Portless, a logistics and fulfillment startup focused on streamlining global supply chains for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, has announced an $18 million funding round led by Commerce Ventures, eGateway Capital, Ground Up Ventures, and FJ Labs.

Founded by Izzy Rosenzweig, Portless is addressing a common but deeply underserved pain point: the slow, expensive, and fragmented process of international order fulfillment - especially for brands manufacturing in Asia and shipping to customers in the U.S. and Europe.

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What Does Portless Do?

Portless operates a tech-enabled fulfillment platform based in Asia, allowing D2C brands to:

• Store inventory closer to their manufacturing hubs
  
• Ship directly to consumers internationally in 5–9 days
  
• Avoid the upfront cost and risk of bulk shipping to Western warehouses
  
• Track every order through Portless’s integrated logistics dashboard
  

The result? Brands cut fulfillment costs by 30–50%, reduce delivery time by over a week, and maintain full control over the post-purchase experience.

Think of it as the Amazon Prime of cross-border eCommerce, minus the need to commit inventory to multiple warehouses.

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The Problem Portless Solves

Cross-border fulfillment has traditionally been broken. D2C brands that manufacture in China or Southeast Asia face a difficult choice:

• Ship bulk inventory to U.S. warehouses and pay storage, duty, and distribution costs up front
  
• Use slow international shipping (e.g. ePacket) that takes 2–4 weeks, kills conversion, and hurts brand trust
  

According to Statista, more than 55% of U.S. shoppers expect delivery within 3–5 business days, and 72% say long shipping times are a top reason for cart abandonment.

Portless fixes this by enabling fast, low-cost international shipping - without requiring brands to stock warehouses thousands of miles from their suppliers.

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Why This Raise Matters

Portless’s $18 million raise is a signal that global D2C logistics is overdue for disruption. As brands become more agile, manufacturing cycles shrink, and customer expectations rise, the traditional logistics stack just can’t keep up.

This is where Portless thrives. Instead of building yet another U.S.-based 3PL, the company is flipping the model - bringing fulfillment closer to the factory, and letting tech do the rest.

And what’s most instructive for founders is that Portless didn’t try to outbuild FedEx or reinvent global shipping. They looked at the choke point that no one was talking about - the limbo between product completion and customer delivery - and asked, “Why does this still exist?”

What they understood is something every founder in a crowded space should learn: the biggest leverage is often in what everyone assumes is fixed. Most logistics players treat international fulfillment as a black box. Portless opened that box, stripped out the outdated steps, and built a new default from scratch - one that actually fits how D2C brands operate in 2024.

If you’re a founder, here’s the playbook: don’t just optimize what exists. Ask which assumptions are wasting time and money simply because no one questioned them. Find the invisible tax that your customer pays - then remove it.

Portless didn’t win by being louder. They won by being smarter about what everyone else accepted as normal.

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Global eCommerce & Fulfillment Market Outlook

Portless is tapping into a rapidly expanding market:

• The global cross-border eCommerce market is expected to hit $7.9 trillion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 26.2% (Research and Markets)
  
• The global fulfillment services industry is forecast to surpass $198 billion by 2027, fueled by D2C and eCommerce growth (Grand View Research)
  
• China alone accounted for over 40% of the world’s D2C manufacturing volume in 2023, yet fewer than 10% of brands have direct fulfillment operations there (McKinsey)
  

At the same time, 60% of D2C brands rank fulfillment as their top operational challenge  -  ahead of marketing or even product sourcing (Shopify Plus, 2024).

Portless’s model flips the script by offering faster shipping from the source  -  rather than waiting until products are repackaged and re-shipped from the West.

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What’s Next for Portless?

With its new funding, Portless plans to:

• Scale its Asia-based fulfillment hubs across Shenzhen and Ho Chi Minh City
  
• Deepen its tech stack for predictive demand and inventory distribution
  
• Expand integrations with ERP systems, CRMs, and cross-border tax APIs
  
• Launch analytics dashboards to optimize cost-per-order by SKU, region, and customer type
  
• Explore warehouse-lite models in Latin America and Eastern Europe
  

They’re also investing in sustainability, including carbon-offsetting partnerships and recycled packaging standards to appeal to environmentally conscious brands and customers.