Global Fishing Gear

BUSINESS PROBLEM

A premium apparel and footwear provider in the sport fishing community, that prides themselves on their reputation for the highest rigorous and relentless quality, does not have a dedicated team for international trade compliance. They rely heavily on their product teams and external counsel to conduct these activities. HERA Consulting was brought in to help assist in an audit of their international trade compliance for Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) and to help implement best practices for HTS assignment going forward.

OUR APPROACH

To address the broad organizational challenges, we focused on building out the fundamentals in a critical business function with a four-part action plan.

Phase 1 of the project was to conduct an audit of 125 styles to assist with a response to a specific Customs inquiry. Phase 2 started immediately afterwards, with a full audit of all USA, CAN, and EUR HTS codes currently in inventory and future inventory through Fall 2027 (~1950 codes). This phase also includes documenting the future state of best practices within the company as well as with their external Customs Broker and Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) warehouse administrator. Discussions on Phase 3 are underway, which will include establishing a process to ship goods in-bond from the FTZ to their company in Canada, and a potential for Phase 4, which will expand that process to include Latin America. There are also discussions to hold HERA consultants on retainer to 'phone a friend' for future seasons.