From Side Gig to Headliner: How 1-800Accountant Is Helping Mid-Market Business Capital Music Gear Move up the Charts

Cory Borgen, founder of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Music Gear, had always wanted to enter the music business but didn't see a path forward. That changed when he mastered the dropshipping fulfillment model he utilized during his career in the automotive industry.  Dropshipping removes the burden of purchasing, shipping, and storing inventory, with orders from e-commerce businesses like Capital Music Gear passed through to a supplier for fulfillment. Capital Music Gear was started as a part-time venture, but its success inspired Mr. Borgen to focus on his music business full-time. 

While Capital Music Gear has annual revenue in the seven figures, Mr. Borgen knew certain methods he embraced early on wouldn't work as his operations scaled. He needed the right partner to entrust with his high-level financial work, but identifying one with the expertise and willingness to handle it was a serious challenge. "I developed this complex accounting system and tried to do everything in the database before working with 1-800Accountant," said Mr. Borgen. "I feel like that was working well for a while, but we didn't have great processes to reconcile back on certain things, like when they got out of whack, or things got missed or some inaccurate inputs. And then, as the business kept growing, these mistakes were causing problems everywhere," he added.

Mr. Borgen engaged several top accounting firms to evaluate if their capabilities and popular bookkeeping products could handle Capital Music Gear's distinct financial demands. "1-800Accountant was one of the first firms I reached out to, and honestly, you're one of the only ones I spoke to who were willing to take it on," Mr. Bogen said. He continued, "A lot of them were like, 'This is too complex for us. We can't figure this out.'" But when Mr. Borgen spoke with his future 1-800Accountant team lead, he came away with a great impression. "The first time I talked to Xin, I could tell right away about the questions she was asking. She's already brainstorming on that very first conversation. There was a clear path forward."

Mr. Borgen has been impressed as a 1-800Accountant mid-market client and is enthusiastic about what's next. "It's been really good. When we first onboarded, I think we had probably a weekly call, and now we're set up on a routine call going forward just to review progress on an ongoing basis." Most recently, the status calls have centered around Capital Music Gear's prospective key performance indicators (KPIs). "We just started talking about some different KPI ideas. Those conversations will probably get deeper, but honestly, it's just been so much work to set up the initial systems with tens of thousands of transactions that took a while for us to get on, so I am definitely looking forward to that in the future."

In Mr. Borgen's experience, 1-800Accountant's competitors aren't equipped to handle the complexities of mid-market e-commerce dropshipping and haven't made the necessary investments to service this growing industry segment. "The overall competency and understanding of the process and ideas on how we could address some of those things really gave me a lot of confidence in 1-800Accountant." Mr. Borgen added, "So, I think the possibilities for growth with 1-800Accountant is really great."