How Prolong Lash consolidated 3+ accounting providers and unlocked full tax compliance across 14 U.S. states with Commenda

Prolong Lash had outgrown the setup that got it to global brand status. What started as a single innovation in 2008 – the lash industry's first professional aftercare cleanser – had become a brand with established distribution in five regions and active expansion underway in two more. But the operational scaffolding underneath that growth was creaking.

The U.S. was the hardest piece. For an Australian-based company, U.S. sales tax is a uniquely punishing problem: 45 states, each with its own nexus thresholds, registration requirements, exemption rules, and filing cadences. And before any of that could be solved, Prolong Lash needed something most U.S. tax platforms simply don't offer: a registered U.S. entity.

That was the fundamental mismatch with everything Prolong Lash had tried.

In the early stages, Prolong Lash assumed reputation and experience were what mattered, so the team engaged a series of high-end accounting firms. What they got instead was inefficiency, inconsistent advice, and a billing model that punished growth.

"There were ridiculous expenses for accounting on an hourly basis. So, I'd imagine that these high-end accountants will begin to fade away in the current climate." – Kerry Wood, Founder, Prolong Lash

Tax was handled by yet another set of providers, with nexus registrations, transaction-level reporting, and filings split across vendors. The result was a fragmented, error-prone process where no one had a single view of where Prolong Lash actually stood.

"When we were setting up our U.S. head office, establishing all the state addresses was a nightmare." – Kerry Wood, Founder, Prolong Lash

This is where most off-the-shelf options broke down. A typical sales tax platform could file returns, but couldn't form the U.S. entity Prolong Lash needed to operate domestically in the first place. A typical entity provider could form the company, but would then hand Prolong Lash back the ongoing sales tax registrations and filings as a separate problem to solve. Neither, on its own, was going to work.

The turning point came with a change in ownership. When Alicia Phoenix stepped in as the new owner, she recognized that fragmented vendors were no longer a viable foundation for a brand preparing to launch in Canada, the EU, and the UK. The business needed one partner who could form the entity, run the books, and handle multi-state sales tax – all under one roof.

Prolong Lash's path with Commenda started with the entity. Commenda provided the registered agent service to their entity that gave the brand legal standing to operate stateside – the foundational piece every U.S. tax platform assumes you already have. With that in place, Prolong Lash then self-served into Commenda's sales tax platform, registering in states where nexus thresholds had been crossed and automating filings from there.

This sequence – entity formation followed by self-serve into sales tax compliance – is exactly the use case that single-product vendors leave on the table. A pure sales tax tool would have left Prolong Lash to find a separate U.S. lawyer or formation service first. A pure entity formation service would have walked away once the LLC was registered and left tax for someone else. Commenda did both.

Commenda set up Prolong Lash's registered U.S. office and handled the address, registration, and operating infrastructure required to do business stateside – the piece that had been "a nightmare" under the previous setup.

With the entity in place, Prolong Lash moved onto Commenda's sales tax platform. State registrations are triggered automatically when nexus thresholds are crossed, filings run on schedule, and exposure across all 14 active states is visible in one dashboard. The team gets advance alerts before new state registrations are required, so compliance stays ahead of growth instead of chasing it.

One of Prolong Lash's most repetitive workflows – collecting and tracking tax-exemption certificates from resellers – moved from manual back-and-forth to a bulk-upload process inside the dashboard.

"I like the tax-exemption for our resellers. We can send a bulk email to our resellers so they can upload their tax-exempt certificates. Everything's much more organized now." – Adelle Whiteway, E-Commerce and Head of Operations, Prolong Lash

On top of the entity and sales tax work, Commenda absorbed the accounting function that had been spread across multiple expensive firms. Bookkeeping, consolidated reporting across entities, and real-time visibility into cash flow and tax obligations now run through a single system.

With Commenda, Prolong Lash transformed a fragmented compliance stack into a single financial framework built for the next phase of growth. The brand is now registered and filing sales tax in 14 U.S. states, closing books on time, and operating with the visibility it never had under the prior setup.

"I think that the high-end accountant markets are being chipped away at by the great work that people like Commenda and some of the organizations that are up and coming are doing now. We'd probably have to go out and find two or three different tools just to match the functionality we get today." – Kerry Wood, Founder, Prolong Lash

With the U.S. compliance stack settled, Prolong Lash is preparing to launch in Canada, with EU and U.K. compliance already underway. The brand has also secured a launch on Rakuten Japan and continues to strengthen its marketplace presence through Amazon UK.

"Next year is going to be massive. We're duplicating websites for new regions and preparing launches in New Zealand, Canada, and the EU." – Alicia Phoenix, Owner, Prolong Lash

With Commenda as a consolidated compliance partner, Prolong Lash can confidently onboard new entities and expand into new markets – without rebuilding its compliance stack each time.