While there are many public sources of competitive and competitor intelligence available, from corporate filings, to patent applications, and even corporate blogs, few can match the actionable intelligence that U.S. Customs data provides. With the economy continuing to struggle, many of our subscribers tell us that now is the time to invest in knowing more, not only about their competitors, but also their suppliers.

I contend that you should always be aware of what your competition is up to, but I understand why many competitive and market intelligence professionals are seeing a surge in information gathering activities. When every bit of market share means more than ever, being able to predict what your competitors’ strategies are before they make any visible moves is invaluable. Taking the U.S. Customs data into an executive’s office and showing the evidence that a competitor is currently prototyping a new product or testing a new supplier is one of the times that many CI practitioners dream about. Think about it, this is one of the few scenarios where a solid ROI can be applied (i.e. if we act now we can defend or gain 10% market share).

Take this for an example, about a year ago, one of Zepol’s trainers was showing TradeIQ to a group of managers at a Fortune 500 company. They asked to do a search for one of their competitor's shipments and within seconds TradeIQ was showing their rival's Bills of Lading for the last month. As our trainer flipped through the Bills of Lading online, one of the managers suddently asked her to stop, on the screen was a shipment for a product that was not on store shelves. They were able to identify that the competitor was about to launch a new product and they quickly sped their response to the market, securing invaluable points of market share.

I know this example is pretty incredible, but we hear about situations like this on a weekly basis from our customers. Most involve users doing in-depth analysis for which they need advanced tools like TradeIQ to do. A lot of competitive intelligence is down in the trenches work, but some of the smartest companies in the world are applying unique data sets like U.S. Customs data to reduce much of the leg work. We wrote a case study that talks further about how our data can be used to develop and report on U.S. imports for competitive intelligence uses and it is worth a read if you need to know more about your competition's supply chain (who doesn’t?).

BBC News is doing an ongoing story about how a container travels in the current international trade environment called “The Box.” They are concentrating on stories about globalization and the world economy as it travels along the way. Check out the story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2008/the_box/default.stm.

The container is currently in Shanghai dropping off whisky from Scotland and picking up a shipment of clothing destined for the United States. TradeIQ will see this shipment come in and I will post the Bill of Lading online when it does.

This container has already entered the United States three times in the last three years. Below are the dates and contents of the shipments:

• 4/8/2006 – Knock down furniture, desk pads, pencil cups, and jewelry boxes.
• 1/2/2008 – Auto parts and car air conditioners.
• 3/30/2008 – Salmon and crab meat cat food.
  

While TradeIQ subscribers have access to the full details of these Bills of Lading, this story shows the power of the information that Zepol provides. This is a very interesting piece and I cannot wait to see who the importer and supplier of The Box’s contents are. Check back soon to see the details of the shipment.

On October 29th, a new recall was issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relating to Chinese milk derived products. This expands the products that have been affected by melamine contamination in China. The FDA lists the products that have been recalled here.

What role can trade data play when imports are at the center of a controversy like this?

The melamine recall affects a small number of imports that are sold at Asian specialty stores. However, investigating the recalled products and their importers, we can better understand how large this problem may be, what other products from these sources could be involved, and how long the products have been in the United States.

I did some research into the specific companies/products the FDA lists on their website and found shipment details for most of them listing the importer of record, the shipper (possible manufacturer), and the description of the actual product. Click the link below to see a Bill of Lading for one of the recalled products:

White Rabbit Candies Sample

Members of the business community can also put Bill of Lading data to use by being able to fully vet their suppliers, knowing exactly what they have been exporting to the U.S. and to whom. Manufacturers could use the data to prospect for new customers by learning who the affected manufacturer's U.S. customers were. Journalists could use this information to provide compelling facts about a recall or expand the scope of the piece by knowing all the players.

The final important group that takes great interest when product safety is concerned are attorneys and investigators. TradeIQ’s U.S. Customs data provides key facts needed to prove a company imported products, identify jurisdiction, and determine suppliers like in the melamine case. Zepol has written a case study on how some law firms have incorporated this data in their international practices.

A lot has happened in the last week at Zepol. We have added several new features to www.zepol.com, made a couple of enhancements to TradeIQ, and received some press from a local magazine. With all this going on, I wanted to run down a few of the items:

1. Zepol was featured in the Twin Cities Business magazine's Going Global section. They did an overview on our company and how we help importers know more about their markets.

2. We added a Video Demonstrations page to Zepol.com. This page walks visitors through guided tours of TradeIQ. I encourage you to check out both the company and product search videos, to understand what makes Zepol different from other data providers. The videos clearly illustrate our unique interface that allows you to get both an aggregate and detailed view of U.S. import data.

3. We added a button to the front page of our website to allow those new to trade data to get a sample report. This will allow you to see what kind of information your can receive on your competitors, suppliers, and marketplace.

4. We added sorting functionality to the saved searches section of TradeIQ. This makes our saved searches even easier to use. Our customers save time by saving their commonly run searches, allowing them to spend minutes every week retrieving data instead of hours.

5. Finally, we are happy to announce that TradeIQ is now available using Google's Chrome browser. This makes TradeIQ available for Microsoft® Internet Explorer®, Mozilla Firefox (Mac and PC), and Google's Chrome. In other words, if you can access the Internet, then you can find the Bill of Lading data you need from anywhere in the world.

More enhancements are coming to TradeIQ and we plan on adding other website features to help the international trade community.