Case Study 03
If your operator has become the hardest part of doing business in America, it is time to talk about what a real partnership looks like.
statesideimports.com
A TWL Company
Does This Sound Familiar?
You chose a pay-to-play operator because you needed infrastructure. Now the infrastructure is costing you more than the product. These are the patterns we hear from brands every week.
Charges appear for services you did not request. Line items are bundled so tightly you cannot tell what you are paying for. Quarterly invoices swing by thousands with no explanation.
Your rate at signing is not your rate six months later. Distribution tiers compound. Storage markups increase. The contract allows it, buried in the fine print.
You do not know exactly how many cases are in the warehouse. You do not know when orders ship. When you ask, you wait days for a reply that raises more questions.
Your operator does not own the warehouse. They contract with one and pass the cost to you with their margin on top. You are paying for two layers of service and getting one.
Annual commitments. 90-day notice periods. Early termination penalties. The contract was designed to make leaving painful, not to make staying worthwhile.
You are a line item in their portfolio. Your account manager changes. Your emails go unanswered. Your brand's success is not their concern as long as the invoice is paid.
The Real Cost
The financial damage is easy to measure. The opportunity cost is harder to see but worse.
Every hour you spend reconciling invoices, chasing down inventory counts, or fighting for credits is an hour you are not spending building your brand, developing new products, or talking to retailers.
The hidden cost of a bad operator is not what they charge you. It is what they take from you.
Opaque fees, billing errors, and escalating rates erode your margins every month. The damage compounds over time and is nearly impossible to recover retroactively.
When you are spending hours each week managing your operator instead of your business, your growth stalls. Compliance issues, warehouse miscommunications, and missing data consume your bandwidth.
Every delayed shipment, every compliance gap, every retailer who cannot get your product is a sale that went to someone else. The market does not wait for your operator to get it together.
A Different Model
| Typical Operator | Stateside Imports | |
|---|---|---|
| Warehouse | Third-party facility. Your operator rents space and marks it up before passing the cost to you. | Our own bonded warehouse. No middleman. Flat-rate pallet storage you can plan around. |
| Pricing | Bundled line items. Tiered distribution fees that escalate as your business grows. Quarterly surprise charges. | One monthly invoice with every line item explained. No bundled charges. No tier escalators. |
| Contracts | Annual commitments. 90-day termination notice. Early exit penalties. | Month-to-month. 30-day notice. No exit fees. |
| Inventory Visibility | Limited or delayed reporting. You request information and wait. | Real-time inventory and order tracking. You see what we see. |
| Communication | Rotating account managers. Email response times measured in days. | Single point of contact. Same person from onboarding through operations. |
| Product Ownership | Varies. Some operators take title to your product as a condition of service. | You retain title to your product at all times. Always. |
Making the Switch
Most brands assume switching operators means starting over. It does not. Federal approvals travel with your brand, not your operator. Here is the process.
We review your current operator agreement, compliance filings, inventory position, and retail footprint. This conversation is confidential. We have been where you are.
While you are still active with your current operator, we begin compliance filings under Stateside. State registrations, importer of record transfer, and warehouse preparation happen in the background.
We work with you to plan the inventory transfer. If your current operator has a notice period or exit process, we build the timeline around it. The goal is zero downtime in market availability.
Your product arrives at our warehouse. Your compliance goes active. Your retail accounts are reconnected. From this point forward, you have one partner, one warehouse, one invoice, and one person to call.
Typical transition: 4 to 6 weeks. Most of that time is the overlap period. The actual cutover takes days. Your retailers will not notice anything except that your product is suddenly easier to order.