Managed Markets alternatives for Canadian brands

There are four workable approaches to selling into the US from Canada, and the right one depends almost entirely on your monthly US volume. Here they are with their actual trade-offs.

Option one: a managed merchant-of-record service

Someone else becomes the seller or importer of record, calculates and collects duty and tax, remits it, and absorbs compliance obligations. You pay a percentage of US revenue.

Fits: high US volume, complex catalogue, multiple destination countries, limited internal capacity for compliance.

Costs: a share of revenue that rises with growth, plus some loss of control over the customer-facing flow.

Option two: duties unpaid

Ship DDU and let the carrier collect duty and brokerage from the customer at delivery.

Fits: almost nobody selling consumer goods, honestly.

Costs: refused parcels, return freight, refunds, support load and reviews mentioning hidden fees. Cheapest on the invoice, most expensive in practice.

Option three: build landed cost yourself

Classify your catalogue, maintain HS codes and origins, calculate duty at checkout, ship prepaid, reconcile invoices.

Fits: brands with technical capacity and someone who will own it continuously.

Costs: real internal time, and the classification drifts the moment nobody is maintaining it.

Option four: flat-fee duty-inclusive pricing

Catalogue classified once and maintained, US prices displayed duty-inclusive, parcels entering prepaid, monthly reconciliation — for a fixed monthly fee, with compliance responsibility remaining yours.

Fits: US$2k–10k a month in US sales, where percentage pricing is the wrong shape and doing nothing is costing you reviews.

Costs: a flat fee, and you keep the compliance exposure. We state this openly because it is the reason the price can be flat.