The ship arrived yesterday, so when do you see the record in our database? We honestly walk through the whole chain of delays.
The manifest is submitted to US customs before the ship arrives, and the record usually reaches the public feed within a few days after arrival. The data-processing chain adds a week: cleaning, name consolidation, categorization. Our database updates weekly, so a typical record is visible with us two to four weeks after the goods arrive.
Supplier-level aggregate views may lag another couple of weeks, because identifying the foreign shipper happens in a later processing round.
For sales work this is more than sufficient: you are not chasing yesterday's containers but buyers' patterns, which form over months. A month-old record is fully valuable as a sales lead.
Where freshness truly matters is monitoring: if a competitor's customer has switched suppliers, you want to know with weeks', not quarters', precision, and that is exactly where our weekly rhythm works.
We always state the date of the data: reports carry a generation date and the database shows the update time. If someone promises real-time customs data, ask them how: we know that, honestly, it is not possible.
The first consultation is free: together we'll see who in the US already buys your product and how to reach them.