NUDIENT's CEO describes the company as "a Swedish design brand for people on the move." The business was founded in Stockholm in 2016 with a phone case that ended up winning a Red Dot Design Award. And like all of NUDIENT's products, that case, the Bold Case, was designed by industrial designer Jesper Ståhl.
As frequent travelers embraced the signature phone case, NUDIENT thoughtfully expanded to sell more on-the-go products, including phone accessories and luggage under the name Bold Luggage. NUDIENT differentiates itself as a "design company that happens to run a large e-commerce operation."
And that e-commerce operation has grown very large. NUDIENT operates in more than 40 markets from a single Shopify Plus store, earning 94% of its revenue from e-commerce and serving more than a million customers.
With a team of only six people, the company achieved this success by focusing on core business functions such as executing great design. As Pontus Krusing, NUDIENT's CEO, told Numeral, "We are deliberately small and build most of our internal tooling ourselves. That only works if the things that are not our craft are genuinely handled by someone else."
One of those things is tax compliance, which had become a significant barrier to growth as the company expanded into new markets.
As a Swedish company, VAT (value-added tax) compliance was not new to NUDIENT, and the company's accountants effectively managed its VAT obligations within the European Union. However, as it grew into a global brand and began selling to customers in the United States, things became a lot more complicated.
While VAT rates vary by European country, the EU operates under a harmonized framework across member states. In the United States, each state sets its own sales tax rules.
"The U.S. had quietly become a real market,” Krusing told Numeral, “and sales tax there does not work like VAT: no single registration, rules set state by state, and liability triggered by crossing thresholds rather than by opening an office. We had no U.S. entity, no U.S. staff, and nobody whose job was tax."
NUDIENT was facing complex compliance issues that were taking Krusing away from his core function and leaving him wondering whether the company was doing it right.
"The problem was not hours, it was attention," Krusing explained. "It sat with me as CEO, and it is the kind of work where you can spend an evening reading state guidance and still not be sure you have it right. That uncertainty costs more than the time. Today, with Numeral's help, the recurring work is checking notifications and approving payments."
Krusing was right to be concerned, because the company's rapid expansion into the United States brought NUDIENT numerous complex sales tax obligations, including:
Companies that do business in the United States can trigger sales tax registration obligations by establishing a physical presence in a state (physical nexus) or by developing significant economic connections to a state (economic nexus).
It was economic nexus rules that had NUDIENT concerned. "We sell physical products into a lot of places at once, so obligations appear in markets where we have no presence at all," Krusing said. "The trigger is volume rather than intent, so compliance happens to you while you are busy growing. And we are six people carrying the same obligations as a company ten times our size."
One challenge is that the rules for when you establish economic nexus vary by state. In Alabama, for example, you establish economic nexus and trigger sales tax compliance obligations when you reach $250,000 in sales in that state, but in Arkansas and Arizona, the threshold is $100,000.
Companies like NUDIENT must know these rules across 50 states and track sales across all channels to determine when they've reached the threshold that requires them to register in a state. Understandably, this presents logistical challenges, which is why Numeral created a free nexus monitoring solution that companies can use to take this task off their plate.
Once a company establishes nexus in a state, it must register to collect sales tax there. Registration deadlines vary by location, so NUDIENT had to ensure that it was meeting each state's timeline as it established nexus.
Some options let you register for multiple states at once, like Streamlined Sales Tax (SST). However, these options are not comprehensive and don't make sense for every business. And even with participation in SST, NUDIENT would still have multiple different state portals to manage.
After registering, NUDIENT must begin collecting sales tax at the proper rate for every sale.
Most of NUDIENT's products are taxable unless purchased by tax-exempt buyers. But rates differ from state to state (and even within states), as do rules about whether shipping and handling are taxable.
As NUDIENT expanded into multiple states, it had to configure its Shopify Plus store and other sales channels to collect the correct tax on all applicable transactions.
Once it had registered, NUDIENT also had to file tax returns and remit payments on schedule. Again, this means managing multiple portals, with different systems for preparing and submitting returns and transmitting payments.
Since NUDIENT is located in Sweden, there was the added complexity of making payments to state revenue departments across the United States. In some cases, payments from outside the United States can require using an international bank wire to avoid having to pay with credit cards and incur extra processing fees.
Aside from the logistics, NUDIENT's expansion into the United States, and the sales tax obligations it incurred, meant the company was facing significant regulatory risk without a U.S.-based tax expert who could help to ensure that it was fulfilling all of its obligations.
Krusing explained, "It is not one task but a chain: Work out where you are liable, register, configure the store, file on each jurisdiction's calendar, pay in local currency, and keep up when a rule changes. Any weak link is a penalty letter later."
NUDIENT’s rapid growth led the company to realize that finding a partner with expertise in U.S. sales tax compliance was critical to its operations.
“As our US volume grew, economic nexus became a live question, and we wanted it handled properly from the point it mattered, ”Krusing said.
Krusing knew exactly what NUDIENT was looking for to solve its problem: "Someone to own the outcome, not another tool,” he explained. “Plenty of platforms calculate tax and leave the registrations, filings and state correspondence to you, which does not help a six-person team. I wanted registrations done for us, returns filed without me chasing deadlines, and a real person to turn to when a jurisdiction sends a letter."
NUDIENT also needed a sales tax compliance solution that could support its international expansion. "One partner across countries mattered a great deal. A specialist per market means several contracts, logins and onboardings, and no single view of where we stand."
Numeral became that partner.
NUDIENT brought Numeral in during the spring of 2024, and Krusing immediately knew that he'd found the right fit. "They took on the whole job, including the parts nobody enjoys,” he said. “The nexus study told us where we actually stood, and they did the registrations themselves. They are also built for our situation: a foreign company selling into the U.S. on Shopify without a U.S. entity."
Once Numeral was managing NUDIENT's U.S. sales tax obligations, Krusing soon faced another issue. NUDIENT was rapidly expanding, and each new country where it found customers just brought more tax rules that the company became responsible for following.
"Canada and Australia both had grown quietly until they were clearly material, and the same question came back: Register properly now, or carry unquantified risk into the next stage of growth," he said.
Fortunately, this time there was no deliberation about what to do and no real problem for Krusing to solve. Since Numeral manages sales tax compliance across more than 90 countries and more than 13,000 jurisdictions, getting fully compliant in its new markets took no effort on NUDIENT's part at all.
"We signed the international scope in March 2025 and were registered in both countries by May," Krusing said. "The international onboarding was faster because the relationship already existed. Scoping call in March 2025, SoW signed the same month, and Numeral handled both registrations, including the Canadian paperwork. Australia was registered within weeks and Canada followed. The parts that needed me were clearly flagged. The rest they simply did."
Expanding into new countries used to mean spending hours learning new systems, understanding complex laws, navigating government portals, and worrying that the rules hadn't been followed. Now, it's barely a blip on Krusing's radar.
"Canada and Australia added two lines in the same dashboard rather than headcount or a new system. And with auto-registration switched on, we're just registered in a new jurisdiction without anyone remembering to start the process. That is the difference between expansion being a growth decision and expansion being a compliance project."
The freedom that came with knowing Numeral was taking care of everything tax-related didn't just make Krusing's life easier. It directly impacted how fast the company could scale.
"Numeral is the reason international expansion was a small decision rather than a project," Krusing said. "When Canada and Australia came up, we extended what already worked: One platform, one team who knew our setup, one place to see every jurisdiction we are registered in. It also changes how we think about new markets, because the compliance question now has a known answer and a known owner."
The company's partnership with Numeral not only made expanding into new locations easier. It also simplified the process of expanding into new product lines. "That is the part I did not fully anticipate. We launched an entirely new category, Bold Luggage, in 2025, and it added no compliance work on our side. Same store, same registrations, same filings," Krusing said.
With such a small team, finding a full-service solution was important. Krusing also emphasized that he wanted a structured solution that took tax compliance off his plate entirely.
Since Numeral is built for e-commerce, offers white-glove support, and fully automates time-consuming tasks, it fulfilled all of NUDIENT's expectations. Now, Numeral manages every aspect of compliance for NUDIENT, including:
Numeral even sets up a virtual mailbox and responds to mail received from state revenue departments. And every service is backed by the Numeral Guarantee, giving Krusing the peace of mind he needs.
"On the U.S. side Numeral ran the nexus study, we sorted out the EIN, and they registered us across the states where we had crossed thresholds and took over filings from there," Krusing said. "Filings are prepared, submitted on schedule and auto-approved ahead of the deadline, so a return never waits for me to click something. When a state sends a notice, their compliance team picks it up."
This hasn't just taken the busywork off of Krusing's to-do list. It's freed up both time and, more critically, mental energy.
"Indirect tax outside Europe moved from my head into a system. Returns are filed across around ten U.S. states, plus federal GST/HST returns in Canada and GST in Australia, and I see them as notifications rather than as tasks. Nexus monitoring runs in the background, so when we approach a threshold in a new state, we hear it from Numeral, not from the state. My own involvement is approving payments and reading confirmations."
As for how this impacted Krusing and NUDIENT as a whole, Krusing was very clear:
"The time saving is real, but the stress is the number that matters. What I got back is not having to think about it, no low-level worry that a state has been adding penalties since last year, or that a threshold slipped past us during a product launch."
To sum up how he feels about his experience with sales tax after partnering with Numeral, Krusing had just one word to say: "handled."
Numeral is an end-to-end sales tax compliance platform for ecommerce and SaaS businesses. Top brands like Ridge, Muddy Bites, Graza, and Grüns spend less than five minutes a month on sales tax.
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