2nd Tier TI Providers, Part 2: U.S. Based Trade Intelligency, Manifest Journals & Import Intel

On the home front, several new T.I. competitors have recently emerged from rather inauspicious roots, such as  L.A. based Trade Intelligency, founded by Tor-Leif Walker.   Last year about this time, DiscoveringStartups.com did a company mention on him & it.

Tor: Stone mason or TI mason?

Trade Intelligency offers a $99 plan into the world of (U.S. Customs data based) Trade Intelligence, which is available via your Android smart phone. Now that sounds like a smart way to serve up trade intelligence.  They do offer more expensive plans based upon how far back you want to peek into their database.  30 days?  1 year?  5 years or more?  If you’d like to try it out, there’s even a free search utility.

They’ve got an official page on Facebook.  Or  you can Follow him on twitter. You’d become his 8^th follower, if you did.  If you join-in LinkedIN however, you’d be only one of his hundreds of connections.  How he has gone from stone cutter and supplier (the vocation he references as his current employ) to Trade Intelligence Provider would be an interesting story indeed.

Michael Heffernan of Manifest Journals

DC based Manifest Journals provides somewhat technical but insightful information about U.S. Customs data.  Although their website is bland and graphic-less, it does address key problems as well as outline important value added features they provide.  Noteworthy are:

How We Fix the Four Big Problems in the Raw Data from US Customs:

• How We Handle Multiple Versions of Foreign Manufacturers’ and US Importers’ Names
• How We Calculate TEUs as a Consistent Measure
• How We Get the Country of Origin from the Raw Data
• How We Add the US State, City, and Zip Code

If you have successfully and happily made it through the above explanations, then stagger forward (heavy doses of caffeine may be helpful at this juncture) to these two interesting (for us data geeks) descriptions:

• How We Actually Get the Raw Data from US Customs and How Soon You Can Access the Latest Bills of Lading
• A Short Database Programming Lesson: How Name Cracking Makes US Import Data Work Smoothly with SQL

Nowhere is price mentioned.  In fact it is difficult to find much information about them at all. Michael Heffernan (Seattle) US Customs Data Expert and Divyesh Shah (India), Director of Technology were “added” to the company last year.  I did dig up their blog /Facebook presence and twitter account.

North Carolina based Import Intel serves up the same U.S. Customs Waterborne Import Manifest (BOL) Data but marketed from a slightly different angle.  They offer “custom” world wide or specified country EXPORT reports.  Really it’s just looking at the shipper side of the U.S. import transaction.  Of course they also regurgitate the typical list of other applications: locate industry suppliers, monitor market demands and track specific competitors.  Pricing is not revealed, but they offer a free trial and demo of services rendered. They mention an affiliate office in China.

Manifest Journals searching and reporting utility for U.S. Customs data