Sips & Bytes - Zach Kamphuis - Building Compliance That Doesn’t Suck
The Kamphuis family isn't done yet and the next generation is taking on winery DTC compliance.
Building Compliance That Doesn’t Suck
Zach Kamphuis spent six years at Commerce7 watching the same movie on repeat: wineries getting kneecapped by compliance software that costs too much, does too little, and creates unnecessary friction to the essential part of commerce, completing the transaction. As the son of one of the industry’s greatest innovators, Andrew Kamphuis of Commerce7, it wasn’t clear that he’d follow his father’s footsteps. But he put in the hard yards and earned his way up the ladder at his father’s company, and eventually became the architect of the sale. After a long, entrepreneurial run with a great exit, Zach did the right thing. He recharged. Then he and his wife did what you do when you’re young, untethered, and still able to sleep sitting upright: they visited every continent in 2024. Yes, even Antarctica. Because apparently he’s a younger version of the most interesting man in the world.
But wine tech does this thing to you. It gets into your bloodstream. You can leave the office, but the problems you face and never solved haunt you. I know that ghost well. And that itch, the itch of the unsolved, nags at you in the back of your mind. With Zach, that nagging kept coming back to compliance. His dad, Andrew, was thinking the same thing—separately. So was Jeff Carol. Three people who actually know this industry (not “I read a thread once” know it), all landing on the same conclusion: There’s a hole in the market, and it’s not small.
Why compliance of all things?
Compliance is one of the few categories in wine tech that isn’t optional or a problem in search of a solution.
“I like the compliance space because compliance is a requirement,” Zach told me. “It’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have.”
He’s right. Every winery that sells DTC in the U.S. needs to deal with compliance. Maybe you’re doing filings with a partner. Maybe you need real-time checks and a more sophisticated system. But you don’t get to ship across state lines without it. Period. That alone makes it rare. Most wine tech is a parade of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” Compliance is “you literally can’t operate without this.”
And yet, despite being required, it’s still priced and packaged as a tool that penalizes wineries for higher sales, rather than as the one that actually helps capture those sales.
I’ll admit I once nearly came to blows with Jason Eckenroth, founder and CEO of ShipCompliant, after he declared that compliance was the most important thing in the wine industry. I swept the table, and Andrea Johnston, COO of WineDirect, literally had to hold me back, while I fired back something along the lines of “You’re a toll booth on a road you didn’t build.” Not my finest moment, and I clearly undersold the genuine importance of compliance in the heat of it all, but it isn’t the center of commerce; it’s unnecessary regulatory friction, but yes, mandated to do the job. However, both Zach and I have always viewed compliance as a feature that makes it easier to collect transactions, rather than as the center of DTC commerce.
ShipCompliant has been around since 2009. It works (mostly). They’ve been the standard forever. But Zach kept hearing the same thing from wineries: “It’s overkill. It’s rigid. It’s antiquated. And the pricing is punitive.”
“It seemed like there was really a need for a more lightweight, more modern, much more affordable solution,” he said. “That’s not a shot. That’s just what happens when a category matures into a virtual monopoly and a pricing structure built when the company was cash-hungry. The dominant company is trying to extract the most money from big accounts, and everyone else gets told to either pay up or suffer.”
And when software is priced off production size or gross revenue, let’s be honest: that’s not “pricing.” That’s rent extraction. Zach’s seen wineries paying $15K a year for basic compliance. I’ve seen some up to six figures. Just for moving data around and gatekeeping as the only sheriff in town.
You can call it “necessary evil.” Wineries call it “another bill I hate.” And to top it off, ShipCompliant hasn’t innovated much since its 2014 sale to Sovos. While that may be a testament to its staying power, it’s more a testament to the lack of choices. When I volunteered at a winery on Sundays for the last few years, it pained me to hear how much MANUAL reconciling the small team had to do just to make the transactions work.
What’s different this time
Zach’s going for simple, transparent, accessible pricing.
Zach put it plainly: “VinoCheck is built around a simple idea: compliance software should be modern, easy to operate, and priced so it’s accessible. We don’t pretend to have every feature under the sun today, but we ship quickly, listen closely, and plan to keep the product affordable so compliance tooling is within reach for everyone”.
The build is modern, lightweight, and excels at the essentials: keeping wineries compliant, ensuring tax and fee calculations are accurate, and simplifying day-to-day workflows.
He’s got a small team of developers leading the build, with Andrew + Jeff providing strategic guidance as Advisors.
The part of the market that’s getting screwed
The wineries of all sizes are suffering. Right now, there are two choices:
Overpay for a system designed over a decade ago and still lose money reconciling the transactions
Duct-tape together workarounds and hope nothing breaks
Zach is aiming directly at that gap, producers who need compliance that works seamlessly with their commerce solution, not drags it into oblivion. A solution that understands wineries want to ship legally without hemorrhaging margin on software that doesn’t scale down nor shred margin as one grows.
“The smaller end of the market was just really not being fit,” he said, “and wineries growing their DTC to be sustainable are being taxed at a rate that acts like a toll booth instead of infrastructure.”
That’s the opening. And this isn’t some Silicon Valley “disrupt the industry” theater. No revolution cosplay. No buzzword soup. It’s much simpler, and much more useful: build something that works for the people who’ve been ignored. Make it modern. Make it affordable. Make it work.
Zach knows the space. He knows the operators. He has the respect of so many of both the old guard and the new innovators. He’s watched the pain up close for over a decade. Now he’s taking a swing at the thing wineries should have had all along: compliance that does the job right, at a fair price, without making you hate your life.
VinoCheck is deeply integrated with Commerce7, and on the roadmap, they will soon be working with Offset and Shopify via the Atowmic Club app. They charge $199/month and,
(YES, ONLY $199/month)
while they are still adding features to make compliance easier, they are the best choice for wineries using any of those three systems and will only get better to become the best solution (price and features) by the end of the year. I guarantee it.
