An enquiry is a claim. The import record is the verification.
Someone has written asking for your best price on forty containers a year. Before you cut that price, quote open terms or book production, one question is worth more than the rest: what has this company actually imported? Customs declarations answer it in minutes — real volume, real suppliers, real history — in the 38 of our 43 direct markets that name the importer on the record.
Four things a buyer’s import history settles before the first call.
None of these require the buyer’s cooperation, and none of them can be embellished on their side of the conversation. That is the whole value of reading a counterparty from the customs ledger.
Are they a real importer at all?
The simplest and most-skipped check. A company that has cleared shipments through customs under its own name exists as a trading entity; a company with no record behind a confident enquiry is, at best, an intermediary who has not said so.
How much do they actually import?
Declared quantity and value, totalled across the year. This is the number that tells you whether the order on the table is their normal month or an order they have never once placed with anyone.
How many suppliers do they run?
One incumbent, or nine rotating sources? A buyer with a single long-standing supplier is a displacement job. A buyer who changes source every quarter will change again after you.
How long have they been at it?
Shipment history depth, and whether it is continuous. Six years of unbroken monthly clearances is a different counterparty from four shipments clustered last spring.
Trade credit is a bet. Customs data prices it.
A credit report tells you whether a company pays its registered obligations. It rarely tells you whether the company trades in your product at the size it is asking you to fund. The import record does, and it does it for buyers in markets where formal credit information is thin or absent.
- Size the exposure against declared annual import value, not against a stated ambition.
- Read the trend: a buyer whose clearances have halved over three quarters is a different risk this month than last year.
- Check concentration: if one supplier carries all their volume, ask what happens to them — and to your invoice — if that relationship ends.
- Confirm continuity before shipping on open account: long, unbroken histories are the cheapest comfort available.
Two jobs, two pages
You already know the name. That is this page: verifying one counterparty who has approached you.
You are still looking for names. That is prospecting: rank every importer in your HS code by real volume and build a call list from it.
Both read the same declarations. Only the question you bring to them changes.
Buyer data, asked and answered.
What is buyer data?
Buyer data is the customs import history attached to a named company: every shipment it cleared, with the supplier, the HS code, the port, the date, the quantity and the declared value. Read as a profile rather than as a list, it shows what a company genuinely buys, how much of it, from whom, and for how long.
How do I verify that a buyer is legitimate?
Look the company up in the import records for its market and check four things: that shipments exist under its name, that the declared annual volume is consistent with the order being discussed, that it works with a plausible number of suppliers, and that the history is continuous rather than a short burst. Screening the same name against sanctions and restricted-party lists closes the loop.
How is this different from your import data page?
Different job. Import data is for prospecting: you do not yet know who to contact, so you rank every importer in your HS code by real volume and build a call list. Buyer data is for due diligence: the name is already in front of you and you need to know whether the company and the order behind it are real before you commit price, terms or production.
Can customs data tell me if a buyer is credit-worthy?
It is not a credit score and we will not pretend otherwise. What it gives you is the trading evidence a credit file usually lacks: real import volume in your category, supplier concentration, and whether activity is growing or fading. In markets where formal credit information is thin, that is often the only independent record available.
Which markets name the importer?
38 of our 43 directly licensed customs feeds publish named importers and suppliers. The other direct feeds carry the shipment facts without names, and a further 184 countries are covered through mirror derivation from partner countries’ export declarations. The platform labels which layer every answer comes from.
Can I check a specific buyer before subscribing?
Yes. Bring the company name and its market to a 30-minute live demo and we pull the import record on screen. Platform access is published openly at $1,100 for 6 months or $1,800 for 12 months, and the demo itself costs nothing.
See what your buyers are buying.Then decide.
Everything we show you comes from official customs filings — records, not claims. 30 minutes. Your shipment. Your HS code. Real platform. If you don’t see something new about your market by the end of the call, we walk away. No follow-ups.