Public customs data lets you estimate a competitor's US business with surprising accuracy, if you know how to read it. We teach our back office.
First, find every spelling of the name: the same manufacturer often appears in manifests under several spellings, together with the names of subsidiaries and logistics providers. Second, count shipments, not rows: one container can span several rows. Third, estimate weight and value: where no declared value exists, the category's average dollar per kilo gives a solid estimate.
Fourth, look at the rhythm: a full container once a quarter means warehouse sales, weekly small shipments mean direct contracts.
The biggest mistake is reading only one spelling of the name and underestimating volume many times over. The second mistake is taking CIF values as absolute truth: they include freight and insurance, and some are estimated. The third mistake is forgetting that air freight is not in the data: high-value small cargo can be invisible.
Our system does the name consolidation and estimation automatically, but it helps to know the logic so you interpret the numbers correctly.
A competitor's volume gives you three decisions: whether the market is big enough, what the realistic price level is, and which customers are ripe for takeover, because buyers with multiple suppliers are visible in the data. This is not spying, it is a professional reading of public data.
The first consultation is free: together we'll see who in the US already buys your product and how to reach them.