Case Study: Leading Cycling Footwear Company achieves smoother cross-border tax compliance and cost savings with Avalara

Performance-focused Cycling Company Creates a Smooth Path for Cross-border Tax Transactions

A performance-focused cycling footwear company that designs and manufactures technical mountain-biking shoes faced costly customs delays and misclassified inbound shipments from China. Complex, country-specific tariff rules — where material and construction details heavily affect duty rates — led to a 2019 incident with ~20,000 units being held and duties jumping from about 5% to over 20%, significantly hurting margins and causing process inefficiencies.

Their freight forwarder recommended Avalara Item Classification; Avalara’s team learned the products and manufacturing processes, assigned country-specific tariff codes for the U.S. and Canada, validated the rationale with the client, and loaded the codes into the ERP. The result was reliable, accurate duty calculations, faster customs clearance, reduced rework and costs, confidence for a new product launch, and smoother expansion into 30 countries.