ePacket
ePacket is a postal shipping service for lightweight parcels from China to the United States, created under a 2010 agreement among USPS, eBay, and China Post and launched in 2011, that offered tracked delivery at very low prices.
What happened and why it matters
ePacket made it cheap to mail small items from China directly to US shoppers, which fueled cross-border dropshipping and set price expectations that US sellers still compete against. Parcels had to weigh under 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) and be worth no more than $400, and once in the US they moved through the postal network like domestic First-Class Mail. Within months, eBay reported about 30,000 parcels a day from its sellers in China. Because the low rates rested on international postal terminal dues, US merchants complained that a small parcel from China could cost less to deliver than the same item mailed domestically.
People
Related events
Sources
- USPS deal with eBay helps expedite Chinese imports (Mailing Systems Technology) mailingsystemstechnology.com
- ePacket (Shopify Encyclopedia) shopify.com.au
- Postal Service initiates ePacket service with Hongkong Post (USPS) about.usps.com