Sourcemap wants to detain customs drama before it ever begins.
The supply chain mapping company announced Tuesday it had launched a new tool, called the Mock Customs Detention solution. Leonardo Bonanni, Sourcemap’s founder and CEO, said the solution is designed to simulate how brands and retailers would need to respond should their shipments get held up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and to ensure their supply chains are agile enough to provide the necessary documentation about a product or shipment.
If CBP detains a shipment—whether over potential violations of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), trouble with taxes or tariffs or otherwise, the company responsible for the shipment must provide data to prove the shipment is compliant with all applicable laws; typically, companies have 30 days to complete that process, though Bonanni said it’s best practice to have all paperwork submitted within about 10 days after receiving a detention notification.
That paperwork comes from each and every supplier who handled the finished good before its eventual import. But contacting suppliers far removed from the end product can sometimes prove difficult, whether because of inaccessible contact information, language barriers or otherwise.
Sourcemap’s new solution makes it possible to ensure a company’s respective suppliers can submit documentation on a quick-turnaround basis in case of any detention.
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“What we’re doing with mock detention is providing a way for companies, ahead of any detention, to quickly find out which of their suppliers are going to need more time and start working on those supply chains to make sure that should anything happen, they’ll be able to get data from them in way less than the 30 days that CBP gives you to provide evidence,” Bonanni said.
To begin the mock detention process, all a brand or retailer needs to provide is the email addresses of their contacts at Tier 1 suppliers. From there, Sourcemap invites the supplier to participate, and the system starts “automatically cascading invitations to [clients’] indirect suppliers” until the supply chain is mapped down to the raw material providers.
Sourcemap then runs all the suppliers’ names, addresses and data against watch lists for CBP banned entities and companies on EU, UN and OECD watchlists. While the company doesn’t use artificial intelligence to collect data, it does use the technology to sort through and verify the collected information; with over 5.5 million suppliers accounted for in the company’s systems, automation has become a key part of handling millions upon millions of data points and correlations.
Suppliers are expected to update their information each time they begin partnering with a new material provider. Bonanni said using direct-from-supplier data, rather than publicly available data, to feed the systems helps to ensure accuracy and a direct line to the supply chains behind a business.
“It’s not enough to buy a database or scrap some data off the web that says, my suppliers are good to go. Even if your suppliers are compliant, you still need to know who they are, where they are and how to get in touch with them,” he said.
Bonanni noted that trade issues remain in flux as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to enter the Oval Office, and he expects it to be a year of uncertainty on legislation and its enforcement.
That kind of uncertainty, he expects, will bring retailers into the supply chain mapping game in a way they historically have not been interested in.
“What you’re going to see is a shift from supply chain mapping being done exclusively by manufacturers and brands, to now retailers mapping a very significant portion of the products that they buy—apparel and otherwise,” Bonanni said.
Bonanni said he will encourage retailers to pressure test one shipment from each brand they stock items from and recommends those tests happen one to four times a year.
The mock detention product has been designed to aid first-time mappers—who may have previously manually mapped supply chains—in understanding whether their supply chains have any suspicious vendors involved, so they can preemptively work against any problems that could warrant detention.
“This [solution] is entirely for companies that haven’t been able to get mapping and tracing off the ground, and in light of the tariffs, in light of the de minimis loophole possibly going away, in light of CBP ever growing enforcement, being able to get a very quick assessment of where the risk is in their supply chain,” Bonanni said.