Why I Built Aleph

The story behind building a product compliance platform — born from watching importers drown in spreadsheets, email chains, and six-figure enterprise software that doesn't fit.

If you import consumer products into the United States, you already know the feeling. It's 11 PM on a Sunday, you're deep in a spreadsheet trying to reconcile which SKUs need updated Certificates of Product Compliance, whether your Prop 65 warnings are using the current template language, and if your food contact materials supplier actually sent back those PFAS test results — or if that was the other supplier, for the other product line, three emails ago.

I've lived in that world. I've watched smart, experienced importers — people who know their supply chains inside and out — lose hours every week to compliance busywork that shouldn't be this hard. Not because the regulations are unreasonable (most of them exist for good reasons), but because the import compliance software available to manage them is terrible.

The typical setup looks something like this: a shared Google Drive with hundreds of PDFs organized by some naming convention that made sense to whoever set it up two years ago. A spreadsheet tracking which products fall under CPSIA, which need Prop 65 warnings, which are covered by your FSVP program. Maybe a calendar reminder for when lab test results expire. And a lot of email threads with subject lines like “Re: Re: Fwd: COA — updated??”

It works, barely, until it doesn't.

Why Import Compliance Tools Are Broken

When I started looking at the compliance software landscape, I expected to find someone who'd already solved this. Surely there was a platform that handled the specific, overlapping regulatory requirements US importers face.

What I found instead were two categories of tools:

• Enterprise compliance suites — six-figure contracts, months-long implementations, and feature sets built for problems importers don't have
• Generic document management — platforms that can store your files but have zero understanding of what a Children's Product Certificate actually requires, or when California updated its Prop 65 warning language, or what the FDA expects in an FSVP record

Nothing in between. Nothing that spoke the language of a mid-market importer bringing in consumer goods and trying to stay on the right side of CPSIA, Prop 65, FSVP, and the growing patchwork of PFAS restrictions — all at the same time, often for the same product.

The problem isn't that compliance is inherently complicated. The problem is that importers are forced to treat each regulation as a separate workstream, when in reality they all converge on the same products, the same suppliers, and the same shipments.

What Mid-Market Importers Actually Need

After talking to dozens of importers, a clear pattern emerged. They don't need another document storage tool. They don't need a $200K enterprise platform designed for a Fortune 500 manufacturer. They need something that:

1. Knows which regulations apply to each product — automatically, based on product category and destination market
2. Generates the actual compliance documents — CPCs with all 7 required fields, Prop 65 labels with current safe harbor language, PFAS disclosures mapped to the right states
3. Tracks expiration and renewal — so you find out your lab report is expiring before customs holds your shipment, not after
4. Connects documents to products — not scattered across drives, inboxes, and filing cabinets

How Aleph Handles CPSIA, Prop 65, FSVP, and PFAS

Aleph is a product compliance platform built specifically for US importers. Not adapted from something else, not a generic workflow tool with compliance templates bolted on. Every feature exists because an importer needs it.

You organize your work around product families — because that's how your business actually thinks. For a given product, Aleph knows which regulations apply and what documentation you need. It generates Children's Product Certificates with the correct CPSC-referenced testing standards. It produces Prop 65 warnings using current safe harbor language. It manages your FSVP documentation with the structure FDA expects. And as PFAS disclosure requirements expand across states, it helps you track which products are affected and generate the appropriate disclosures.

The goal isn't to replace your testing labs or your customs broker or your legal counsel. It's to be the single place where all your compliance information lives, stays current, and is ready when you need it — whether that's for a customs audit, a retail buyer's vendor compliance questionnaire, or your own internal peace of mind.

What We're Building Next

We're early. I want to be honest about that. Aleph is live and functional today, but the product roadmap is long and we're building based on what importers actually tell us they need.

In the near term, we're focused on making the day-to-day workflow faster — less manual data entry, smarter defaults, better ways to handle products that share components or testing. Longer term, we're looking at how to help importers stay ahead of regulatory changes rather than scrambling to react to them. The compliance landscape for imported goods is getting more complex, not less. PFAS regulations alone are evolving on a state-by-state basis in ways that are genuinely difficult to track manually.

I'm not going to promise we'll solve every compliance problem an importer faces. But I'm committed to building the tool I wished existed when I first saw how broken this process was — something focused, practical, and built by people who understand the specific world of US import compliance.