Global Shipping

Shipping is where the landed cost of a garment is finally decided, and it is the part of the process buyers most often leave until last. The freight rate is only one term in the equation: the Incoterm decides who pays for what and where risk transfers, the packing decides how much of a container the goods actually occupy, and the destination charges decide what arrives on the invoice after the goods do.

Two numbers govern the planning. For sea freight it is volume — the cubic metres the cartons occupy — because a container is a volume constraint before it is a weight constraint, and how densely apparel packs depends on how the cartons are filled and stacked. For air freight it is chargeable weight, which for bulky, light garments is the volumetric figure rather than the actual weight, and that is why apparels is one of the categories where air is most often more expensive than a first quote suggests.

The decision between the two methods is rarely about the freight rate alone. Air is worth it when the cost of arriving late is higher than the premium, which is a commercial judgement rather than a logistics one. Sea is the default when there is time, but only if the goods are packed to make full use of the container.

Start from global shipping for the service view. The guides below cover Incoterms, container loading and the landed-cost arithmetic that sits behind a delivered price.