Wine Direct Ship Licenses... While You Wait!
February 18, 2009 12:56 PM   Subscribe

Wine Direct Ship Licenses... While You Wait!
One of our biggest clients is a wine compliance company (compli-beverage.com... we did that website too). In the wine business, the hot (comparatively) new way to sell wine is on the internet (as of about four or five years ago), through internet retailers, wine clubs, or the wineries' own website.

One of the problems with doing that, however, is that each state requires its own set of licenses, bonds, registrations, etc.

My husband created this incredible website (he and our employee our the sole programmers for this company) that tells wineries which states require what. That's nothing new, though. You can get that information from here and here, for example. But on this new site, you can click on a state that you want to ship to, pay a fee, and have a complete package of application forms filled in for you (with info you provided through a wizard), as well as detailed instructions on how to file the forms, where to send them, how much to write the check for, etc.

If you become a repeat customer, the site will keep all your previous info, track which licenses you have applied for and if you enter the number and date of the ones you received, it will track those too and let you know when you have to renew them.

As far as we know, there is nowhere else on the internet to do this. Most direct shipping licenses are obtained by doing the paperwork in-house or going to a full-service agency (that's what Compli does also...) and paying them to do it (a lot more than what the website charges).

Competitor ShipCompliant does reporting on sales, but does not provide the licensing part which has to be done before you can (legally) ship anything.

Of course, in a year or less, Compli will no doubt have the reporting function, and probably ShipCompliant will have the licensing function. Ah, the joys of competitive capitalism...

Now I'm wondering... in what other industry are there different laws for every state that need to be adhered to, tracked, licenses applied for, etc.?
posted by workinggringa (0 comments total)

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