Brands 101 (VIDEO)

This 5-minute video explains what brands are, how to set them up, and how to tie brands and Certificate of Label Approvals (COLA's) from the TTB to the brands you set up in ShipCompliant. 

Subtopics and where they begin

Video transcript

Zoe:
Hey, I'm Zoe and this is Petra from ShipCompliant University.

Petra:
We're super excited to have you on board with ShipCompliant and we want to set you up for success with your ShipCompliant account. It all starts with brands.

Zoe:
Yeah. So brands are what everything revolves around. Like the earth revolves around the sun or your winery revolves around the harvest.

Petra:
Like a dog revolves around its tail.

Zoe:
Sure.

Petra:
Let's do it.

Zoe:
Let's do it.

Carolyn:
Correct brands are the cornerstone for all your products. Accurate brands are essential for all output, like generating registrations, reports, and when filing for Colas through the TTB. Brands also must be set up before you can begin adding products.

Carolyn:
My name is Carolyn and in the next three minutes I will walk you through the setup brand step in your wholesale wizard. To begin setting up the brands in your Ship Complaint account, navigate to the compliance tab and scroll down to the wholesale wizard. On this page you'll notice several steps and each one has an icon next to it, indicating whether or not a field has been started, a field is in progress, or if a field is complete. Locate step seven, the brand step, and click on the field. Once you are on the add brands page, begin by clicking the blue add brand button. In the dialogue that pops up enter a brand key and a brand name.

Carolyn:
The brand name is an extremely important field. Enter it exactly as you'd like it to appear in your outputs. It is important at this step that you make a distinction between company name and specific brand name. If you are adding a beer brand at this step, you can indicate both brand name and TTB brand name, if they are different. At this step, we bridge the gap between how you've indicated your brand with the TTB and how you will register each brand with the state.

Carolyn:
Next we'll look at brand key. The brand key is a required field, but it is arbitrary in most cases and is only used as a unique identifier. If your system of record does not have a unique identifier or a code for your brand, you can simply put the brand name here or an abbreviation. This field is alphanumeric with a 25 character limit. You are also welcome to use punctuation. If you keep track of your brands in your order management system, then they should match exactly to the brand key in ShipCompliant.

Carolyn:
Great, now that we know what your brand is, we need to ask you a couple of questions about it in order to prompt you for accurate supporting documents during the registration process, and to ensure that orders with products under these brands get reported on correctly. Look at the brand owner part of the dialogue. Who owns the brand? If you are an importer, this is going to be the foreign supplier.

Carolyn:
The next important step in the brand setup process is to assign the ShipCompliant brand to the corresponding TTB brand. Our integration with the TTB pulls in all of the COLAs from your account. Sometimes this information comes to us with misspellings and/or typos, or it is simply different from how you'd like to register the brand with the state. Here you want to specify which TTB brand corresponds to each ShipCompliant brand that you have just created. This step creates consistency when you create COLAs, add products, and create state label registrations. Begin by opening one of your TTB labels, navigate to the top drop down titled ShipCompliant Brand, and choose the appropriate brand you've created to match the TTB brand. Then scroll down and click the green apply button. Once all ShipCompliant brands have been assigned to the TTB brand, hide all remaining labels that do not belong to a ShipCompliant brand.

Carolyn:
One last important note, if you need to add more than 15 brands to your account and don't want to add them one at a time, contact the Ship Compliant support team. We'll work with you to import a spreadsheet of all your brands. Utilizing the support team can make this process quicker and easier. Once this is completed for all your brands, you are ready to begin adding your products. Thanks for listening in.

Petra:
Thanks for watching. So, brands come first.

Zoe:
Brands are super important to make sure you're printing accurate state and federal reports.

Petra:
Yep. So what's next?

Zoe:
Next we go snowboarding.

Petra:
Okay.

Zoe:
Here we go.

Petra:
Just kidding, products are next.

Zoe:
Products are next.