About The Hedgehog Company
The Hedgehog Company is a DTC e-commerce holding company that specializes in acquiring $5M-$15M revenue brands. Backed by the CEOs of ThredUp, Lands End, Kayak, Italic, Drizly, and more, they’ve been growing their portfolio rapidly since arriving on the scene in 2020.
They’ve now acquired a variety of online businesses ranging from apparel to eyewear, with an internal operating team managing the portfolio. This is when CFO Matthew Rehurek was introduced to the wonderful world of sales tax across a handful of businesses including brands like Baboon to the Moon, Felix Gray, and The Reset.
Challenges
Managing a portfolio of growing businesses requires more than just a cookie-cutter approach to sales tax.
Businesses in The Hedgehog Company’s portfolio carried over their prior sales tax solutions, and there were a handful that still needed to be set up net new. However, after being referred to their previous software provider and getting set up with them, Matthew and the team ran into a number of challenges.
The most glaring issues they faced stemmed from disjointed, complicated customer support processes. This wasn’t going to cut it for a lean operating team that had a running list of to-do’s to keep the business running smoothly.
Many headaches later, Matthew looked into available white-glove sales tax solutions in the market. After reaching out to Zamp’s CEO Rohit Bhadange, he was referred to Matt Grattan who heads up partnerships and sales. He felt comfortable that Zamp could handle their sales tax needs when his first conversation focused on knowledge sharing. He finally received thoughtful answers to his specific sales tax questions.
“From my first call with Matt Grattan, I really appreciated the level of expertise. It felt like there was a proper investment in the relationship and understanding our situation, versus being a cookie cutter approach.”
Solution
Zamp takes care of all of The Hedgehog Company’s sales tax needs, driving 3 key benefits:
Benefit #1: Low-effort sales tax compliance
Issue resolution is critical to Matthew and his team. Outside of ongoing maintenance, he needed a provider who could truly take care of sales tax from start to finish when questions and unexpected situations arose. For example, he was sent a ton of different sales tax letters to sort through and review from the states. The Zamp team reviewed each file, sent a recap, and determined the necessary next steps to get the states exactly what they needed. This was all covered as a part of the managed solution service.
“I think if we were doing that with our previous provider it wouldn't have gotten done or they would have built out some crazy hourly rate to support me on that. It was fully handled by Zamp, so pretty immeasurable time was saved there.”
Benefit #2: A supportive team and thought partner for all things sales tax
If questions ever come up, Matthew knows he’ll get immediate answers from a team of experts who truly care and understand sales tax.
“I interact with James Graham pretty closely and he's been extremely responsive helping me with one-off questions that I have. He’s really supportive and more of a thought partner rather than just getting the service done for us. It's night and day compared to a support ticket at our previous provider.”
Benefit #3: Drastic time saved during onboarding
Previously, Matthew would be referred to different parties for different questions, which resulted in a slew of support tickets, slow response times, and inefficient communication. With Zamp, Matthew was good to go after being guided through the steps below with a dedicated onboarding manager:
- 1. Give Zamp access to a brand’s e-commerce platform and transactional data.
- 2.Zamp determined which states they needed to start collecting sales tax in, and they turned it on for them.
- 3. Zamp takes care of the rest.
“The time savings is drastic. From a setup perspective, myself and two others on our team were each putting in five plus hours a week to get setup with our previous provider. With Zamp, the comparable setup time was maybe 10% of that.”
Results
Now that he has freedom from sales tax, Matthew can focus on what he does best.
See how Zamp has taken care of sales tax for The Hedgehog Company:
- 8 months of accurate and timely filing
- Over 56 registrations completed (combined)
- Over 56 state accounts configured (combined)
“We’ve now shifted so any net new brand will be working with Zamp, and have identified a number of the issues that our previous provider created. Zamp has rectified those as well, which has been a really nice experience.”
Zamp is happy to be The Hedgehog Company’s sales tax provider of choice, and can’t wait to continue supporting their success in the e-commerce space while taking care of all of their sales tax needs.
“We talk with a ton of brands and we'll continue to refer you guys.”
Sales tax is complicated enough as it is, and adding a portfolio of brands to the mix only makes it more difficult. While there’s no escaping sales tax, it shouldn’t be a source of stress that takes away valuable time from operating your business smoothly.
With Zamp by your side, you can focus on what matters most instead.
Get in touch to see how we can help.
