Flying Blue Imports brings quality European and Australian wines to the American consumer at an accessible price point. Their products allow customers to experience the characteristic taste of the world’s wine regions and their grapes, without having to incur the traditional expense of estate-bottled wines.
Flying Blue Imports needed a tool to save time on all aspects of their three-tier distribution compliance, as their variety packs and wine advent calendars contain anywhere from 12 to 24 different labels. Sovos ShipCompliant’s Market Ready and 3-Tier Reporting with AutoFile solutions streamline and automate state product and brand label registrations; keep track of state forms, compliance requirements and license renewal deadlines; and generate, populate and file out-of-state returns for this nationally distributed importer whose brands are available in Costco, Target, Walmart and other large retailers. These solutions save the importer’s Compliance Director and her small team multiple days of work each month.
Before partnering with Sovos ShipCompliant, Flying Blue Imports had one employee spending two days each month working on state reporting.
Printing and mailing over 200 pages of documents to states to register their products and report on their sales was a burden to staff and had unwanted environmental impacts.
Manually keeping track of Flying Blue Imports’ large volume of products was difficult and created inefficiencies. They needed a centralized solution to streamline brand registrations, keep track of renewal deadlines and get a handle on state reporting and tax filings.
Flying Blue Imports partnered with Sovos ShipCompliant for Market Ready and 3-Tier Reporting with AutoFile solutions to simplify their compliance.
The small but mighty team at Flying Blue Imports can now upload sales orders to Sovos ShipCompliant and the AutoFile filings team ensures that state returns and taxes are filed and paid in a timely manner. Once the outsourced compliance work is completed, their internal team does some spot checking, and then complete reports are ready to be submitted to each state with no further hassle.
The Director of Compliance now has more time to focus on their broader portfolio, expanding their product offerings to include spirits.
Decreased the amount of time spent on compliance, reporting and tax filing.
Increased visibility into upcoming expiration dates, helping prevent lapsed licenses.
Eased the internal burden on employees. Flying Blue Imports’ Director of Compliance says, “Before Sovos ShipCompliant came on board, I was working 17-hour days. I was working weekends. Once you miss your child’s first baseball game, you know it’s time to make a change.”
“ShipCompliant has lifted a tremendous weight off me. When it comes to everything they’ve handled, they have handled it like a champ.”
Utilizing Market Ready and 3-Tier Reporting with AutoFile reduced the time spent on manual compliance processes. Brand label registrations, renewals and other state filings that once took hours to manually submit one-by-one can now be done in minutes, allowing the Flying Blue Imports team to focus on business-growth strategies.
The Director of Compliance no longer needs to set their email status to “out of office” and spend days pouring over registration data and monthly state returns. Instead, they’re now able to help their colleagues with urgent business matters in a timely fashion. With the saved time, Flying Blue Imports also has the resources to conduct legal research into obtaining new licenses and branch into spirits. By onboarding ShipCompliant to streamline and automate compliance functions, rather than hiring additional staff, Flying Blue Imports can get more done and be more effective without having to grow their team.
Sovos ShipCompliant’s Market Ready and 3-Tier Reporting with AutoFile solutions streamline state product and brand label registrations by integrating with government systems, making it easy to generate registrations for state requirements no matter the submission method required. Plus, users are quickly alerted to errors or missing information, allowing for corrections to be made before registrations and reports are filed. Creating and submitting monthly compliance filings takes minutes, saving time and resources. ShipCompliant acts as a central repository for all compliance data, which organizes and streamlines relevant information, removing the need for spreadsheets and binders.
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