Big news on this episode of the Decoding Cross-Border Ecommerce podcast: Zonos has acquired Evolve Trade Services. Clint Reid, Founder and CEO of Zonos, and Aaron Bezzant, Zonos' Head of Global Trade Strategy, sit down with Jason Bye, co-founder of Evolve Trade Services (alongside William Coleman), to talk about why this acquisition matters and what it unlocks for postal operators, consolidators, marketplaces, and brands shipping into the U.S.

Jason walks through Evolve's origin story, from enabling high-volume Type 86 ecommerce to pivoting their book of business to Type 11 when de minimis went away, and the industry-wide scramble for data, classification, and compliance that followed. The team digs into what's coming next for postal clearance, why a Type 11-style requirement is on the horizon, and why having a broker in-house lets Zonos finally control the entry from the point of sale.

The conversation also covers broker mistakes that erode trust, the "telephone game" of data between checkout and CBP, and how combining Zonos' upstream transaction data with Evolve's brokerage expertise pushes us closer to our mission: creating trust in global trade.

🎧 Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at the acquisition, what it means for our customers, and where cross-border clearance is headed in 2026.

Chapters:

[00:00:00] The big announcement: Zonos acquires Evolve Trade Services
[00:00:32] Welcoming Jason to Zonos and St. George
[00:01:24] The origin story: how Bill and Jason got into high-volume ecommerce
[00:01:45] Type 86, Section 321, and the rise of origin pick-pack-ship
[00:02:42] Launching Evolve Trade Services to bring brokerage in-house
[00:03:01] Type 86 vs. Type 11: what actually changed
[00:03:36] The industry scramble for data, HTS accuracy, and manufacturer info
[00:04:38] Why Zonos acquired a broker: postal volume and the qualified party process [00:05:10] Bringing Evolve in-house ahead of the next clearance shift
[00:06:28] Aaron's dad joke of the day
[00:07:08] Landed cost in a Type 11 world
[00:08:28] Why combining Zonos data with Evolve brokerage is so powerful
[00:09:39] Broker mistakes and the data "telephone game"
[00:10:48] Cutting out the middleman and controlling the entry
[00:11:14] Helping postal operators through the upcoming transition
[00:11:59] The indirect pain of working through third-party brokers in chaos
[00:13:50] Doing customs clearance at the point of sale [00:14:26] Trust in global trade — and what erodes it
[00:15:51] Have we ever seen change like this before?
[00:17:28] Why Evolve has won and retained big shippers
[00:19:16] The Evolve team's ecommerce DNA
[00:19:49] Welcoming the Evolve team into the Zonos family
[00:20:42] What excites Jason most about joining Zonos