Ottawa-based advertising software firm Trellis is opening a new U.S. office, a move its leadership says was driven directly by the uncertainty of the ongoing trade war between Canada and the United States.
Why Trellis is setting up south of the border
Trellis, an advertising software company based in Ottawa, works with sellers on Amazon and similar e-commerce platforms. Co-founder and CEO Fahim Sheikh said the unpredictable nature of U.S. tariff policy drove the decision to establish a U.S. entity. "With the whole unpredictable nature of things, we felt that it was best to actually establish an entity in the States," Sheikh said.
The new office will be located in Manhattan, New York. It's a significant commitment for a company still headquartered in Ottawa: more than 85% of Trellis's business already operates south of the border, and the company's leadership, Sheikh and co-founder Krishna Vemulapali, decided it no longer made sense to run that much U.S.-facing activity entirely out of Canada.
What the new entity will actually do
The U.S. subsidiary will handle American transactions independently of the Ottawa operation, which means Trellis needs new payment processors and an actual physical presence in the country, not just a Canadian bank account routing U.S. revenue. Sheikh said the expansion costs 30 to 40% more than operating the equivalent work out of Canada, due to higher resource expenses in the U.S.
Trellis has already hired its second U.S.-based employee and plans to keep growing that team. It's a modest start, but the intent is clear: rather than treating the U.S. as an export market served remotely from Ottawa, Trellis is building a standalone American operation that can absorb tariff-related shocks without dragging down the parent company.
The Ottawa angle
The decision is a concrete example of how Ottawa's tech sector, not just its manufacturers, is restructuring around trade war risk. Kanata North gets most of the attention when people talk about Ottawa tech, but Trellis's move shows the pressure is being felt well beyond the hardware and telecom firms typically associated with the city's tech corridor. A company can be entirely digital, selling software rather than physical goods, and still find itself needing a second legal entity just to keep operating predictably in its biggest market.
It also reflects a broader pattern of Ottawa and Canadian businesses hedging against U.S. trade policy rather than waiting it out. ottown's earlier report found Canadian maple syrup producers seeing a jump in international demand as buyers shift away from American supply chains, while ottown's earlier report covered Ottawa's own tariff dispute over imported canned vegetables. Trellis's move is the same instinct playing out from the other direction: rather than waiting for tariff policy to settle, a digital company is building physical redundancy into its structure now.
Looking beyond the U.S.
Trellis isn't only hedging by building out its American presence. The company is also exploring expansion into Europe and Asia, with China representing about 60% of its potential client base in the e-commerce sector. Sheikh credited the federal CanExport program for supporting that diversification work, saying it gave the company exploration opportunities as it looks to reduce its reliance on any single market.
For a company this dependent on U.S. e-commerce sellers, diversifying geographically is as much a trade war response as opening the Manhattan office is. Both moves point to the same conclusion inside Trellis: predictability is no longer something it can assume comes free with doing business in the United States.
Sources: Ottawa Business Journal
