From the factory floor to the warehouse shelf.
Placing the order is the easy part. Getting goods produced on time, moved across an ocean, cleared through customs and booked into stock is where most expansions lose weeks and money. eBrands runs that whole stretch as one operator — including acting as Importer of Record, so the customs entry is in our name, not yours. Freight, duty and storage are recharged at cost, with no markup.
The gap between "ordered" and "sellable" is where expansions stall.
Nothing on this stretch is difficult in isolation. The damage comes from the handovers between the people doing each piece.
Production, staging, ocean freight and customs stack up into months, not weeks. Reorder decisions have to be made against a forecast that reaches past the next quarter — and most teams are working from a spreadsheet that was accurate a fortnight ago.
The supplier hands to the freight forwarder, who hands to the broker, who hands to the warehouse. Each one answers for their own leg. When something slips, the brand is the only party with visibility across all four — usually after the fact.
Someone must be named on the entry, hold the EORI or equivalent, pay duty and import VAT, and carry the liability if the classification is wrong. Brands routinely discover this after a container is already on the water.
Every order sits in one of five states, and both sides can see which.
A purchase order is not a document that gets emailed and forgotten. In our model it is a tracked object with a state, an owner and a date — visible to you and to us at the same time.
Payment status is tracked alongside the state — unpaid, partially paid or paid — so the cash position of the order is never a separate conversation from its physical position.
You make it. We move it, clear it and book it in.
You make it. We move it, clear it and store it, at cost with no markup. Who owns the goods in transit depends on which of the two stock models applies
Your side
Our side
The title question: where eBrands imports the goods, ownership has to sit with us at the border, because customs requires the importer to own what it imports. It is a transfer on paper — the economics stay yours. The full mechanics are on the partner model page.
Clearance is a capability, not a courier service.
Supply chain performance is measured, not assumed.
Standard targets, agreed jointly with each partner before they take effect. Amber is the alarm rather than red — the root-cause conversation starts before a target is actually missed.
Five SLA pillars sit behind those numbers: stock availability · inbound and fulfillment · data and communication · issue management · quality and compliance. Scored monthly, reviewed quarterly, with targets and remedies agreed per partner rather than imposed.
Lead time, cover and the next order — calculated, not guessed.
Where the fulfillment network page is about where stock sits, this stretch is about when it arrives. Apollo holds both sides of that: every open purchase order with its state and payment status, supplier lead times as actually delivered rather than as quoted, and forward cover measured against production plus freight time.
That is what makes replenishment a calculation. When cover falls to the reorder point, the next order is raised — early enough that the lead time still fits inside it.
Common questions about supply chain and import
Ready to go global?
Let us show you how eBrands can take your brand to every market that matters.