DHL Teams With Shopify to Expand International Shipping

DHL is teaming with Shopify to expand international shipping for U.S.-based merchants.

The collaboration, announced Monday (Aug. 25), lets Shopify merchants access DHL eCommerce’s Parcel International Direct and Parcel International Standard services, and DHL Express Worldwide.

This arrangement, the company said in a news release, is designed to provide “reliable and cost-effective cross-border shipping solutions” for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

“We believe that a great shipping experience doesn’t have to be expensive. Until now, DHL eCommerce’s cost-optimized international network has primarily served enterprise-scale savvy shippers,” said Scott Ashbaugh, CEO, DHL eCommerce, Americas. “Through the Shopify partnership, we’re empowering small merchants and newcomers selling abroad access to the industry’s most cost-effective shipping option.”

With this partnership, both DHL Express and DHL eCommerce (Parcel International Direct) now include delivered duty paid (DDP) and delivered duty unpaid (DDU) services, giving merchants the choice to either collect duties and taxes from customers at checkout, or have customers pay them upon delivery.

According to the release, the DHL integration is available on Shopify now for merchants in the U.S. and Germany, with plans to expand into Canada in September of this year, with other markets to follow for the remainder of this year into the next.

The partnership is happening at a time when SMBs are dealing with the “gut punch” of new tariffs, PYMNTS wrote last week, as these companies “don’t have the resources, capital or leverage to do much about the supply chain pressures that they’re feeling today.”

However, Growth Catalyst Group CEO Manish Kapoor told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an interview that while SMBs may be lacking size, they often have the ability to speedily adapt, something their larger competitors do not. And as global trade tensions, increasing costs and changing consumer expectations all intersect, agility can provide a competitive edge.

“[SMBs] tend to be more nimble, with less corporate red tape to drive change faster if they have the answers,” Kapoor said. “The challenge is knowing where to focus.”

That focus boils down down to three levers: sourcing resilience, market expansion and operational efficiency, he said, the last of which offers the most immediate gains.

“Many SMBs still run warehouses on Excel and Google Sheets because they can’t afford warehouse management systems,” Kapoor said. “But there are solutions now to automate without breaking the bank.”