Nashville Startup Third Person Helps Businesses Defer Tariffs Amid Trade Tensions (Nashville Business Journal)

Originally published in the Nashville Business Journal on May 9, 2025.

A Nashville startup is helping small to mid-size businesses defer tariffs. 

That wasn’t the original intention of CEO Matt Hertz’s company, Third Person. But because of the shifting tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump and the retaliatory tariffs, he’s been making changes to the logistics company’s platform, which helps businesses connect with warehouses. 

“Tariffs are forcing U.S. businesses to rethink their supply chains,” Hertz said. “Many brands that sell products in the United States source those goods overseas.”

Tariffs, like the 145% one placed on goods imported from China, are causing businesses to rethink where they get their materials or goods from, but changing suppliers and switching to countries that have lower tariffs can take months or even years, according to Hertz. This is why he’s helping brands match with bonded facilities, warehouses that can store imported goods without paying tariffs or duties, and free trade zone warehouses, which essentially do the same thing. The tariff or duty is paid once the good is shipped out of the warehouse and to the customer as opposed to when the goods reach American soil. 

“Bonded warehouses are a way to essentially defer payment of tariffs,” Hertz said. “It doesn’t help you avoid tariffs, so it doesn’t save you money, but from a cash flow perspective it more closely matches when you generate the revenue, when you make the sale, and when you actually have to pay the government.”

Bonded warehouses have been around since the 1800s. While there’s not a comprehensive list publicly available, there’s 1,751 bonded warehouses nationwide, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

“It’s not a lot when you think of just the magnitude of this problem,” Hertz said. “Billions of dollars a day in product are being imported from China. This is a huge problem and not enough capacity to absorb the needs of all these brands.”

Some companies are using bonded warehouses to wait out tariff negotiations, according to Hertz. It’s a gamble, if tariffs decrease, they win. But if they go up, then the business will end up paying more. The business only has to pay the rate that is imposed when they ship the product out, not what it was when the goods were imported. 

“If you have the ability to hold inventory for an indefinite amount of time, you can sort of play a game of like, 'I'm only going to ship product when tariffs are at a more controllable level,'” Hertz said. “It’s been the No. 1 question that I’ve gotten from brands in the last month.”

Third Person is rolling out an option to filter warehouses by if they are bonded or not. Right now, the platform — which allows companies to input their needs and get matched with the top 10 warehouses that fit those needs on its artificial intelligence-enabled platform — has two dozen bonded and free trade zone facilities companies can match with. In total, Third Person has 303 warehouses, or 3PLs, signed up and roughly 100 brands are signing up for the platform each month to be matched.  

“The truth is that our business does well when change happens,” Hertz said. “When there’s volatility, when there’s transactions happening, we do well. The good news with this dilemma for us is that brands are making really quick decisions.”

The company has been around for a year now and in that time 30 deals have been signed between brands and warehouses, eight of which were signed in April, according to Hertz. A quarter of those deals were signed within days of the company signing up and being connected to warehouses.

“The way I explained it to my mother, what we built is basically a dating app for brands and 3PLs, kind of like a Tinder or Match.com,” Hertz said. 

The company, which is comprised of a team of seven contract employees, raised a quarter of a million dollars to get off the ground and closed a nearly $300,000 funding round in the fall, which includes $50,000 from LaunchTN, that will be used for labor. Third Person has 38 investors including the co-founder of Birchbox, Hayley Barna, who was Hertz’s boss for several years and Carly Strife, one of the BarkBox founders. 

“It’s really a lot of people who can actually help me,” Hertz said. “Smart capital, not just a check, people who have connections with brands and just understand startups and technology and products.”

The platform is free for companies to use and Third Person makes money by charging 2% of total revenue over 24 months from the warehouse through actual deals made because of the platform. Hertz anticipates being profitable this summer. 

The ultimate goal is to build Third Person into a Nerd Wallet for supply chain, according to Hertz. The next step for the company is to match businesses with the best shipping carriers.