How to use this dashboard
What each page answers, how the head-wind / tail-wind verdict is built, and what every term means.
This dashboard compares DiversiTech's import sourcing against the other importers visible in the same customs data, and tells you whether market conditions are currently helping or hurting us.
It is built for two questions Finance and Pricing ask most: are we paying more than our competitors for the same kind of freight, and is the direction of travel good or bad? Everything on screen comes from shipment-level import records — no forecasts and no assumptions.
The verdict blends four factors — freight cost per kg, declared value per kg, sourcing options and supply stability — and compares the most recent three months against the three months before them. Each factor is scored from -1 to +1 and averaged.
Tail-wind
Conditions improving in our favour.
Head-wind
Conditions moving against us.
Neutral
Too small to call, or too little data.
A falling cost is a tail-wind; a rising cost is a head-wind. For sourcing options and shipment flow it is the other way round — more is better. Factors with fewer than five shipments behind them are not scored, and those under ten are flagged low confidence.
Overview
Is the market working for us or against us right now?
The headline verdict, the four scoring factors behind it, and the freight-cost trend by importer. Start here for the one-minute read.
Market signal
Why does the verdict say what it says?
Each factor broken out with its period-over-period change, sample size and scoring rule, plus a separate verdict for every importer.
vs. Competitors
Are we paying more or less than the others?
DiversiTech against Rectorseal, Dial and Supco on freight cost, volume and product mix. Use it to spot pricing exposure by HS code.
Sourcing
Where does our supply come from, and how concentrated is it?
Country-of-origin mix over time, supplier concentration, suppliers added or lapsed, and which suppliers we share with rivals.
Data explorer
What exactly is behind a number?
The shipment rows themselves — sort, search, choose columns. Use it to sanity-check anything a chart shows.
The date range, product code and supplier country at the top apply to every page at once and follow you as you switch tabs, so you can narrow to one product group and then walk through the whole story. Reset returns to the default view covering all available months.
Export CSV gives you the current filtered shipment rows for Excel. Download workbook gives a multi-tab Excel file — shipments, price benchmarks, supplier risk, volume trends and the scorecard inputs — all on the same filters.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Freight cost per kg | Shipping cost divided by shipment weight, counted only where both values are present. This is the primary cost signal in the dashboard. |
| Declared value per kg | The declared customs value divided by weight — a secondary signal, useful for product mix shifts rather than negotiated rates. |
| Landed cost | Goods value plus freight and related charges at the point of arrival. Only partially available in this data, so it is used as context, not as a headline figure. |
| Tail-wind | Conditions moving in our favour over the last three months — for example freight per kg falling, or more suppliers available. Shown in green. |
| Head-wind | Conditions moving against us — costs rising or sourcing options narrowing. Shown in red. |
| Neutral | Movement too small to call in either direction. Shown in grey, as is any factor with too little data. |
| Composite score | The average of the four scored factors, on a scale from -1 (strong head-wind) to +1 (strong tail-wind). Above +0.15 reads as tail-wind, below -0.15 as head-wind. |
| Sensitivity | How large a percentage change a factor needs before it counts as a full point. Cost factors move the score faster than volume factors, because a 20% freight swing matters more than a 20% shipment-count swing. |
| Sourcing options | The number of distinct suppliers shipping to us in the period. More options generally means more negotiating room. |
| Supply stability | How steady shipment flow has been month to month. Sharp swings read as instability. |
| Supplier concentration | The share of shipments or weight coming from the largest suppliers. High concentration means more exposure if one supplier falters. |
| New supplier | A supplier whose first shipment to the importer falls within the last 90 days. |
| Lapsed supplier | A supplier with no shipment in over 90 days — possibly dropped or paused. |
| Shared vs. exclusive supplier | Shared means a competitor also ships from that supplier; exclusive means only we do, within this data. |
| Supplier overlap | How much of our supplier base a given competitor also uses. High overlap means we compete for the same capacity. |
| HS code | The Harmonized System customs classification for the goods — the closest thing here to a product category. |
| BOL | Bill of lading — the shipping document. One row in the data is one bill of lading. |
| TEU | Twenty-foot equivalent unit, the standard container-volume measure. |
| Entry / exit port | Exit port is where the shipment left origin; entry port is where it arrived in the US. |
| Fill rate | How completely a shipment used its booked capacity, where the source data reports it. |
| Company group | DiversiTech's figures combine DiversiTech, AllTemp Products and Packard. The competitor groups are Rectorseal, Dial and Supco. |
| Sample size | The number of shipments behind a figure. Fewer than 5 and the factor is not scored at all. |
| Low confidence | Fewer than 10 shipments behind a figure — shown, but treat it as a hint rather than a trend. |
- The DiversiTech group has a relatively small shipment count, so a single month can move a figure a long way. Thin months are marked low confidence rather than treated as trends.
- Customs value is blank on most records, so freight cost per kg is the primary cost signal and declared value per kg is secondary.
- The Data explorer shows the first 200 rows on screen — use the export for the full set.
- Everything here reflects only the shipments present in this dataset, which is import activity, not total company spend.