Wildberries Launches 'Customs-to-Warehouse' Model: Eliminating Intermediate Transshipment to Cut Costs and Boost Efficiency

Ebrun Original: On June 12, Russian e-commerce platform Wildberries officially launched a new logistics model called 'Container Supply,' which allows cross-border goods to enter the platform's warehouses directly after customs clearance, thereby bypassing the previously required intermediate transshipment steps. The platform stated that this approach aims to simplify sellers' logistics processes and enhance overall fulfillment efficiency.

In the traditional supply path, after sellers complete customs clearance, goods must first be transported to their own or rented transit warehouses for repackaging and pallet assembly before being shipped to Wildberries' logistics centers. This process not only consumes significant time but also incurs additional costs for storage, labor, and secondary packaging.

The newly launched 'Customs-to-Warehouse' model completely eliminates these intermediate steps from the supply chain through containerized transport. After customs release, goods can be shipped directly to designated Wildberries warehouses without the need for seller-managed transshipment and redundant operations.

According to the platform, this service is currently in a pilot phase, available only to a select group of sellers for testing and process optimization.

Sellers participating in the pilot can activate this new model by simply selecting the 'Ship by Container' option in their personal backend when creating a shipping order. Wildberries plans to expand the service to more sellers in the coming months and simultaneously add new functional modules to further improve system applicability and operational convenience.

From the perspective of seller benefits, eliminating intermediate transshipment is expected to bring two key advantages:

first, accelerating the delivery speed of goods from customs clearance to shelf listing, thereby shortening the overall warehousing cycle; second, reducing sellers' logistics costs related to storage, secondary packaging, and short-distance transportation.

These improvements are particularly significant for cross-border sellers with high-frequency, large-volume shipments, helping to enhance their capital turnover efficiency and market responsiveness.

From an industry perspective, Wildberries' launch of the 'Customs-to-Warehouse' model is not surprising.

Firstly, the proportion of Chinese sellers among the platform's cross-border merchants is steadily increasing, making streamlined warehousing processes directly and significantly valuable for China-Russia cross-border trade. Secondly, Wildberries has been continuously strengthening control over its own logistics operations in recent years, from building its own transportation capacity to optimizing its warehouse network, reflecting a clear intent to extend its influence upstream in the supply chain. Thirdly, a large volume of cross-border goods entering the Russian market already arrive via containers, making containerized direct delivery to platform warehouses a natural fit. Finally, theoretically, each reduction in transit warehouse handling means a reduction in costs for moving, storing, and packing, while also compressing goods-in-transit time.

It is worth noting that developing logistics infrastructure has always been one of Wildberries' key strategic focuses.

In December 2024, the company launched its own freight transportation service for third-party businesses; in 2025, it introduced a large and oversized item delivery service. Currently, Wildberries' transportation network covers air, rail, and road transport, and includes various logistics methods such as unmanned vehicles and hovercraft. The implementation of this 'Customs-to-Warehouse' model can be seen as another important move by the platform to fill a critical gap in cross-border fulfillment and enhance its overall competitiveness.

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