Find Any US Importer's Overseas Suppliers From Customs Records

When a container enters the United States by sea, a bill of lading is filed, and that filing names both ends of the transaction: the consignee receiving the goods and the overseas shipper sending them. Those records are public. That single fact is what the entire trade intelligence industry is built on.

It is genuinely useful information. If you want to know who actually manufactures for a brand, which Vietnamese factories picked up business when tariffs moved, or which suppliers a competitor added last year, the answer is sitting in customs records rather than in anybody’s marketing.

Try it live: US Import Supplier Intelligence: Customs and Supplier Data. Pay only for results delivered, no result no charge.

The US Import Supplier Intelligence actor takes a US importer and returns the overseas suppliers shipping to them, reconstructed from those public records.

What comes back

Each run emits two or three row types, distinguished by record_type:

company_profile, one per importer you query: company name, address, the date range covered, the top supplier by volume, and a summary line.

supplier, the bulk of the output: supplier name, country, location, total shipment count, and a product category breakdown.

hts_code, optional: the Harmonised Tariff Schedule codes on the shipments, which is how you see what is actually being imported rather than guessing from the supplier’s name. This one is off by default because it costs an extra request per company.

Three ways people use this

Sourcing. You know a product category and want factories that already export to the US at volume. Query the brands who sell what you want to sell, and read off their suppliers. Shipment counts give you a rough sense of which relationships are real versus one off samples.

Competitive supply chain research. Query a competitor and diff their supplier list against last quarter. New suppliers appearing, or an existing one dropping to zero shipments, is a real signal about their sourcing strategy or a quality problem.

Lead generation for freight and trade services. Importers with rising shipment counts and a widening supplier base are the ones who need customs brokerage, freight forwarding and trade finance. The record tells you who is growing.

Example

from apify_client import ApifyClient
from collections import Counter

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("themineworks/us-import-supplier-intelligence").call(run_input={
    "companies": [
        "https://www.importyeti.com/company/nike",
        "https://www.importyeti.com/company/adidas-america-inc",
    ],
    "includeHtsBreakdown": False,
    "maxSuppliersPerCompany": 100,
})

countries = Counter()
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if row.get("record_type") != "supplier":
        continue
    countries[row.get("supplier_country") or "unknown"] += 1

for country, n in countries.most_common(8):
    print(f"{country:<20} {n} suppliers")

That gives you a sourcing footprint by country in a few seconds, which is the question most sourcing conversations actually start with.

Reading the shipment counts honestly

Shipment count is a count of bills of lading, not of dollars or units. A supplier with 300 shipments of low value components and one with 12 shipments of finished goods can represent similar trade value. Use the count to rank relationships by activity, then use the HTS breakdown when you need to know what is in the boxes.

Coverage is ocean freight. Air and land shipments are filed differently and are not part of this record set, so a supplier who only air freights will not appear.

Pricing

Pay per row delivered, from $2.70 per 1,000 on higher Apify plans and $3.75 per 1,000 on the free plan. Every row type is priced the same, so the rate holds whatever mix of profile, supplier and HTS rows a run returns. A company that yields nothing is not charged.

Use it from an AI agent

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/us-import-supplier-intelligence

Related

• Company Identity Resolver to match a supplier name to a real legal entity
• B2B Leads Finder to find decision makers at the importers you surface
• Website Contact Finder to get contact details for a supplier domain