IDA Sports designs soccer cleats for athletes the footwear industry has long overlooked: women and girls. Co-founded by Laura Youngson and Ben Sandhu, the brand was built on the insight that most soccer boots were designed around men's feet, leaving women players in footwear that didn't fit their biomechanics. IDA worked with players, coaches, podiatrists, and biomechanical researchers to build a women-specific cleat from the ground up.
The company launched in Australia in 2017, moved operations to the UK, and—after closing a multi-million dollar funding round in 2024—established a US entity to chase its biggest market. Today, the majority of IDA Sports revenue runs through the US, with direct-to-consumer sales on Shopify and Amazon, alongside wholesalers like Dick's Sporting Goods, Soccer.com, and a growing roster of independent stores.
Crossing Shopify nexus thresholds without realizing it
When Michael Joyner joined IDA Sports as the company's first dedicated finance hire in August 2025, US sales tax was not on the agenda. The team had been running with a fractional UK-based finance contact who had no visibility into US tax obligations, and the company was heads-down on US growth.
Then Michael opened Shopify.
“When I joined, I checked into Shopify and saw we'd exceeded all these thresholds already,” he says. “We hadn't set ourselves up for sales tax at all. We weren't charging sales tax to recover the liability in the states we'd opened up in.”
The Shopify notifications were there, but nobody knew to look for them. With orders flowing across the US—and a Dallas warehouse plus employees in New York, North Carolina, and California adding physical nexus on top of economic nexus—IDA was quietly accumulating ecommerce sales tax compliance exposure across multiple states.
The core problem: IDA Sports had tripped economic nexus thresholds in multiple US states through Shopify sales and had no system in place to track obligations, collect sales tax, or file returns—all while operating with a UK-based finance team of one.
Why not Avalara?
Michael's first move was a discovery call with Avalara, recommended by a contact in his network. But Avalara's enterprise pricing and complexity was overkill.
“They were expensive and trying to package up a load of stuff we just didn't need,” Michael says. “So I parked that.”
Michael needed a sales tax automation solution sized for his business, not one designed for Fortune 500 retailers. After conversations with peers in his finance network, three names came up: Numeral, Anrok, and Yonda Tax.
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