In this demo, Ron Healy showcases how the ePAL cross‑border calculator integrates with a Shopify store (Fantasy F1) to deliver a fully landed‑cost checkout experience. He walks through a purchase of a snowboard, comparing Shopify’s default duties and taxes (effective duty 6.5%) with ePAL’s optimized calculation (effective duty 3.7%) that results from using a more appropriate HS code. The lower duty reduces taxes, allowing the merchant to either lower the retail price to $3,409 and become the top‑ranked option for AI shopping bots, or keep the $3,501 price and retain the margin saved on duties. He demonstrates ePAL’s reverse‑audit mode, its ability to be enabled per market (e.g., Portugal and France), and how it computes product‑by‑country landed costs in the backend, delivering a checkout with no hidden fees for consumers while potentially reducing the merchant’s tax and duty liability. The presentation emphasizes strategic pricing decisions, the importance of HS‑code accuracy, and the benefits of a fully landed‑cost experience for both merchants and shoppers.
Chapters
Hi, and welcome to EPAL for Shopify. EPAL delivers a fully landed cost experience globally for all different merchants of all different types. Let's take a look at a typical Shopify store. This one's Fantasy F1. It's a, just a demo site we put up. There's a really nice snowboard. Let's buy it. Okay, Shopify does a great experience of allowing me to buy it, add it to my cart, do my checkout. And fill in my information. I'm out of Sweden and I've got a fully landed cost, Shopify fully landed cost with the duties and Shopify taxes both enabled, which is great. The question is, I wonder if that's the lowest price I could get. With AI and the ability to search broadly across the web and find the best price, this is more and more important to merchants. So $3,501, is that the best we can do? Hmm. And for a merchant, if you're not the lowest price now, then you're not going to make a good impression with the AI bots. They're going to find somebody else. Let's look at the backend of the merchant's setup. So what we can see is they've got the ePAL cross-border calculator enabled. In this case, it's running in reverse audit mode. We can also run it in the actual liability calculator itself. So that the, the price is computed by ePal. But in this case, we're just showing a comparison. Let's look at what Shopify calculated. So we've got the goods value, same for both, and then Shopify's got a tax and duties figure as well as shipping. So $35.01, which is what we saw on the site. ePal says Shopify is overcharging, overcharging on duties and overcharging on tax. I wonder what's going on there. Let's take a look. Shopify has an effective duty of 6.5%. EPAL says it can be done at 3.7%. Let's look into the individual products. In this case, we can see Shopify has an HS code that's different than EPAL's. This HS code is actually for the materials, the resin and the polymer inside the board, whereas this is for the actual consumer product, the snowboard. So in this case, EPAL found a lower customs duty, which also then drove, since customs duties are taxable, a lower tax amount. So it's a knock-on effect. The duties and the tax travel together. So what this means is the merchant could actually sell for $3,409 and become the highest-ranking selection by the shopping bot or by consumers themselves. Now, they could also continue to sell at $3,501 and just pay less in taxes and duties and make up the difference, keep the difference, put it into their margin. It's really their choice. Easy to turn on as a reverse audit tool to check on everything. Easy to turn on in the markets you choose. Here we're looking at a market that has EPAL enabled. In this case, it's enabled for Portugal and France. You come in here, you select all the products you want, and then EPAL will work out the prices. So you work out the prices for the entire country. Let's work out France's prices. And so in one fell swoop, it runs a calculation in the backend and computes by product, by country, the fully landed cost to deliver that solution into the country itself. And then it makes that price available for checkout. So the consumer gets a fully landed cost experience, everything covered, no customs duties, no fees, no taxes due when it arrives at their door. And the merchant also gets an optimized liability calculation, oftentimes reducing the tax and duties they owe to the government. Thank you. That's EPAL Global.
