Touch of Modern Saves 4,000 Hours a Year & Streamlines Supplier Payments with Tipalti
- Grew sales dramatically while staying lean
- Increased payment options and enhanced currency offerings
- Successfully integrated with accounting package, Xero, by using the Tipalti API
HQ San Francisco, CA
Customer Since 2012
Industry Ecommerce Retailer
With Tipalti, we’ve never had to add headcount in accounts payable or finance.
Jonathan Wu
COO at Touch of Modern
Touch of Modern markets to urban, fashionable men.
With cutting edge products for body and home, they support emerging manufacturers that offer their high-end clientele first dibs on unique and stylish products.
With 4,000 suppliers worldwide, Touch of Modern was
scaling at a rapid rate—growing from $6M in sales to $90M.
But for Jonathan Wu, COO, their heavily manual accounts payable process was causing inefficiencies in their payments operation.
“AP was a major time sink—even with only five payments, it took half a day, which included entering in the invoice and vendor payment information, checking and double-checking amounts, and setting up wire transfers.”
To add to the complexity, Wu was using multiple methods to
pay suppliers, including wire transfers, ACH, paper checks,
PayPal, and credit card authorizations. This process
required manually logging into each system’s portals,
setting up payment routing, and executing the payment.
Plus, Wu’s manual operations were putting an unnecessary
strain on their critical supplier relationships.
“It becomes crucial that we minimize the onboarding process knowing how volatile things can get with suppliers. An unhappy supplier is more likely to share their experience with others in the community and hurt the reputation of the retailer.”
As a one-person finance department, Wu had the sole responsibility for all global operations, including technology infrastructure, workflow processes, cash flow management, forecasting, and accounts payable.
He needed a technology partner that could alleviate the financial burden.
“With Tipalti, we can run our business without the need to staff a dedicated accounts payable department, saving significant time and resources. That level of automation has given us increased control and clarity over our payment methods and eliminated the chance for human error.”
Also, Wu was able to benefit from Tipalti’s added financial controls and streamlined supplier management.
“Tipalti is the only system that pulls from a central account to support all the varying payment methods needed. The platform effectively guides our international suppliers through all banking rules and has the intelligence to prevent any global banking remittance issues.”
So, what’s the future for Touch of Modern?
“Continuing to create a culture that’s focused on streamlining and automating as much as possible. It’s important to operate lean to optimize margins—any opportunity to find savings across the board is critical to survival and scalability.”
And for AP?
“The long term value Tipalti has brought us is immensely valuable—now, we’re hyper-focused on growth and scaling our company.”
