Importing Your First Apparel Shipment Into the US
By The Velocity Wear Team
Most new brands import their first production run without ever really deciding to. The garments are made overseas, they arrive, and somewhere in the middle a customs entry happened in somebody's name. Understanding whose, and what that means, is worth an afternoon before it becomes urgent.
Somebody has to be the importer of record
The importer of record is legally responsible for the entry: declaring the goods accurately, classifying them correctly, and paying duties and fees. If you buy on terms where the goods become yours before they reach the US, that is you. If you buy delivered duty paid, it is your supplier.
Being the importer is not exotic and plenty of brands do it. It requires an identification number with Customs — usually your EIN — and, for most commercial entries, a customs bond. It also means the accuracy of the declaration is your responsibility even if somebody else prepared it.
Classification is where apparel gets fiddly
Every imported item has a code in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, and that code determines the duty rate. Apparel codes are unusually granular: knitted versus woven, fibre composition, garment type, sometimes gender. A cotton knit tee and a polyester woven shirt are not near each other in the schedule and do not carry the same rate.
This matters because textile duty rates are, in general, on the higher end. Getting the code wrong is not a rounding error, and it is correctable retrospectively — with interest — when somebody notices. Ask your supplier what code they classify the garment under and check it against the current schedule for your product. This is a factual determination about what the garment is, not a choice you get to optimise.
What you will be asked for
- A commercial invoice with an accurate description, quantity, unit value and total, plus the country of origin.
- A packing list, which is what the carrier and customs use to reconcile what actually turned up.
- The HTS classification for each line.
- A customs bond if you are the importer of record on a commercial entry, either single-entry or continuous.
- Textile declarations for the fibre content and origin, depending on the goods.
Use a customs broker
For a first shipment, the case for a licensed customs broker is straightforward: they file entries for a living, the fee is small relative to the value of the shipment, and the errors they prevent are the expensive kind. Trying to self-file a first commercial textile entry to save a few hundred dollars is a false economy that a surprising number of founders attempt.
What buying delivered removes
If your supplier quotes a delivered price with duty paid, everything above becomes their problem for that shipment. You compare one number against another number, the goods appear, and there is no customs conversation. It is usually not the theoretical cheapest route, and for a first order it removes an entire category of way-to-get-this-wrong.
The trade-off is transparency: a delivered price bundles freight, duty and handling into one figure, so you cannot see which part moved when it changes. As you grow and volumes justify the attention, unbundling gets more attractive. For run one, it rarely does.
Plan the calendar, not just the cost
Production with us is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval. Freight is on top of that, and the variance in freight is much larger than the variance in production — sea is slow and cheap, air is fast and expensive, and the decision between them is usually made under time pressure by somebody who left it late.
The single biggest avoidable cost in a first import is air freight taken to rescue a launch date. Build the schedule backwards from the date you need stock, add a buffer for customs, and the choice makes itself calmly instead.
