In response to changing trade policies and escalating international freight costs, Melbourne-based menswear brand OTAA has set up a permanent U.S. fulfillment operation, working with e-commerce logistics provider Cart.com at its Longview, Texas facility.
The strategic expansion comes on the back of a major shift in U.S. trade policy on Aug. 29, 2025, which effectively suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for cross-border shipments of $800 or less for all time.
Prior to launching its Texas operations in February 2026, OTAA had simply fulfilled every order from Australia directly, shipping the parcels some 9,000 miles from Melbourne. The new model is to import the inventory and pre-position it in Texas so that it can then be delivered via the domestic network.
Cart.com said this reduces OTAA’s average order fulfillment and delivery cost by around 50 percent compared to the direct shipping from Australia (duty is still payable when the inventory enters the country).
The U.S. is by far the largest market for the Australian company (around 50 percent of its business). It was set up in 2011 by brothers Fameez and Shaheen Haroon with just $500 Australian dollars, or $345. They’ve now generated over $40 million Australian dollars, or $27 million, in lifetime sales and have over 400,000 customers across 70 countries.
The brand is well known for its neckties and accessories and has been featured in over 50 films and TV shows including “Elvis” and “The Bear.”
“We never felt we belonged in a traditional luxury menswear store, so we created our own kind of luxury; Australian, a bit cheeky, a bit of character,” said Fameez Haroon, co-founder of OTAA. “The American market took to it from the word go. To have our bestsellers on the American market via Cart.com is a real commitment to them and it’s the beginning of OTAA actually establishing a presence in America.”
OTAA’s catalog has some 10,000 designs, so the move to transition the U.S. inventory is being done in phases to manage working capital. Longview currently has around 1,750 of the brand’s best-selling designs in it which is less than a fifth of the total catalog but again covers the vast majority of the domestic volume. OTAA plans to increase the Longview inventory by another 1,000 designs by the end of 2026 as demand grows.
“The end of de minimis changes the economics of serving the U.S. customer and makes the decision around where to hold inventory a lot more important,” said Omair Tariq, founder and CEO of Cart.com. “Brands now need a U.S. operation that is appropriately sized to the demand they see, with scope to grow as the business grows. We provide the facilities, the software and the operators to enable that transition so that brands can invest in U.S. inventory without having to go out and build a fulfillment operation themselves.”
Haroon said scaling the catalog incrementally is the way to achieve financial stability whilst at the same time improving delivery times for the U.S. customer. “We simply couldn’t have moved the whole catalog overnight and every style we have in Texas is capital tied up,” he said. “Cart.com gives us the space to bring more of our range to the U.S. customer.”
