minimum $100 for de minimis (under $800). If you send via air freight, the tariff is as low as 30%. It's important you get this right because obviously you don't want to get stuck with an unexpected tariff bill.
Pick your poison, but whatever you do, be transparent about it.
The Big Question: Wait It Out or Pivot?
At a higher level, you have to make a bet: Will the politics all be over in a few months and everything go back to normal, or is this going to be a long-term thing where you need to look at moving fulfillment to another country?
Here's what we've already seen: movement reducing from the initial 150% down to as low as 30%, and we know that in around 90 days, something else is going to happen. Obviously, no one has the answer to this question, but currently, it seems that waiting it out could be the best option.
Your Survival Strategy: Focus on Secondary Markets
So what do you do in the meantime? Focus on your secondary markets.
Look at whatever strategies you used to gain traction in the US market and apply them to your secondary markets:
- Influencer Marketing: If you rely on influencer marketing in the US, reach out to influencers in your secondary markets
- Email Marketing: Set up your EDMs to send out in secondary market timezones
- Shipping Optimization: Do you offer free shipping to secondary markets? Look at optimizing things that you've already optimized for the US market
Leverage Shopify Markets for Localization
Another powerful strategy is utilizing Shopify Markets to post region-specific content for your secondary markets. Ask yourself:
- Is it the same season in your secondary market?
- Should you use different wording or messaging?
- Do you need to add languages?
- Would local photography make a difference?
I'm not going to go into specifics here, but all these tools are native in the Shopify platform. You could even invest in doing a photo shoot in the region or getting a localized domain.
The Bottom Line
This isn't the time for growth hacking or looking for the next big opportunity. This is about survival. Be honest with your customers, make smart decisions about duty handling, consider your long-term bets carefully, and maximize your secondary markets while you wait to see how this all plays out.
The brands that survive this period will be the ones that communicate clearly, adapt quickly, and don't try to get too clever with workarounds that might backfire.