most importers don\u2019t want to disclose the names of their Chinese suppliers. But, in the US, the names of shipper and importers (as shown on the bill of lading) is public information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is available through more and more websites: Import Genius, Panjiva, Tradesparq, Trade Mango\u2026 Which makes it possible to look up who the suppliers of a particular competitor are!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I outlined three strategies to make sure this doesn\u2019t happen to you in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trick is to ask for the bill of lading to be issued \u201cto order of [your freight forwarder]. This way, the importer of record is not your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can hide your own company name abroad (consignee) when you open bill of lading with \u201cto order\u201d instead of your contact details as consignee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is particularly interesting if you\u2019d also like to ship whole containers directly to some of your customers (you can bill them from your HK company, and declare that profit in HK\u2019s low tax system).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assuming that the importer has a Hong Kong company, the importer can use his Hong Kong set up to do the re-invoicing of the Chinese supplier\u2019s invoice and packing list. Furthermore he can advise his appointed forwarder to issue the B\/L so that the Hong Kong company is shown as shipper and not the Chinese supplier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Setting up a HK company is quick and not very expensive. Many service companies and CPAs can help you manage all the trade-related paperwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can simply set up another importing business, with a company name that has nothing to do with the name under which you do business. Then you buy domestically from that other company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is nothing stopping you from incorporating a new company at home. Here I\u2019m talking about creating a second, seemingly unrelated business with the sole purpose of bringing the goods into the US. In this scenario, your company, ABC Marketing Inc., would purchase its merchandise from XYZ Importing Inc. As a domestic sale, you have perfect privacy, so your competitors would never know that ABC was doing its buying through XYZ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
la plupart des importateurs ne veulent pas divulguer les noms de leurs fournisseurs chinois. Mais aux \u00c9tats-Unis, les noms des exp\u00e9diteurs et des importateurs (tels qu'ils figurent sur le connaissement) sont des informations publiques. Ces informations sont disponibles sur de plus en plus de sites web : Import Genius, Panjiva, Tradesparq,<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3859,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_mbp_gutenberg_autopost":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/hero-secret-weapon-post.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3860,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3858\/revisions\/3860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}