The Strait of Hormuz—a 21-mile-wide channel between the Persian Gulf and global markets—has been effectively closed to commercial shipping since late February 2026. Over 150 vessels are anchored outside the strait,¹ and for the first time in modern history both Middle East major maritime corridors are blocked at once.² 

Negotiations are ongoing and partial passage is being allowed for some vessels. But the disruption has already persisted long enough to ripple through multiple layers of the supply chain and land on the desks of commerce teams managing margins, inventory, and marketplaces. 

It’s a stressful time. But the commerce world has been here before. Here’s what past disruptions tell us, what’s happening now, and what you can do about it. 

Lessons from past chokepoint crises 

When the Ever Given ran aground in March 2021, it delayed 432 vessels carrying an estimated $9.6 billion in cargo per day. The impact on commerce logistics was almost immediately felt: retail late shipments spiked 11% in the week of the blockage, and Nike, Gap, and Steve Madden all cited the incident as a direct driver of inventory shortfalls that quarter.³ 

Brands with inventory already in domestic warehouses were largely protected. Brands relying on in-transit or just-in-time replenishment were not, and the global supply chain took more than two months to absorb what was only a six-day delay. 

The pandemic showed us what happens when a disruption compounds across quarters rather than resolving in days. Stockouts triggered over-ordering, which created margin erosion, which led to reactive discounting that took quarters to recover from. It was a cycle, and the brands caught in it were the ones still treating each disruption as a one-off logistics problem rather than a structural exposure.

The brands that came out structurally stronger weren’t the ones waiting for ports to reopen. They used the disruption as a forcing function to build lasting infrastructure: inventory visibility across channels, pricing systems that could respond to cost changes at scale, and channel flexibility that didn’t depend on any single supplier or route. The real question today is whether that muscle held through years of relative calm. For some brands, it has. For others, this moment is exposing the same structural gaps all over again.

The repeating lesson: waiting for resolution to plan prolongs the pain. 

Landed costs are moving  

According to Rithum’s 2026 Commerce Readiness Index, 91% of retailers and 87% of brands say pricing power is shaped more by external conditions than by their own strategies. The Strait of Hormuz is the latest confirmation. 

Hapag-Lloyd, a leading global container shipping company, is absorbing $40+ million in additional costs per week due to surging bunker fuel, war risk insurance, and emergency surcharges that now run $1,500 per container for Gulf-bound cargo.^4,5 Base freight rates from Shanghai to Jebel Ali more than doubled in the first two weeks of March alone.^6,7 

For brands, those costs move into pricing decisions, promotional planning, and SKU prioritization. And for brands with lean inventory strategies, this impact will likely ripple through into Q2 and Q3, even into back-to-school and early holiday planning.  

Gartner research puts numbers on what’s at stake: during a major supply chain disruption, nearly two-thirds of companies expect to lose revenue and supply chains experience an average 40% surge in cost-to-serve post-disruption.⁸ That figure holds whether you sell through two channels or twenty. But it also holds that brands with real-time visibility into pricing and inventory are in much better shape to navigate through disruption cycles.  

This can be overwhelming, as it lands out of your control. But what you can control is acting quickly on what your data is telling you. 

What you can do right now 

Audit your inventory position across channels. Know what’s in your warehouses, what’s in transit, and what hasn’t shipped yet. For brands selling across multiple marketplaces, that picture is often fragmented across systems. Consolidate it now so you can make decisions from data, not estimates.  

Revisit your pricing architecture. If landed costs are moving, your margin profile is moving. Identify which SKUs are most exposed and whether your current pricing across marketplaces reflects the new cost reality. Brands with centralized pricing management can make those adjustments at scale. 

Prioritize your assortment. Not all SKUs are equal under margin pressure. Identify which products have the most runway at current landed costs and consider whether promotional strategy needs to shift toward higher-margin items while the disruption persists. This is also a moment to identify SKUs with the highest exposure to affected supply chains—electronics, petrochemical-adjacent goods, and anything sourced through Gulf or Southeast Asian routes facing extended transit windows. 

Communicate proactively with retail partners. If you’re a brand selling through retail dropship programs, your retail partners are managing the same pressure. Getting ahead of availability conversations—rather than responding to stockout flags—protects the relationship and the shelf. Retailers are already managing their own inventory and margin exposure; being a predictable, communicative supplier is a competitive advantage right now. 

Don’t wait for resolution to plan. The Suez blockage lasted six days and took two months to clear from supply chains. The Red Sea crisis stretched well over a year. The planning decisions made now around inventory, pricing, assortment, and channel mix will determine your margin position heading into H2, regardless of when the strait reopens. 

Resilience is the strategy 

The brands and retailers best positioned to navigate this are the ones who built operational flexibility into their commerce infrastructure before the disruption hit, ensuring inventory visibility, centralized pricing, channel diversification, and the ability to make fast decisions from clean data. The data story about your products, the accuracy of your pricing, the visibility into your inventory—those are things you can control right now. Rithum was built for moments like these. If you’d like to talk through what this means for your business, please reach out. Our team is ready to help you navigate it.  

Sources 

1.  Carra Globe, Strait of Hormuz Closure 2026: What It Means for Your Supply Chain, March 2026. 
2.  CNBC, The Strait of Hormuz crisis explained: What it means for global shipping, March 2026. 
3. Wikipedia, 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis. 
4. Supply chain impact figures from post-Ever Given analyses; retail late shipment data widely reported. See also Easyship, Strait of Hormuz Shipping Disruption (2026). 
5. UNCTAD, Strait of Hormuz Disruptions: Implications for Global Trade and Development, 2026. 
6. Wikipedia, 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis. Brent crude peaked above $126/barrel, March 2026. 
7. Sourcing Journal / Reuters, Hapag-Lloyd Faces $40–$50 Million Weekly Costs Due to Middle East Conflict, March 2026. 
8. Container News, Hapag-Lloyd introduces war risk surcharge for Gulf cargo, March 2026. $1,500/TEU standard; $3,500/TEU reefer. 
9. Couriers & Freight, Middle East Conflict: Major Carriers Add Shipping Surcharges, March 2026. 
10. TTL Co., War Risk Surcharge on Gulf Shipping — Verified Carrier Rates (March 2026). Freightos Terminal data. 
11. Easyship, Strait of Hormuz Shipping Disruption (2026): Impact on SMBs. Cape of Good Hope rerouting adds 10–14 days per shipment. 
12. CNBC, How Strait of Hormuz closure can become tipping point for global economy, March 2026; citing Andrei Quinn-Barabanov, Moody’s. 
13. ISM / Gartner, The Impacts of the Iran Attack on Supply Chains and Global Business, March 2026. 

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Although supply chain issues may not be completely resolved, online orders have continued to increase. The need to have streamlined, effective fulfillment systems is crucial. With this in mind, our partners at Tejas Software, Inc. have put together a list of challenges and solutions for different stages of the supply chain. 

Challenges to Functional Fulfillment

• Inaccurate inventory causes improper stock level maintenance in the warehouse and accumulation of obsolete inventory, and poses a major challenge overall for the retail business. The resulting problems will lead to inefficient picking processes, lower productivity, increased expenses and revenue loss.
• Inefficient warehouse picking is another challenge. Picking is one of the most significant warehouse management problems since poor picking can easily disrupt the inventory control system in an unplanned environment.
• Fluctuations in demand can lead to an ongoing inability to predict ordering trends. This problem can greatly damage the effective inventory control process, reduce sales and impair customer satisfaction. 
• Ineffective customer support can have a wide-ranging effect within a company. However, customer support sometimes reflects the quality of other operational areas. With inefficient systems, customer support teams will not be able to answer all necessary queries, thus resulting in customer unhappiness. This gap also dilutes the ability of the management team to make proper decisions that lead to true improvements.

Solutions for Successful, Optimized Systems 

• Automated digital fulfillment systems give real-time, accurate stock level information. This will help create efficient picking processes, increase productivity, decrease unnecessary expenses and improve sales.
• Integrated digital order management systems (OMS) and warehouse management systems (WMS) will give a great omnichannel sales experience to customers and reduce rising overhead costs.
• Digital solutions such as voice-directed, radio frequency and mobile-based picking operations can help improve the warehouse picking process. Systems with the ability to record exceptions and adjustments will improve overall picking efficiencies.
• Improved visibility derived from data gathered and analyzed from all OMS, WMS and other connected systems can help identify potential improvements in the order fulfillment process.
• Granular-level fulfillment workflow data can be used by customer support teams to resolve customer issues.
• Intelligent metrics of automated digital systems yield deeper understanding that management teams can use to make efficient decisions to achieve operational efficiency. With the right systems and the right data, the retailers will be able to deliver excellent service to customers with improved sales, improved revenue and better margins.

Additionally,  Tejas Software, Inc. has four main products that can help your business with these challenges as well.  For more information about Tejas Software visit – https://www.tejassoftware.com

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Lessons Learned

We know that the pandemic impacted retail sales and the consumer journey over the past couple of years. 

We are seeing an accelerated adoption of e-commerce as an effect of the pandemic. This has resulted in a massive investment in e-commerce infrastructure led by Amazon. The marketplace has invested billions of dollars in fulfillment capacity from more warehouses to transportation.

The increase in fulfillment capacity has given buyers more options to receive their orders whether it’s curbside pickup, buy-now-pick-up-later or shorter delivery times. 

Unfortunately, complex circumstances created by the pandemic have resulted in supply chain challenges. Stock availability has been impacting every part of retail, especially shipping. These difficulties are likely to linger well into the new year for many brands and retailers and, in some categories, could have a measurable impact on sales.

Trends for 2022

The acceleration of e-commerce is no secret to retailers. With Amazon leading the way as an example of how retail media spending can drive growth, other retailers, such as Walgreens and CVS, have been inspired and are in the process of launching their own retail media markets.

E-commerce has been a part of social platforms for quite some time now. It has become an even more frictionless experience, especially for mobile devices. Users see ads targeted to their interests and with one button can click through to make their purchase. This smooth transaction can be seen with Instagram ads and, more recently, TikTok. 

While social platforms are tracking users and their activity, we are seeing privacy and regulatory battles intensify. The prevalence and tracking power of the cookie has begun fading with the implementation of privacy technology, arriving with acronyms like ITP, ATT and IDFA. Increasing adoption of this technology as well as potential new regulations and laws will require marketers to change. As the old methods to target, track and attribute the results of ad campaigns begin to become obsolete, companies will need to innovate and adapt to remain in touch and engaged with their consumers. 

Strategies for Success

So, where do you start? Take inventory of your e-commerce health and evaluate your digital shelf to ensure optimal product content. How are your products presented? Is your pricing competitive?

Here are a few specific strategies to consider executing in the new year.

Be everywhere. The consumer is looking at every possible option on every site. It’s important to be where consumers are shopping or looking at advertisements, including Amazon, Walmart, social media platforms and other online locations. Think about how your business is reaching consumers currently and find the gaps.

Diversify your approach. Diversification builds durability. This means diversifying where you receive your supply, which channels you are selling on, which regions/countries you are reaching and what fulfillment options you offer. As you think about expanding to new channels, factor in the customer acquisition costs. Think about the channels you are expanding to and the cost for advertisement. What’s your strategy for moving to new channels and have you budgeted for it? 

Focus on fulfillment. The last mile has gotten competitive, especially with features such as shortened delivery times, free shipping and buy-now-pick-up-later options. The consumer journey is important at every stage including the fulfillment options. Set yourself apart from other retailers and brands to get consumers their products when and how they prefer.

What else should you look out for in e-commerce in 2022? Watch Vice President of Digital Marketing Strategy Link Walls discuss what we’ve learned this year and what actions we can take to succeed in 2022. 

The post Perspectives in E-Commerce: Key Trends, Challenges and Actions for 2022 appeared first on Rithum.