Importers have the option of filing a “warehouse entry” instead of a traditional “consumption” entry.  When they do this, the goods are moved into a bonded warehouse instead of entered into the commerce of the United States.

Importers often ask, “Is it illegal to clear customs for a shipment if you are not a broker?”   The simple answer:  No, it is not illegal to import shipments into the U.S. without a customs broker, provided you are importing for your own account, and not on behalf of another company. You cannot be a customs broker (a company that assists other companies to clear their shipments through U.S. Customs) without a license.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol processes hundreds of thousands of shipments entering the country every single day. Typically goods are granted entry almost immediately, allowing commerce to flow at the fast pace demanded by today’s global economy.  How can this government agency handle such a massive volume of goods and their accompanying paperwork?

One aspect of Customs’ solution is the requirement that importers purchase a Customs Surety Bond for each shipment they bring into the United States. A customs bond is a guarantee issued jointly by a licensed surety company (typically large insurance companies and other financial institutions) and the importer to pay all customs duties and fees as well as to comply with all applicable regulations.  With that guarantee of payment in hand, Customs can release the actual merchandise to the importer before all documents and information have been provided.  That means goods can flow into the commerce of the United States without delay, while giving Customs more time to ensure compliance and investigate potential violations.

Alibaba.com is one of China’s great Internet success stories, not only for the vast wealth and influence it has accrued in the Chinese market, but just as importantly for its role as an enabler of global commerce.  Before the rise of Alibaba and similar B2B marketplaces, importers typically had to travel to the other side of the world to meet suppliers and learn about the latest products.

Now that suppliers are just a click away, many new companies are breaking into the importing game for the first time.  CustomsHQ.com has built a suite of tools to make the importing process as painless as possible.  We give you a streamlined interface that makes all the steps of importing goods from your new supplier as obvious and intuitive as possible.

Importers thrive when they compete based on the quality of their products, suppliers, and effectiveness of their marketing. Transportation, logistics, and customs clearance should be automatic and low-cost.  Customs HQ speeds up those processes while keeping costs down, letting importers focus on their core competencies in sourcing and marketing.

We may build a marketplace for importers to post information about shipments to receive bids on clearing the shipments through customs by verified customs brokers.  Eventually we might find trucking and ocean freight companies to participate in the marketplace as well, although that’s a more complicated matter.

When an importer accepts an offer from a customs broker, we share both parties’ contact information and request more detailed shipment data and documents on behalf of the broker. The marketplace would either take a cut of the transaction, charge the brokers to bid, or just be a free resource designed to build a stronger presence on the Web for importers and customs brokerages.

CustomsHQ.com would offer quotes on each of the customs clearance jobs posted to the marketplace. That way the importer is guaranteed to find at least one broker ready to do the job. If another broker offers to come in and do the job for a lower price than we can offer, it would be a great wake up call for us that we need to find more efficiencies in our organization. Our goal is to make it easy for small businesses and individuals to import goods from abroad.

We’re hard at work preparing our core web application for importing shipments into the U.S.  But that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about ways to take the application to the next level.

We just stumbled across CustomsJobs.net, a new site aiming to provide a unified platform for customs brokers, entry coordinators and others interested in finding employment with customs brokers. This week at the AAEI.org annual conference we asked both the organizers and the representatives from the National Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Association if they were aware of any job portals focused on the customs brokerage space. Both were unaware of this new site, which from the looks of it has not yet launched. We’ll be sure to post any of our own job openings in there, and hope you’ll help us spread the word around the customs brokerage and logistics industry. Everybody can be made better off if there is a central clearing house to match up the best talent with the most exciting  job opportunities in our space.

As the economy starts showing signs of life again, this graph makes it clear that both imports and exports are steadily recovering from their huge slump in 2009. We’re still well off our peak importing levels, but those volumes now seem attainable in the near future barring a major double dip recession.  This graph comes from Census.gov‘s Foreign Trade division, which provides excellent updates on the state of our trade with the world.