Recent Blog Articles from Panjiva, PIERS, Datamyne & Import Genius

From Panjiva: Trendspotting: The Q3 Report is Now Available.  Libby Fortier, Marketing Communications guru for Panjiva, was nice enough to send us their latest comprehensive third quarter report.  The report contains a quantitative analysis of the macro trends shaping global trade during Q3 which helps sourcing executives figure out which geographies are trending “hot” for the products they seek across the globe.  It provides a clear view of how some of the most rapidly changing product categories performed relative to the same quarter one year prior. Interestingly:

• Toy imports to the U.S. are down.
• Guided missile exports from the U.S. are down.
• Trade with NAFTA countries is up.
• Trade with Libya and Egypt is down.

Download, review and enjoy the entire (.pdf) report.  Thanks Libby

From PIERS: Correspondingly, Jesse Case from PIERS sent along a note to a recent interesting and unusual article the crafted looking at movies as exports: International Box Office Sales or Another U.S. Export? How Do Hollywood Movies Stack Up?  Just for fun we decided to look at some of the top grossing films in 2011 and see what it would take to ship these movies abroad assuming they were physical goods. To make this comparison we took PIERS Estimated Value for all containerized U.S. exports through Q3 2011, and divided this number by total TEUs exported, to come up with an average value per TEU shipped in 2011 ($77,543/TEU).  Using these assumptions we’ve found that this year’s blockbusters (if they were physical goods) would have generated some pretty impressive container volumes.  Fun with Data. 

From Datamyne: Peru Eyes Blueberries. Planting in the mountains for export markets in US, Europe, Asia.  The Peruvian government’s Sierra Exportadora agency announced that its demonstration blueberry plantation in Pichupampa should be shipping its first crop next year. The economic development program will be ramping up investment to expand the fruit’s cultivation throughout all 17 regions of the Peruvian Andes and gain share of the lucrative winter market for the berries in the Northern Hemisphere. Blueberries can fetch $30/kilogram in the US, where the buying season is about to open for trade dominated by Chile.  Singing the Blues. 

From Import Genius: Using Shipping Records to Research Suppliers.  Finding reliable suppliers can agonizing. You may be separated by more than just thousands of miles. Language barriers, cultural obstacles and time differences can make it difficult to build trusting relationships with overseas vendors. And that’s not to mention the huge number of scammers, amateurs and middlemen that abound at trade shows and, especially, in online marketplaces.

Nothing can replace face-to-face meetings and in-person factory inspections. You should trust nobody until you’ve seen the facility with your own eyes. But trips overseas can be extremely expensive and enormously time consuming, so before you go you should perform as much due diligence as possible on the factories you’re thinking about working with.

One great way to check up on a factory you’d like to work with is to tap into their actual history of shipping goods to the U.S. and other countries using public records. As it turns out, the shipping manifests for ocean cargo entering the U.S. and many Latin American countries are considered public documents.  Helpful advise from Import Genius.