A bimanual robot nicknamed "Fleetwood Pack" fills 30 percent of Highline Commerce's orders at the 3PL's Brooklyn fulfillment site, founder and CEO Richard Hurley told an apparel-sourcing audience on Sept. 29.

The disclosure, made during Sourcing Journal's Fall Summit at 583 Park Avenue in New York, anchors a wider pitch from three alternative logistics providers — Veho, Highline Commerce and FlavorCloud — to brands seeking control over shipping, fulfillment and cross-border compliance outside the legacy networks of FedEx and UPS.

Why are brands switching carriers?

Macy's, Sephora and Lululemon now route last-mile deliveries through Veho, a decade-old New York delivery company. Catherine Dummitt, Veho's vice president of marketing, framed the appeal in a single word: control.

"Ultimately, I think what people are looking for when they're switching to alternative providers is more control," Dummitt told moderator Glenn Taylor, Sourcing Journal's logistics editor.

The standard or expedited shipping menu that legacy carriers impose, she argued, makes brands design e-commerce flows around the carrier rather than the customer.

"That model is just silly, but it's also fundamentally broken," Dummitt said.

Optionality — the ability to pick speeds by SKU, region or customer cohort — is what alternative specialists sell.

What does cross-border actually cost?

The three panelists cover discrete tiers of softgoods delivery: storage, fulfillment, and the customs border. Rathna Sharad, founder and CEO of FlavorCloud, pressed brands to stop treating international shipping as a domestic rate plus postage.

"E-commerce infrastructure allows you to customize for every single market as if you are in the domestic experience," Sharad said. "Oftentimes, you're thinking about domestic experience and optimizing the e-commerce model, but not understanding the consumer in India is very different."

The default U.S. export practice, Delivered Duty Unpaid (DDU), pushes import duties and clearance fees onto the shopper. Sharad characterized the resulting friction as costly.

"It really is death by a thousand cuts," Sharad said. "Stuff gets stuck in customs compliance issues, and then the consumer experience suffers the most."

Can automation underwrite a 3PL for small brands?

Highline Commerce, founded more than five years ago to serve businesses deemed too small for incumbent 3PLs, now uses robotics to compress labor costs across its client base. Hurley named warehouse rent and labor as the two largest expenses for any new seller.

"I think the purpose of my company is to lower the barrier for someone to pass with their fulfillment, and the biggest costs are your rent and your labor," Hurley said. "It is already cheaper than humans."

The "Fleetwood Pack" two-armed manipulator from Ultra Robotics handles up to 30 percent of Highline's order volume in Brooklyn, per Automated Warehouse Online.

Hurley warned founders against optimistic production timelines that strip out buffer stock, a frequent error he sees among emerging brands his 3PL absorbs.

What sourcing decision does this force?

The summit's argument lands at the sourcing desk, not the consumer. Brands that route DDU parcels into India, Latin America or Southeast Asia absorb customs friction in returns, chargebacks and abandoned carts. Three follow-on actions emerge from the panel:

• Re-tender U.S. e-commerce last-mile contracts to providers offering SKU-level speed selection rather than standard or expedited only.
• Reassess default DDU terms on cross-border softgoods routes that funnel unexpected duty bills to overseas shoppers.
• Audit 3PL labor economics at sites where robotic order-fulfillment has crossed the cost-parity threshold versus human pickers.

Veho's Dummitt closed the session with a direct instruction to the apparel audience: "Stop accepting the status quo."