Buttonwood Grove Winery first opened its doors in 2004, and the original owners Ken and Diane Riemer soon established a reputation for producing some of the most noteworthy wines in the Finger Lakes area of New York. In 2014, Dave and Melissa Pittard purchased the winery and have since expanded the vineyards and further transformed Buttonwood into an artisan, handcraft winery, doing all their own production. Their wines are made onsite with the majority of being estate wines, using only grapes grown on the property. Buttonwood Grove Winery produces between 5,000 to 6,000 cases of wine a year along with hosting events like weddings, tastings and tours.
Buttonwood Grove Winery was using spreadsheets and printed-out reports to manually track and complete complex state reporting processes that varied state by state. This proved very time-consuming and stressful— trying to ensure that each state and the differing requirements were properly filed, with different deadlines, paper vs. electronic filings requirements, and varying lengths of reporting periods.Then the actual reporting, like the counties they shipped to, which tax rate to pay, and gallonage shipped, took up a lot of time that could have been directed toward other activities, like marketing and supporting the wine club.
After Buttonwood Grove Winery received the Governor’s Cup award in 2017 for their 2016 Riesling, their wine club orders began to increase rapidly. With wine club orders and their licensed states available for DtC wine shipping both increasing, so did the amount of time spent trying to manage the individual state reporting processes. Managing state requirements and reporting was now taking up too much time and hampering the growth and further expansion of the available ship-to states for the wine club.
Based on suggestions and feedback from other wineries and compliance experts, Buttonwood Grove Winery chose ShipCompliant to help them streamline their state reporting process.
ShipCompliant Direct with Autofile helped free up a large amount of time each month, ensuring all the different state reports were calculated and completed accurately every time and always submitted on time. It enabled the wine club to continue to grow, not having to worry about keeping track of new state’s requirements and deadlines. After implementing ShipCompliant they were able to pull reports and statistics quickly, get notifications when licenses are about to expire in certain states, and get shipping alerts, making them aware when a delivery attempt had failed.
“But the time savings are huge. Just huge.15 to 20 hours at the beginning of each month doing reporting, writing checks, cutting checks, getting them in the mail, etc. For my taxes, that was for probably seven or eight states that we shipped to. Now I spend almost no time on any of it, maybe an hour or two a month, on a month when we have a situation that I have to look at, maybe an hour or two a month and now we [ship to] 17 states.”
Marcia Klue
Marketing and Wine Club Director
Buttonwood Grove Winery has been able to expand their wine club from shipping to seven states to being able to serve customers in 17 states. ShipCompliant’s solutions have helped free up a significant amount of time that can now go towards strategic marketing efforts and other revenue-generating activities. Getting notifications on failed delivery attempts has helped Buttonwood Grove Winery minimize the number of returned shipments by allowing them to reach out directly to the customer in a timely manner and figure out the best way to get the wine delivered successfully.
ShipCompliant offers a comprehensive resource for state regulatory information. When Buttonwood Grove decides to ship to a new state,or a new state become available for DtC shipping, the forms and links to the state licensing documents are immediately available to allow Buttonwood Grove Winery to begin the registration process.The Buttonwood Grove team appreciates ShipCompliant’s automatic notifications on state reporting due dates, license expirations and shipping statuses that help ensure customers get their shipments on time.