BIC creates smooth B2B shopping experience for clients

BIC is a multinational manufacturing corporation best known for making disposable consumer products such as pens, razors and lighters. The company was founded in France in 1945 and today it has an annual revenue of €1.6 billion. BIC’s headquarters are now in Shelton Connecticut and its manufacturing operation is global, with 25 factories operating around the world.

In the U.S., BIC has a sizeable B2B ecommerce business supplying customised lighters to major brands, conferences and the hospitality sector. Its 2020 acquisition of another lighter manufacturer allowed BIC to expand supply significantly, and sales have grown accordingly.

Up until 2020, BIC’s finance team were still manually calculating the rate of sales tax for every order, and maintaining lists of rates by state, county and city. But, with over 13,000 taxing jurisdictions in the U.S. and rates changing frequently, trying to keep up with myriad rates and rules was proving to be an impossible task. Even using ZIP codes to calculate sales tax can lead to errors – BIC has found that the rate on one side of a street can be different to the rate on the other.

Adding to the administrative burden, BIC’s corporate clients wanted to see transparent costs, which meant it was essential to present invoices with sales tax details fully itemised. Around 70% of business customers had sales tax exemptions, which complicated transactions further. Many orders had to be manually adjusted to accommodate a seller’s unique situation. 

At this point, BIC decided it was time to automate its sales tax compliance to allow its North American business to scale more efficiently. The team responsible for finding a technology partner knew that Avalara’s AvaTax could solve BIC’s sales tax calculation problem and so choosing the cloud-based software was an easy decision. “AvaTax is the Rolls Royce of tax calculation so it was the obvious choice”, says Davide Moncalvo, Senior Business Analyst.

AvaTax calculates duties and taxes in real time at the point of sale and collects at checkout, reducing the risk of costly penalties, customs delays, and customers being surprised by unexpected costs. It also allows sellers to manage exemption certificates to ensure compliance requirements are being met; being able to report on and evidence exemption is vital in case of audit.   

With prebuilt connectors to BIC’s ERP system, Magento 2, implementation of AvaTax was straightforward. Davide handled it himself. “Avalara provides excellent documentation so getting the system up and running was quite simple – it just plugged in. AvaTax is intuitive and easy to use. I had to set up a lot of custom rules and some were quite complex, but Avalara’s support team were on hand to assist me”.

He adds, “When I was setting up the system I ran many tests to check that the correct rates of tax were being calculated. I wanted to be certain that we could have complete confidence in the software. I tested dozens of locations, focusing on those with particularly complicated sales tax rules. AvaTax passed the test every time.”

The integrated system has created a powerful ecommerce platform for BIC. AvaTax and Magento work together to provide a very smooth experience for both business and individual customers. BIC’s corporate clients can enter exemption certificate numbers into their account records, which Avalara keep on file in Magento and make easily accessible at checkout for sales tax exemption. So for returning customers, this makes ordering a breeze.

Davide says, “B2B sales may be lower in volume than B2C, but the orders are much higher in value so it’s crucial that we make buying from BIC easy for our business clients”.

While AvaTax can automatically handle up to 1,000 certificates, Davide anticipates BIC may soon need to add Avalara Exemption Certificate Management to its tech stack. This would handle the growing number of exempt sales and provide additional compliance measures such as managing certificate renewal and performing additional validation.

Today BIC is registered for sales tax in all 50 U.S. states and 9 Canadian provinces. It uses AvaTax for both B2B and B2C sales in the U.S., and for B2B sales in Canada.