Shipping terms decide who talks to customs, who pays the duty, and who owns the problem when a consignment is held. For handcrafted hair the wrong choice does not just cost money - it can strand a production batch at the port while your salon clients wait.

1. What DDP and DDU Actually Transfer

Under delivered-duty-paid terms the seller clears the goods and absorbs import duty and clearance fees. Under delivered-duty-unpaid terms the buyer is the importer of record: the consignment arrives cleared for transit, but duty, taxes and customs handling are settled by you on arrival.

The distinction matters because the importer of record legally owns the declaration. If a valuation or classification question is raised months later, the party on the entry documents answers for it, regardless of which side paid the invoice.

2. Why DDP Looks Cheaper Than It Is

Air courier DDP is common on small-to-mid consignments because it removes friction entirely. The trade-off is opacity: the duty is bundled into a single landed figure, so you lose visibility on the effective ad valorem rate and cannot reclaim overpayment.

For a distributor scaling toward container volume, that opacity becomes a costing problem. Without a duty line you cannot build an accurate landed cost model, and you cannot evaluate whether a different tariff treatment would have been legitimate and cheaper.

3. When DDU Is the Better Structure

Once you hold a resale or manufacturing registration and a customs broker, DDU usually wins on cost control: you see the duty separately, you can bond or defer where permitted, and recovered duty on re-exported goods remains available to you.

The requirement is internal capability. DDU without a broker and without a correct HS classification simply converts a supplier-side delay into your own customs delay.

4. What to Settle Before the Deposit

Agree the Incoterm in writing, name the importer of record, confirm which HS heading will appear on the commercial invoice, and decide who pays destination terminal charges - the most common source of post-arrival disputes.

For bulk hair the classification usually sits within the hair and hair-goods headings, but the sub-heading depends on whether the goods are raw, worked, or made up. That determination should be made once and applied consistently, not re-decided per shipment.