Suppliers Online Database

(Post: English)
"As imports of everything from sweaters to activated carbon surged into the U.S., Harvard Business School grad Josh Green, 31, saw a void: How could buyers vet all these foreign suppliers offering up goods?"

With support from angel investors, he teamed up with MIT-trained James Psota in 2006 and raised $5 million in venture capital to develop Panjiva, a searchable, online database of 700,000 suppliers from 190 countries.

The service launched in February with nine employees in New York and Boston and has attracted over 200 clients, including apparel-maker VF and Home Depot.

Panjiva's data sources range from the U.S. Customs & Border Protection to Sinosure, a Beijing-based export credit insurance company, to nonprofits like Social Accountability International.

Unlike single-site sources, Panjiva uses algorithms to clean up and analyze data to score suppliers on, for instance, whether business is growing, stable, or declining.

"We take multiple data sources and triangulate them to see if they are telling you the same story," says Psota, 29, chief technology officer.

Clients pay $10,000 annually for search-engine access and can subscribe, starting at $100 per month, for company alerts.

Chief Executive Green says Panjiva is no substitute for due diligence, but "it's a quick way to do a background search and get a short list of suppliers."

Source: BusinessWeek