The Adelheid brand has been delighting international customers with its felt products since 2004. The favourite among customers is the felt slipper. Made in Portugal from Italian wool felt, the slipper excites with creative and witty designs. Other products like jumpers, blankets, and socks are also sold in Adelheid’s online shop. The brand from Trier, which calls itself the “Glückswerkstatt” (happiness workshop), started with a B2B orientation. The B2C online shop was launched in 2009.
Since then, customers from the Netherlands and Austria have also become true felt and blanket enthusiasts. Internationalisation also means a challenge for the 6-member team of to-stock GmbH, which has been distributing the brand since 2017. “In addition to marketing and shipping logistics, many process adjustments are necessary to serve our customers in Europe or even the USA in the best possible way,” says Anne Pörsch, Marketing and E-Commerce Manager at Adelheid. Thus, the company continuously relies on eClear’s automation solutions to optimise the online shop in tax compliance.
„In addition to marketing and shipping logistics, many process adjustments are necessary to serve our customers in Europe or even the USA in the best possible way.“
eClear helps the team keep an eye on the delivery thresholds in the respective countries. ThresholdControl acts as an alarm system. The threshold monitor shows when the net turnover from sales to other EU countries requires registration for VAT purposes in the destination country. This allows Adelheid to respond proactively. “Especially for our deliveries to Austria, this would have helped us enormously last year,” recalls Anne Pörsch. “After Germany, Austria is our second-strongest market. We quickly reached or broke through the specified delivery threshold through Austrian orders. eClear’s warning system is a great relief for the future.”
When the EU VAT e-commerce package comes into force on 1 July 2021, the different thresholds will be replaced by a uniform EU-wide threshold of EUR 10,000. After reaching this threshold, VAT has to be reported and paid in the destination country. The VAT calculation must take the applicable tax rates into account. In future, eClear’s VATRules will support Adelheid to comply. The VATRules database provides all current EU tax rates and rules for all of Adelheid’s products – fully automatically via the eClear plugin integrated into their e-commerce ERP system, plentymarkets.
„We still see great potential for our range internationally.“
“We still see the great international potential for our range, especially personifiable or English-language products. However, the EU reform slows down our growth and costs resources – which is very significant for our small team. It is time-consuming and almost impossible to keep track of all the constantly changing tax and customs requirements. Thanks to eClear, we can optimise our processes easily and automatically,” says Anne Pörsch.
