Supplier Sourcing Research

Supplier sourcing research

Build a supplier shortlist with identifiable companies, observed trade evidence, product fit, and unresolved qualification questions. Shipment records establish observations, not manufacturing quality, available capacity, or willingness to sell.

Setup

Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY to your key from crawlora.net. Run the bundled scripts/crawlora.sh from this skill directory or by absolute path. It sends x-api-key to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1; keep the key in the environment. Read reference/endpoints.md for the selected ImportYeti, search, and website-extraction tools.

Find and qualify suppliers

1. Establish the product, reference brands, desired geography, and qualification criteria. ImportYeti search is by company/supplier name; for a product-only brief, first identify relevant importers or brands through web search.
2. Search /importyeti/search with q and optional 1-based page. Resolve names against country, address, and official domain before assigning a result to a brand. Similar names and importer subsidiaries are not interchangeable.
3. Inspect kind. Only company results chain into /importyeti/company?slug=.... Supplier results have no supplier-detail endpoint in this API. Use their returned search fields and public websites; do not feed a supplier slug to the company endpoint. An unknown/empty kind needs manual identity verification.
4. From a company report, retain supplier names/slugs, country, product categories, shipment counts, and relevant recent shipment descriptions. Preserve bill-of- lading IDs and dates when present. Search/report dates may use different day/month orders; retain ambiguous raw dates rather than silently swapping them. Keep url/source_url and collection time.
5. Compare candidates within compatible coverage windows. Counts, TEU, weights, containers, and estimated freight spend are different measures; do not treat them as product units, purchase value, or share of a brand's total sourcing. Deduplicate repeated shipment evidence by bill of lading where possible.
6. Check shortlisted suppliers' official sites using Bing and /web/scrape or /extract (flat JSON bodies). Separate claimed capabilities/certifications from independently verified facts. Record MOQ, lead time, certifications, capacity, and current availability as unknown unless directly supported.

scripts/crawlora.sh /importyeti/search q=nike page=1
# Use a returned kind=company slug after checking the entity's identity:
# scripts/crawlora.sh /importyeti/company slug=RETURNED_COMPANY_SLUG

Evidence and output

Return supplier, country/address, observed customer relationship, relevant product evidence, shipment metric/date scope, official website, fit rationale, and open qualification questions. Link claims to reports or company pages. Label a freight forwarder or trading intermediary when evidence supports it; do not assume every named shipper operates a factory.

• Public shipment coverage is incomplete. Missing air/land records, confidential records, or alternate names can hide a relationship; absence is not proof of no trade. See ImportYeti's coverage notes.
• Empty supplier/shipment tables may reflect extraction gaps. Report unavailable detail rather than concluding the importer has no suppliers. HS codes are a selected upstream list, not a complete product or tariff classification.
• Preserve masked contact fields. Use only publicly provided business channels; preparing a shortlist does not send inquiries or initiate orders.
• Bound search pages and report lookups. Stop at total_pages, no progress, or the requested shortlist size. Back off on 429, retry transient 5xx once, stop on 401/403, and check application code before using data.