Jared Stark founded Incendico Fire Alarm Store ten years ago, buying and selling surplus new and used commercial fire alarm equipment. The company serves customers ranging from individual buyers to large multinational companies, all through online sales.

For years, Jared ran the business the way most solo operators do: lean, scrappy, and focused on what mattered. eBay was his primary sales channel, and it handled sales tax automatically. For a while, eBay’s sales tax management was enough. But then Incendico hit its next stage of growth. 

Challenges with Multi-channel Expansion

In 2025, Jared began expanding beyond eBay, adding Stripe for direct invoicing and building out a Shopify storefront to improve the customer buying experience and reduce selling fees. The moment he did so, he discovered just how much sales tax complexity eBay had been quietly absorbing on his behalf.

"You're kind of spoiled when you sell on eBay," Jared said. "Once you start branching off into additional channels, you suddenly realize how complicated it is to make sure you're abiding by the tax rules in every jurisdiction you're selling in."

Jared is an accountant, and even he found it overwhelming to figure out all the sales tax requirements nuances and variations by jurisdiction.

His customer base adds another layer of complexity. Many of Incendico's buyers are tax exempt, meaning Jared had to track exemption certificates, understand state-specific documentation requirements, and make sure exempt sales were handled correctly. Managing that manually across a growing client base was becoming untenable.

He had briefly used Stripe Tax, but it didn’t monitor exposure in real time, register Incendico in new states, or handle filings. 

"Going into a Shopify store where you can sell to literally anybody, I needed to make sure I was covered no matter where someone chose to buy from me,” said Jared. 

Finding Kintsugi

Jared searched for Shopify tax solutions, evaluated app store reviews, and found Kintsugi among the highest rated options. The pricing model, in particular, stood out to him. 

"I thought the fee structure was perfect. Some companies want to sell you a product that covers you in all 50 states, even though right now I'm only registered in a few. With Kintsugi, I’m not paying for states that I don’t need."

Quick to Setup and Easy to Use

Jared created his account and connected his Shopify, Stripe, and Quickbooks instances using Kintsugi's prebuilt integrations, and had a clear picture of his tax exposure, entirely on his own in just a few hours.

"It was incredibly easy. Kintsugi already integrates with the apps I use, so it was as simple as clicking the setup link, signing into my accounts, and all the data synced over automatically."

Since then, Kintsugi has been monitoring Incendico’s transactions across 19 states and 2 countries, tracking progress toward nexus thresholds in each one, and handling registrations and filings as they come due. Jared checks in occasionally, but the platform runs without him.

"It's there in the background, running and working, so I can focus on growing my business. All the data has been syncing properly since I set it up. That’s exactly what I was looking for in a solution."

Support That Goes Beyond the Platform

When Jared acquired a larger customer in Canada, Kintsugi's support team stepped in, gave him an overview of Canadian tax requirements, then handled the registration on his behalf. He was expecting to be told that he needed to do some of this action, but was pleasantly surprised.

"The support has been a lot more proactive than I have experienced with a lot of other web services," he shared.

For a solo operator running a business alongside other business endeavors, this kind of responsiveness and proactiveness is not a nice-to-have, it’s a must.

Streamlining Business with Kintsugi

Before Kintsugi, when sales tax questions would surface, they would turn into rabbit holes: Am I charging the right amounts? Am I registered where I need to be? Did I miss a filing deadline? Each one chipped away at time better spent growing the business.

That mental weight is gone now.

"Kintsugi provides me with the value of taking care of an essential regulatory process of running my business. They manage sales tax compliance completely so I don’t have to devote time or mental energy towards something that isn’t part of growing Incendico.” 

Jared monitors nexus thresholds across 19 states and 2 countries from a single dashboard, knows when he is approaching registration requirements, and trusts that filings go out on time. The exemption tracking he once managed manually is handled automatically.

"Nobody likes paying taxes. Nobody likes calculating taxes. But Kintsugi is a ‘set-and-forget’ platform. You can trust that it's working in the background, and then just focus on growing your business."

His verdict, put simply: "It's the cleanest product I've ever used."