453: How To Uncover Your Competitors’ Secrets And Find Good Suppliers With David Applegate Of ImportYeti

Podcast: Download (Duration: 51:51 — 59.6MB)

You can find the exact factories your competitors are using by searching US import records for free at ImportYeti.com. Every ocean shipment into the United States is public record via US Customs’ Bill of Lading data, and ImportYeti packages that data so you can search a brand like IKEA or a scrappy Amazon competitor and see who actually makes their products, in what volumes, and how consistently.

In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I sat down with David Applegate, the founder of ImportYeti and a longtime ecommerce seller behind Wrestling Mart. David built ImportYeti during the pandemic to solve his own sourcing problems, and the tool has since become the go-to free alternative to paid services like Panjiva and ImportGenius.

Below is how ImportYeti works, how David pitches suppliers so they actually want him as a client, and the sourcing and product-launch playbook he uses inside his own ecommerce brand.

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Key takeaways

• US Customs publishes every ocean shipment’s Bill of Lading data, and ImportYeti is a free search interface on top of that data. You can look up any US-importing brand and see their vendors, volumes, and product categories.
• ImportYeti’s value over the raw dataset is deduplication and visualization. Searching “IKEA” returns one merged IKEA entity, not 500 fragmented ones, and vendor volumes and consistency are charted for you.
• Use ImportYeti alongside Alibaba, not instead of it. Alibaba finds you a large pool of suppliers; ImportYeti tells you which of those suppliers actually specialize in your product and move real volume.
• The way you introduce yourself to a factory decides your price. Emails that lead with “I’m an Amazon seller, tell me your MOQ and price” get treated as unproven and expensive; emails that lead with the product spec, a company name, and a call request get partnered pricing.
• Never start on Amazon. David calls Amazon-only businesses “manufacturer arbitrage” and says brand fundamentals (built through community sales, a Shopify store, or retail) are what let you survive when competitors undercut you.
• Copycatting by your factory is rare in practice. In hundreds of seller conversations, David says only about 1 in 100 has actually had a manufacturer clone their product and sell it directly.

What is ImportYeti and how does it work?

ImportYeti is a free search engine on top of the US Customs Bill of Lading dataset, which records every ocean shipment entering the United States. You type in a brand, product, or supplier name, and ImportYeti shows you which factories shipped to that brand, how much they shipped, and the consistency of the relationship over time.

David built the tool in March 2020 to solve his own problem. He was sourcing specialty wrestling products for Wrestling Mart, and existing paid tools required real data-science chops to make sense of the raw bill-of-lading data.

He wanted something a non-analyst seller could open, search a competitor, and act on. That’s the design goal ImportYeti still ships against today.

How is ImportYeti different from the raw import dataset?

ImportYeti’s edge over the raw Customs data is entity deduplication and vendor-volume visualization. In the raw dataset, a search for “IKEA” returns hundreds of fragmented IKEA entities, and you have to manually stitch them together and then tabulate each vendor’s shipments to see the real picture.

ImportYeti merges those entities so IKEA returns as one company. Its vendor table is charted with the volumes each supplier moves, so you can eyeball who is IKEA’s biggest, most consistent partner in your product category without any spreadsheet work.

That matters because consistency is the real signal. A vendor shipping to a big brand month after month for years is different from a one-off shipment, and the raw data hides that distinction.

How should you use ImportYeti alongside Alibaba?

Use ImportYeti and Alibaba together, not as substitutes for each other. Alibaba is great for surfacing a large pool of manufacturers who claim they can make your product; ImportYeti is where you verify which of those manufacturers actually specialize in it and ship real volume.

David’s example: Wrestling Mart sells both wrestling shoes and shoelaces. If Wrestling Mart listed itself on Alibaba, it would claim both, even though its shoe competency is far stronger than its shoelace competency. Import records show which category actually accounts for 70% of a supplier’s volume.

A supplier that specializes in your product category typically means higher quality, better cost structure from economies of scale, a workforce trained on that specific process, and lower raw-material costs. That is the vendor you want.

How do you find your competitors’ suppliers on ImportYeti?

To find a competitor’s supplier on ImportYeti, search their US-importing entity name (usually the corporate LLC or Inc, not the DBA), open their vendor table, and sort by shipment volume in your product category. The top three to five vendors with consistent multi-year shipments are your shortlist.

Then flip the search: type each vendor name into ImportYeti and look at their full customer list. You are looking for vendors whose customer base skews toward brands you respect, hits ESG or industry certifications, and shows the vendor specializing in your product type instead of dabbling in it.

If a factory already meets the quality bar of a big brand you admire, they can meet yours.

How to pitch a factory so they actually want you as a client

Factories give their best prices to buyers who look like real, low-hassle partners, and the first email is where that impression is made. Most sellers torch the pitch in the first two sentences by leading with “I’m an Amazon seller, tell me your MOQ and price.”

That email tells a factory two things they hate: you are unproven (they receive hundreds of Amazon-seller emails a month), and you are going to grind them on price and order the minimum. No factory gives that person a good quote.

The better opening names your company, states the exact product and specs, cites why the factory came recommended, and asks for a call with sales or the CEO. It positions the buyer as someone who has done the homework and wants a relationship, not a quote.

The bad email (what most sellers send)

“Hi, my name is Billy. I’m an Amazon seller. I want to import your coffee mugs. Tell me your MOQ and price.”

The good email (David’s script)

“Hi, my name is David Applegate. I’m the purchasing director at Wrestling Mart, the world’s largest specialty wrestling store.”

“I’m trying to import product ABCD from you. We’re looking for these specifications, and you guys came highly recommended. I’d love to set up a call with your CEO or sales manager so we can better understand your capabilities and see if we might be the right strategic alliance.”

What to do if you can’t credibly claim any of that

Be honest without positioning yourself poorly. “I’m a newer ecommerce brand, we’re investigating bringing these products to market, and I’d like to build a relationship” beats the MOQ-and-price email every time.

Never ask questions the factory expects you to already know. David’s trick: message a few vendors from a burner email first, learn the product terminology and material specs, then contact your real targets from a position of competence.

ImportYeti vs Panjiva vs ImportGenius: how they compare

All three tools sit on top of the same US Customs Bill of Lading dataset, but they package it very differently and price accordingly.

For a first-time or growing ecommerce brand, ImportYeti covers most of the workflow at zero cost. Paid tools become worth the spend once you need bulk exports, non-US shipment data, or API access.

How David picks a supplier once ImportYeti has surfaced the shortlist

David treats hard filters and relationship feel as separate stages. First he applies qualifiers: does the vendor specialize in this product, will Wrestling Mart be a big fish in their pond, are they in the right region, do they have stable long-term customer relationships?

Anyone who clears those filters advances to the relationship round. From two or three finalists he opens a real conversation, not a mass-email blast to 30 vendors.

The relationship round is where he judges partnership fit. He wants a factory that wants his business back, because that mutual interest is what protects him from quality issues, copycatting, and price hikes when the market moves.

Will your factory copy your product and sell it themselves?

In David’s experience, factory copycatting is rare in practice. Across hundreds of ecommerce sellers he has talked to, only about 1 in 100 has actually had a manufacturer clone their product and sell it on Amazon directly.

Two things keep it rare. First, once you have built a real relationship with the factory, the math on burning that partnership rarely pencils out compared to the ongoing order flow.

Second, most quality manufacturers do not have the organizational competency to sell on Amazon, because manufacturing and marketplace selling are completely different skill sets.

David’s five-step product launch playbook

David uses the same product-launch loop for every new SKU inside Wrestling Mart. It is worth walking through as a sequence, because the order matters. First understand it end to end, then work each step.

Here is the five-step launch sequence: participate in a community you actually belong to, spot a product gap you personally feel, test the idea with 30 people from that community, identify your three biggest risk areas, then prove the riskiest one before writing a check.

Step 1: Live inside a community that could be a market

Start with communities you actually belong to, because the product ideas that stand out are the ones you spot from the inside. David rattles off inks, fountain pens, guitars, and wrestling gear as spaces he lives in, and each is somewhere he could credibly launch a product without doing outside research.

The problem with generic idea lists is what he calls “same-room ideation.” When 40 college students in one classroom brainstorm business ideas, every idea is a hangover breakfast, a party cleanup service, or a book-lending app, because that is the only reality they know.

Your unique product ideas come from spaces that most sellers do not live in.

Step 2: Spot a specific gap you personally feel

Look for the products you personally wish existed inside that community. David loves certain shades of red ink and specific fountain pen holders that he cannot find on the market, and those are exactly the ideas he would develop.

If you cannot name a product gap you feel yourself, you are not deep enough in the community yet. Give it more time before you launch anything.

Step 3: Test the idea with 30 people, not a survey

Once you have a candidate product, buy 30 people from that community a coffee and get a 10-minute call. Ask about their current buying habits, walk them through what you are considering, and then ask the hard question: “If I ran a $20 preorder today, would you pay?”

A yes on the preorder question is the strongest interest signal you can get without shipping product. Passive survey responses (“that sounds cool”) do not count.

Step 4: Identify your three biggest risk areas

Every product has three risks: demand risk (will people buy it), distribution risk (can you get in front of them), and execution risk (can you actually make it). Score each one against your own honest track record.

For an ink brand, David figures execution and distribution are low risk for him because he knows manufacturers and can market on forums. Demand is the unknown, so demand is where he spends validation time.

Step 5: Prove the riskiest area before you commit money

Whichever risk scored highest is the one you validate before any real spend. For David’s ink example, that means the 30 preorder calls happen before he ever talks to a factory.

Import Yeti itself was built this way. David shipped a deliberately terrible first version, watched people tear it apart, and used the fact that they cared enough to complain as proof that demand was real.

Why you should not start your ecommerce business on Amazon

David’s controversial take is that starting your ecommerce business on Amazon is a mistake, because Amazon-only sellers are running “manufacturer arbitrage,” not a business. You are buying the same widget as everyone else, listing it at 1% less, and waiting for the next seller to undercut you.

Amazon is a great distribution channel and a phenomenal warehousing layer, but it does not teach you core business fundamentals: how to build a brand, how to talk to customers, and how to market outside PPC. Sellers whose entire marketing strategy is Amazon PPC are one algorithm change away from zero.

Better sequence: prove demand in the community first, then Shopify, then layer Amazon on top as an accelerant once the brand exists.

How to charge premium prices instead of racing to the bottom

David charges premium prices at Wrestling Mart, and his reasoning is that low-cost is one of the hardest strategies to execute unless you have a real cost advantage. Copying everyone else’s manufacturer and pricing 10% lower is not a strategy, it is a countdown to zero margin.

Consumers who are buying on value do not know the price of what they are buying. David cannot tell you what he paid for his Iroshizuku Ama-iro ink, because he wanted the color and would have paid $9, $15, $19, or $29 for it.

Premium pricing also makes advertising, customer service, and returns easier. When margin is fat, you can afford to give products away to unhappy customers, and that goodwill compounds.

The eBay cigar cutter cautionary tale

David’s first ecommerce product was cigar cutters he sold on eBay in the 1990s as a teenager. He was buying them for 50 cents, listing them at $9.99 with $3 shipping, and selling 20 a day.

Then a competitor listed at $9.50 and his sales went to zero. David dropped to $8.99 and got the sales back. That cycle repeated every few days for four months, until he was selling cigar cutters at $1.99 with free shipping and losing 50 cents on every unit.

That is the endgame of every commodity race to the bottom, and David says the same dynamic is now playing out on Amazon in categories like exercise rings, where 195 near-identical listings all trace back to two factories.

Frequently asked questions

Is ImportYeti actually free to use?

Yes. The core ImportYeti product, including brand search, vendor lookups, and shipment volume visualizations, is free and, according to David, always will be. You can search unlimited companies at ImportYeti.com without a paid account.

What data does ImportYeti pull from?

ImportYeti pulls from US Customs Bill of Lading records, which are the shipping manifests every ocean container entering the United States is required to file. This is public data, but ImportYeti deduplicates entities and visualizes vendor volumes on top of it, which saves you the data-science work.

Can I find suppliers for products that ship by air on ImportYeti?

No. ImportYeti is limited to ocean freight, because air freight manifests are not part of the public Bill of Lading dataset. Most physical-product ecommerce imports ship by ocean, so this covers the majority of use cases, but very small or high-value air-shipped goods will not appear.

How do I message a factory I found on ImportYeti?

Introduce your company, name the exact product and specs you want to import, mention why the factory came recommended (their record on ImportYeti counts), and ask for a call with sales or the CEO. Never lead with “tell me your MOQ and price” and never say “I’m an Amazon seller” as your opener.

Will my factory copy my product and sell it themselves?

In David’s experience, roughly 1 in 100 sellers he has talked to has actually had this happen. The relationship you build with your factory, and the fact that most quality manufacturers do not have the skill set to run an Amazon business, keep the risk small.

Should I start selling on Amazon or on my own Shopify store?

David recommends neither as your literal first step. Start by validating demand in the community your product serves (Reddit, forums, Facebook groups, Discord, in-person meetups), take preorders via a PayPal link, then launch on Shopify, then add Amazon as an accelerant once the brand is real.

What are the best alternatives to ImportYeti?

The two main paid alternatives are Panjiva (owned by S&P Global, enterprise pricing) and ImportGenius (subscription starting around $99/month). Both cover similar US import data plus some global coverage; ImportYeti covers the ecommerce-seller use case for free.

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