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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.
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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.
