Inside the DJI Grey Market
A dock in the background wasn’t just scenery — it was a breadcrumb. That clue led us to US Drone Supply, a seller offering gear with the kind of certainty you don’t see when supply chains are in doubt.
The woman appears in a Facebook ad, crossing a sunlit concrete dock with a DJI Mavic box balanced against her hip. She’s wearing dark sunglasses, her hair catching the light as she passes a beige wall and a steel door marked “Suite B.” The caption promises overnight delivery from San Diego.
For most buyers in the U.S., that’s an impossible offer. Since late 2024, DJI drones have been disappearing from store shelves, blocked at the border by Customs under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Best Buy, Amazon, B&H Photo — all have struggled to keep even the most common models in stock. The Mavic 4 Pro never officially launched here at all.
And yet here it was, being sold with the kind of confidence you don’t see when supply is uncertain. The dock in the ad wasn’t just a backdrop — it was a clue. The seller, operating under the name US Drone Supply, matched the business details we’d already verified through public records and prior listings.
The Grey Market Connection
To protect the identity of our source, this person asked to remain anonymous. We will call him the importer.
It started with a face in a marketing video — a woman in oversized amber sunglasses, speaking into her phone behind an unmarked beige building in a sunny California industrial park. On the surface, nothing stood out. The location told a different story.
The importer is not the kind of man who stumbled into this by accident. In the mid 2000's, at just nineteen, he dropped out of a California university, where he’d been studying mechanical engineering and Chinese, and bought a one-way ticket to Beijing. He immersed himself in Mandarin at a major Beijing language institute, then stayed in China for the better part of a decade. By his early twenties, he had founded a U.S.-based trading company, moving goods between North America and Asia, and later oversaw regional business development for a technology firm headquartered in Beijing.
He knew the rhythms of Chinese manufacturing, the quirks of its logistics, and the informal routes that could move a product halfway across the world faster than official channels ever could.
The importer demonstrates how to swap from Chinese to English upon arrival.
A Market Gap
Out back, according to multiple marketing clips and online storefronts we traced, it’s connected to a separate operation: one selling DJI drones that aren’t supposed to be for sale in the United States — at least, not through official distribution.
The site lists models like the DJI Mavic 4 Pro, complete with customer reviews praising the speed of delivery and the chance to get what one buyer called “the unobtainium.”
“The drones are legal to own, but official supply has thinned to a trickle.”
Finding the link between the storefront and the importer was no easy task — from product shots to building facades to the people who appeared in the promotional material. The importer had quietly assembled a supply chain that delivered DJI products most buyers could only find overseas.
The Overseas Channel
They are not the only alternative channel. On eBay, multiple overseas resellers are offering brand-new Mavic 4 Pro units to U.S. buyers, often shipping from Japan or South Korea with expedited international delivery.
Some listings advertise “no additional import fees,” and buyers have reported successful activation and valid warranties upon arrival. Other customers are purchasing through Canadian vendors and using reship services to forward drones into the United States. In online forums, American DJI customers describe traveling abroad to buy the Mavic 4 Pro and bringing it home in checked luggage.
How Customs Broke the Chain
In Washington, DJI is not technically banned. There is no law that makes it illegal to own one, fly one, or even import one. But getting a new DJI drone through official channels has become a different story.
The bottleneck runs through U.S. Customs and Border Protection, empowered by the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). Passed in 2021, the law requires Customs to detain any shipment with suspected links to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. The UFLPA operates on a “rebuttable presumption” — meaning the government assumes any product with supply chain ties to the region was made with forced labor unless the importer can prove otherwise.
DJI sits squarely in that crosshair. The company has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury and added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List, accused of enabling surveillance of Uyghur Muslims. While the company denies the allegations, the designations have triggered intensified Customs scrutiny.
“DJI products are not manufactured with forced labor.” — DJI statement, April 2024
DJI has publicly denied any use of forced labor and says it is working with U.S. authorities to resolve delays. In an April 2024 statement, the company wrote: “DJI products are not manufactured with forced labor. We have robust policies and systems to ensure our supply chain upholds international labor standards, and we are committed to transparency as we work with U.S. Customs to demonstrate our compliance.”
Lessons from the Past
Scarcity like this is not new. History offers its own roadmap for how legal products slip into the margins when supply is disrupted, intentionally or otherwise.
During wartime rationing, coffee, sugar, and gasoline moved through unofficial channels to bypass government limits. In the Prohibition era, alcohol never disappeared — it shifted into hidden rooms, coded shipments, and elaborate smuggling routes. In the 1980s, the United States tightened rules on importing certain foreign cars, spawning a grey market where enthusiasts shipped in models banned by safety regulations. Cannabis has lived in a legal gray zone for decades — legal in some states, but still banned under federal law — with parallel distribution systems operating alongside enforcement crackdowns. Even pharmaceuticals have followed the same path: drugs restricted for safety or pricing reasons often find their way to buyers through overseas pharmacies or informal couriers.
The Lobby Pressure
Michael Robbins, the President and CEO of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), has been one of DJI’s most persistent critics in Washington. In congressional testimony and media appearances, he has argued that DJI drones pose an unacceptable security risk to the United States, framing the company as an arm of the Chinese state.
Robbins’ organization represents a wide range of drone manufacturers, service providers, and industry stakeholders — many of whom would directly benefit if DJI’s U.S. market share were reduced.
Tom Walker, the founder and CEO of DroneUp, has also been vocal on the use of foreign drones. His company operates a drone delivery network, with contracts that could expand if Chinese-made products were pushed further out of the market. Walker’s public statements on safety — including during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, when he told pilots they might fly even without certain waivers if the situation warranted — suggest a willingness to bend rules when urgency demands it. Yet in the context of DJI, his message has been the opposite: strict limits, firm restrictions, and no operational tolerance.
The Ocean Breeze
Back in California, the afternoon light cuts across the same loading dock where our search began. A new ad has replaced the old one — different drone, same backdrop, same pitch: Overnight shipping from San Diego.
The importer is still selling. The buyers are still buying. None of it is illegal. But the official supply chain is as thin as ever, choked by Customs holds, political pressure, and a law designed to target Chinese labor practices.
The history is clear: when legal channels slow to a trickle, grey markets rise. If the rules harden further — if pending legislation or procurement bans bleed into broader import restrictions — the grey could darken. That would push sellers deeper underground and drive buyers to riskier transactions.
In Washington, Robbins and Walker will keep making their case against DJI, and parallel importers will keep finding ways to meet demand. The two forces are moving in opposite directions, but together they are shaping the same reality: a U.S. DJI market that exists in fragments, in workarounds, and in the spaces left open by policy.
Whether it stays that way depends on what comes next — from Customs, from Congress, and from the people who decide how badly they want a drone they can no longer buy in a store.
US Drone Supply
