Tarsis is a trade compliance advisory firm with a software layer, built for foreign mid-market manufacturers.

Trade compliance is where importers lose the most money and get the least advice. Customs software targets consumer ecommerce or Fortune 1000. Big 4 practices serve their largest accounts at hourly rates that assume a corporate tax function is the buyer. The mid-market foreign manufacturer — the Korean tier-2 supplier, the German Mittelstand subsidiary — sits in a gap where the incumbent options do not fit.

Tarsis is built for this specific company: too complex for consumer classification tools, too small for Big 4 economics, entering or growing in the US market with real compliance exposure and a small internal team.

We are not the incumbent’s low-cost alternative. We are a different structure — advisory-led with software following, priced by work performed, staffed to serve a defined ICP rather than a broad market.

Trade compliance is not a self-serve problem. Classification decisions require judgment about facts you have to gather. FTA qualification depends on origin substantiation you have to document. Valuation methodology requires understanding of your commercial arrangements. Software can support these decisions; software cannot make them for you responsibly.

Tarsis leads every engagement with services — an Import Readiness Audit, ongoing program management via subscription or per-entry billing, ad-hoc advisory. The platform, currently in design, will support this work when it launches. Not replace it.

Filings are performed by a curated network of licensed broker partners we vet, contract with, and manage as a program. You are the client of record with the broker. Tarsis is the program manager. This separates advisory judgment from filing authority — a distinction that keeps the regulatory posture clean and produces cleaner advice, because the advisor is not incentivized to shape decisions to fit what is easiest to file.

Most compliance vendors price on request, which produces the outcome that companies with larger legal teams pay more for the same work. Tarsis anchors prices to volume and complexity — SKU count, HTS chapter diversity, entry type, service scope — not to the customer’s ability to pay.

Tarsis was founded by Jason Kim in 2026, following fifteen years of international freight forwarding operations across three cities.

Nine years at LAX, working ocean and air imports from Asia into the US West Coast. Six and a half years in Frankfurt, running trans-Atlantic operations for European exporters entering the US market. Currently based in the Chicago metro, serving as Branch Manager for a regional freight forwarder while building Tarsis.

The work that became Tarsis started as a pattern-recognition problem. Fifteen years of watching the same classification mistakes, the same valuation gaps, the same missed FTA qualifications, the same tariff-exposure surprises — all at mid-market foreign manufacturers who had a broker for filings but no advisor for the decisions upstream. Tarsis is the firm those companies needed and could not find.

Jason works in English and Korean. Tarsis’s paid advisory services are delivered in English and Korean. Tarsis-Haven, our AI assistant, answers general trade compliance questions in English, Korean, and German. All customs filings — regardless of the language of advisory — are performed by our licensed broker partners in English per US regulatory requirements.

Tarshish was one of the ancient world’s major trading ports, and its ships carried cargo for Solomon’s trade fleet — gold, silver, ivory — across three-year voyages.

“The ships of Tarshish were your carriers for your merchandise. You were filled and heavily laden in the heart of the seas.”

The name is the reference. It is not a mission statement, and it does not change what the firm does: advisory and software, not a pulpit. Judge the work.

We publish this explicitly because a mismatched engagement helps nobody. Tarsis is not the right firm for:

• Consumer ecommerce brands shipping high-volume small parcels with checkout-integrated landed cost needs. Zonos and Avalara Cross-Border are built for this.
• Fortune 1000 corporations with existing full-time compliance functions and Big 4 advisory retainers. KPMG, PwC, EY, and Deloitte serve this segment.
• Customs brokerage relationships. We do not file entries or hold a customs broker license. Our advisory work sits upstream of the broker; if you need a broker, we introduce you to a partner in our network.

If Tarsis is the wrong fit, we say so on the scoping call. Referrals to appropriate alternatives on request.