DALLAS – September 1, 2026 – The ecommerce experience has traditionally been defined by what happens before a customer clicks “Buy Now.” Faster storefronts, better product discovery, more personalized marketing and increasingly intelligent checkout experiences have transformed the way consumers shop online.
ShipSquared believes the next major transformation will happen after that click.
The company is building a connected commerce infrastructure platform designed around a simple idea: the shopping experience does not end at checkout.
The delivery date a shopper sees, whether the product is actually in stock, how much shipping costs, how quickly an order leaves the fulfillment center, which carrier receives it, whether it arrives when promised and what happens when something goes wrong are all part of the shopper’s experience.
And increasingly, they are determining whether the transaction happens at all.
U.S. ecommerce sales reached $340.2 billion during the second quarter of 2026, growing 12.2% year over year compared with 6.7% growth for total retail sales, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Ecommerce now represents 17.1% of U.S. retail sales.
But as digital commerce grows, the infrastructure behind it is becoming significantly more complex.
DHL’s 2026 U.S. ecommerce research found that 68% of shoppers have abandoned an online purchase because a product was out of stock or unavailable, while 66% have abandoned a purchase because the delivery offering failed to meet their expectations.
McKinsey found that more than 90% of U.S. consumers are likely to abandon an online purchase when shipping costs are too high, while more than 95% prefer free standard delivery over paying for expedited shipping. At the same time, consumers increasingly value reliability and knowing that an order will arrive when promised rather than simply receiving the fastest possible service.
For ShipSquared, those numbers point to a larger change taking place across ecommerce.
The supply chain is becoming part of the product.
“Every checkout is the result of thousands of decisions made long before the customer ever starts shopping,” said Zak Jones, CEO of ShipSquared. “How inventory is planned, where it is positioned, how quickly an order can move, what delivery options are available, and how reliably the brand can keep its promise all shape whether a customer feels confident enough to complete a purchase. And that same infrastructure determines whether the experience is good enough for them to come back and buy again. As consumer expectations continue to rise, ecommerce brands have to optimize every step behind the scenes, not just the adverts or landing pages. The next generation of commerce will be won by brands that can make the entire experience feel seamless, from the first click to the moment the order arrives.”
Building the Infrastructure Behind the Buy Now Button
ShipSquared is developing its platform around that experience.
Rather than viewing sourcing, international freight, inventory, fulfillment, parcel delivery and post-purchase operations as disconnected services, ShipSquared is working to connect them into a single commerce infrastructure layer for direct-to-consumer brands.
The goal is to give brands greater control from the moment inventory is ordered from a supplier through the moment an individual package reaches a customer’s doorstep.
That can mean helping a brand manage purchase orders and suppliers, move inventory from China into the United States, understand where inventory is located, fulfill customer orders, select among competing parcel networks, monitor carrier performance and give teams better access to the operational information behind every order.
It is a fundamentally different way of thinking about supply chain operations.
ShipSquared does not believe the future of ecommerce logistics is simply moving boxes faster. It is making thousands of individual operational decisions more intelligently so the shopping experience becomes more reliable, more economical and easier for both the brand and its customer.
“I started my ecommerce journey in 2016 as a brand owner and Amazon seller, which gave me an appreciation for the operational side of commerce from the perspective of the merchant first,” said Brent, who runs operations at ShipSquared. “Many of the people leading operations at ShipSquared come from similar backgrounds, so we understand the pressures brands face around margin, inventory, customer expectations and execution. That experience informs how we build and run our operation today. We are continually investing in automation, AI, robotics and better processes to improve efficiency across the network, because those gains do more than make operations smoother. They help our users protect margin, offer more competitive pricing and ultimately provide a better experience for the customer.”
That operating philosophy is shaping how ShipSquared invests in technology across every layer of the commerce ecosystem. The company is applying AI, automation, robotics and software-driven workflows at the consumer level, the brand level and throughout each stage of the supply chain. ShipSquared believes the next era of ecommerce will require continuous modernization across all three, from how shoppers interact with brands, to how brands make operational decisions, to how products are physically moved and delivered. By rethinking each layer as part of one connected system, ShipSquared aims to reduce friction, improve accuracy and create efficiencies that strengthen margins, support more competitive pricing and ultimately improve the customer experience.
The Parcel Network Is Changing
That shift is becoming particularly visible in last-mile delivery.
The United States generated 23.1 billion parcel shipments in 2025, equivalent to approximately 732 parcels every second, according to the 2026 Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. Pitney Bowes projects U.S. parcel volume could reach 31 billion shipments annually by 2031.
At the same time, the carrier landscape is rapidly diversifying.
Parcel volume handled by the “Other” carrier category tracked by Pitney Bowes, which includes regional and alternative networks such as OnTrac, GLS, Veho, UniUni, Gofo, Jitsu, SpeedX and Better Trucks, increased 127% in 2025, from approximately 800 million to 1.8 billion parcels. Their share of U.S. parcel revenue more than doubled from 3.4% to 7.2% in a single year.
For ecommerce brands, ShipSquared believes that fragmentation is an opportunity.
Instead of building shipping operations around one carrier or one static rate card, ShipSquared’s multi-carrier intelligence is designed to evaluate the available delivery network and help route orders based on the combination of cost, service level and performance that makes sense for that shipment.
“The best carrier isn’t necessarily the same carrier for every package,” Jones said. “A shopper in Dallas, a shopper in Los Angeles and a shopper in rural Pennsylvania don’t necessarily need to move through the same network. When you have access to more carriers, better performance data and software making those decisions intelligently, logistics starts becoming something you can optimize instead of simply something you pay for.”
That distinction becomes increasingly important as consumers continue demanding inexpensive or free shipping while brands simultaneously face pressure to protect margin.
Bringing AI Into Physical Commerce
ShipSquared is also preparing its infrastructure for a world in which brands increasingly interact with operations through artificial intelligence.
Among the capabilities available to ShipSquared partners is an MCP connector designed to give authorized AI environments secure access to relevant supply-chain information.
Instead of requiring an operator to repeatedly move between dashboards, spreadsheets, carrier portals and email threads, a brand can interact conversationally with its operational data to understand areas such as purchase orders, supplier activity, China-to-U.S. freight, fulfillment operations and carrier performance.
The implication goes beyond replacing dashboards with chat.
As AI systems become increasingly capable of taking action on behalf of businesses, ShipSquared sees an opportunity to connect artificial intelligence with the physical infrastructure required to actually execute commerce.
A brand’s AI could identify an inventory issue before it results in a stockout, investigate an order that has stopped moving, compare carrier performance, retrieve information about incoming freight or surface operational risks that would otherwise remain buried across multiple systems.
This creates the possibility of moving ecommerce operations from reactive management toward increasingly agentic supply chains.
Turning the Warehouse Into Part of Customer Experience
That philosophy also extends into the physical fulfillment process.
ShipSquared’s Video Verify technology associates fulfillment video with individual orders, creating a visual record of how a shipment was packed before it left the facility.
When a customer reports an issue, authorized teams can retrieve the corresponding packout record instead of relying solely on warehouse scans or manually reconstructing what happened.
As ShipSquared expands the AI capabilities surrounding its platform, that information can become part of an agentic customer experience as well. An authorized AI agent could investigate an order issue, locate the relevant fulfillment record and help provide the brand or customer with the information needed to resolve the issue.
It turns what has traditionally been invisible warehouse activity into accessible customer-experience data.
The Supply Chain Becomes the Shopping Experience
The broader ecommerce market is moving in the same direction.
DHL’s global 2026 research, based on 29,000 online shoppers and 5,800 ecommerce businesses across 29 countries, found that 70% of shoppers now purchase internationally, up from 60% the prior year. The research also found logistics and price remain among the strongest forces influencing ecommerce behavior.
Products are being discovered through social media. AI is beginning to influence purchasing decisions. Brands can launch globally faster than ever before. Carrier networks are becoming more fragmented and sophisticated.
Yet every digital transaction ultimately creates a very physical obligation.
Something has to be manufactured.
Inventory has to be positioned.
The right product has to be available.
An order has to be fulfilled accurately.
A carrier has to be selected.
And a package has to arrive at the customer’s door when the brand said it would.
ShipSquared believes the companies that connect those steps most effectively will have a significant advantage in the next era of direct-to-consumer commerce.
“The storefront has become incredibly sophisticated, but there is still an enormous opportunity to improve everything that happens behind it,” Jones said. “We’re building ShipSquared around the belief that supply chain infrastructure should help brands create a more delightful shopping experience, not just move inventory. When the supply chain works the way it should, customers may never think about it. They just know the product was available, checkout was easy, delivery was affordable, their order showed up when promised and the brand did exactly what it said it would do.”
That is the experience ShipSquared wants to power.
About ShipSquared
ShipSquared is a direct-to-consumer commerce infrastructure company helping ecommerce brands connect the physical operations behind the online shopping experience. Through an integrated ecosystem spanning sourcing, international freight, fulfillment, inventory, multi-carrier delivery technology and supply-chain software, ShipSquared helps brands simplify operations and deliver on the promises they make to customers at checkout.
To become the leading supply chain and fulfillment partner for growing DTC brands, powered by a unified commerce platform, AI and automation.
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Company Name: ShipSquared
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Website: https://www.shipsquared.com/