Sent Items #188: Sunday, May 11, 2025

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers of humans, dogs and pets, and anything else you may help keep alive!

Quick PSA: I am excited to share with my readers an early peek at something I have been working on and will be announcing publicly tomorrow:

Third Person's Inaugural Logistics & Leadership Retreat, taking place September 22–24, 2025 in my hometown of Nashville, TN.

This is not a conference—it's a curated cohort focused on creating meaningful relationships, not surface-level networking. It is not open to the public, we are limiting attendance to 1 person per company (founders/execs only) and are capping attendance at only 50 guests to encourage real connections and an intimate retreat experience.

You can find more information about the event here (link) and the sign up link is towards the bottom (or here). I know many of you are brands, so please note that this event is completely free for brands (which includes a 2 night stay at the Soho House Nashville).

In other event news, I’m looking forward to seeing a bunch of you at Home Delivery World next week here in Nashville. Third Person will have a booth in the Startup Zone and I am hosting a panel discussion on May 22 on warehouse innovation (link) - let me know if you will be there!

In carrier news, the USPS readies July rate hikes for Ground Advantage, other services (link).

Along with announcing a new leader in recent days, as we discussed in last week’s Sent Items, the U.S. Postal Service is planning to increase prices for its Ground Advantage, Priority Mail and Parcel Select products on July 13, according to a filing from the agency Friday. The sharpest increases will be for delivery unit-entered Parcel Select volume and Ground Advantage retail shipments, both of which will see rates jump around 10%. The Postal Service said Priority Mail Express and international products are unaffected.

Shopify remains the dominant e-commerce software platform. Shopify released quarterly earnings last week and their dominance is incredible. Shopify is seeing market share gains and traction in a number of new markets. Enterprise is up 28%, International up 31% and B2B up 109%. Overall GMV in Q1 - essentially combined sales that Shopify merchants generated - was $75 Billion, up 25%+ YoY.

Interestingly, Shopify's exposure to drop shipping was much less than generally expected, which is another sign of Shopify's shift to larger enterprises. They stated there are no impacts from tariffs or macro headwindsto date. They shared that GMV growth through April and May has remained strong. In fact, drop shipping from China to the U.S. only accounts for 1% of GMV, when most, including myself, believed it was much higher. This suggests that Shopify has little risk related to tariffs including (i.e. de minimis, dropshipping).

I wrote in Sent Items #149 on Feb 27, 2024 (link), “ I can’t think of any other $100 Billion business that is on the trajectory to $1 Trillion as clearly as Shopify.” I’ll double down on that sentiment today.

Nashville startup Third Person helps businesses defer tariffs amid trade tensions (link). I sat down with Nashville’s Business Journal to discuss tariffs and how brands are being impacted by them. I also shared a few metrics on Third Person and our vision for the future, and how excited I am about building a startup in Nashville.

80% tariffs coming soon? Anyone ever see Scott B. do the limbo? How low can you go?!

Recall, I speculated earlier in the month on LinkedIn (and reiterated in last week’s Sent Items) that a trade agreement would happen before the end of May. Just saying…

On the topic of tariffs… I thought what Aaron Rubin shared on Twitter yesterday was intriguing:

Enjoy the rest of the weekend (and sign up for our retreat!)

- Matt

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