In 2007, founder and CEO of Every Man Jack, Ritch Viola, set out with the mission to reinvent men’s grooming. After finding that most men’s grooming brands were either too expensive or were full of chemicals, Ritch and team set out to create something that was affordable and full of natural ingredients. Fast forward to the present, and Every Man Jack has become an innovator in the men’s grooming industry. Using as many naturally derived and plant-based ingredients as possible, they create a full line of men’s grooming products that can now be found in most major retailers across the U.S. and Canada, and they show no signs of slowing down.
In fact, it’s this rapid growth that led Every Man Jack to search for a better way to manage sales tax.
With business growth comes greater sales tax responsibilities
In their early days, when Every Man Jack only had one warehouse located in their home state of California, Accounting Manager Amy Ocasio was fine manually filing sales tax. It was time consuming, yes, but manageable.
As their customer base grew, though, Every Man Jack set up warehouses across the country to meet demand. They also began selling their products on Amazon and increased traffic on their own eCommerce platform. Suddenly, the team had sales tax responsibilities in almost every state.
Even with a small team of accountants, like Liz Norato, a Senior Accountant at Every Man Jack, helping her, Amy knew the manual process wasn’t sustainable. Liz once spent two to three hours on a Texas sales tax return alone. Now, imagine doing that exact process for more than 40 states on a regular basis. Clearly, there had to be a better way.
Every Man Jack began their search for a sales tax solution that would enable them to continue to grow the company without having to hire someone full time to manage their sales tax compliance.
Finding the right solution with TaxJar
Amy reached out to a contact at Amazon for a sales tax solution recommendation and he suggested TaxJar. Amy and the Every Man Jack team did their research and found that the product had all the features they were looking for — they were especially excited about TaxJar’s AutoFile solution — and decided to become a TaxJar customer.
With a clearly laid out onboarding schedule and customer support from TaxJar, the onboarding process went smoothly. And Every Man Jack was always able to reference blog articles for questions that came up. Liz said, “Even if we didn’t know something, it was easy for me to find a blog on TaxJar’s site to know exactly what was needed for a certain state.”
As Every Man Jack continued to grow, they found they needed to register in new states as well. They were able to be part of TaxJar’s state registration pilot program and take one more step to compliance off their plate. “TaxJar was able to register pretty much all the states we needed to register in — that was amazing for us,” Liz said.
While Every Man Jack was growing, so was TaxJar. When Every Man Jack needed exemption codes that TaxJar didn’t have in place, TaxJar set to work to create them and give the team one less thing to worry about. Liz said, “Luckily, now TaxJar has that exemption code option for us. So it’s been a breeze. We’re growing and TaxJar has kept up with us.”
Now when it comes time to reconcile reports, instead of spending hours filing sales tax manually, Amy has everything she needs in one spot: TaxJar. It’s been a game changer not having to worry about sales tax daily. “I love getting the monthly report, which tells us what’s set to AutoFile,” said Amy.
Reaping the benefits of their TaxJar decision
How is Every Man Jack feeling about their decision to go with TaxJar now? Pretty positive. “If we didn’t have TaxJar, we’d have to have a team dedicated to doing sales tax,” Amy said. “We’d probably have an entire department dedicated to just doing these regular renewals and registrations. Stuff like that takes a lot of time.”
They’ve taken full advantage of AutoFile and now use it to file automatically in every state possible. “AutoFile was a big, big thing for us. It’s been our lifesaver,” Liz said.
While their rapid growth put them in a position to hire more accountants, the simplified TaxJar dashboard has made onboarding new hires easier. “The dashboard is so user-friendly. We have a new employee who just started and she understands it and how easy it is to use,” said Amy. “It’s very simplified and not confusing.”
Their sales tax recommendation
Now Every Man Jack has a sales tax platform recommendation for other companies: automate with TaxJar. Here’s their advice to other growing companies:
“We spend less time worrying about anything going on behind the scenes with our sales tax, and now we can focus on other aspects of our business.” – Liz Norato, Senior Accountant
“Every company in multiple states should use TaxJar. You want to be in compliance with every state and this is the way to do it. TaxJar reduces the work that we need to do. It saves us time. It has the feature to automate our sales tax filing. If you are a company that is looking for that, TaxJar has helped us a lot. I would definitely recommend TaxJar 100%.” – Amy Ocasio, Accounting Manager