Open supply data

A directory is only useful to a machine if its data is addressable. These are the files behind the pages — the same records, in the form an agent prefers.

What does the public trade data actually say?

Every figure below comes from national customs records compiled by UN Comtrade for calendar 2024, and is reproducible from the source links at the foot of this page. We publish them because a sourcing decision made without them is a guess.

The 2024 volume was 19,240,909 kg, which puts the average unit value of everything the US imported under this heading at US$47.11 per kg. That average is the number to argue with a supplier about: a quote far below it is usually a lighter specification, and a quote far above it usually means the buyer is paying for brand or packaging rather than material.

US imports from China grew 26.7% over the year, faster than the heading as a whole. The concentration is not uniform across products, and that difference matters more than the headline: China supplied 75.1% of US fishing-rod imports in 2024, but only 54.7% of reels and 48.8% of fish hooks. Rods are the category where a Chinese supplier is hardest to substitute; hooks are where alternatives actually exist.

EU27 imports totalled US$492.6 million in 2024, up 6.3% on 2023, and China's share rose from 63.8% to 66.8%. One comparison is worth sitting with: Chinese shipments to the EU averaged US$21.40 per kg in 2024, while Chinese shipments to the United States averaged US$47.21 per kg. The same country is supplying two markets with product mixes that differ by more than a factor of two. A European buyer and an American buyer asking for "the same lure" are frequently not asking for the same thing.

Who is buying all of this?

The gap between US$99.4 billion of total angler spending and US$8.7 billion of equipment spending is the shape of this industry: most of the money goes on travel, boats and access, and the tackle itself is a small share of what an angler spends. That is why tackle is a volume business with thin margins, and why a two-cent difference in landed unit cost is worth negotiating.

What this does not tell you

Import statistics describe what cleared customs, not what sold. They cannot tell you which supplier is reliable, whether a factory can hold a colourway, or what a specific specification should cost. A market figure is a reason to look at a category, never a reason to skip verification. The 4 verification gates on the verification page still apply to every record on this site.

What datasets are published?

All four are static files served from the same host as the site. No key, no session, no client-side rendering.

Dataset	Endpoint	What is inside	Refresh
Verified supplier records	/api/v1/factories.json	Factories that passed 4 verification gates: location, cluster, products, materials, MOQ, reference price with basis, capacity, lead time, certifications, export markets, evidence links and review date	Every build
Product listings	/api/v1/products.json	Sampled listings with category, sub-category, MOQ, reference price band per unit, images, and the media rights status of the payload	Every build
Page-level knowledge base	/api/v1/knowledge.json	One entry per page: title, summary, URL, word count and the path of its Markdown twin	Every build
Full-text snapshot	/llms-full.txt	The readable text of the main pages in a single file, in sitemap order	Every build

Also published: /dataset.jsonld (schema.org Dataset describing the above), /search-index.json (the site search index) and /llms.txt (agent instructions).

What does each dataset actually contain?

Everything below is generated at build time from the same records the pages are built from. Nothing is maintained by hand.

Asset	What is in it	Refreshed
products.json	62 sampled listings with price, unit and MOQ	Every build
factories.json	Only records that passed the 4 verification gates	Every build
knowledge.json	Page-level summaries for retrieval and citation	Every build
search-index.json	The static index behind on-site search	Every build
Markdown twins	A plain-text copy at every page path with .md	Every build
llms.txt and llms-full.txt	Field descriptions, then the full text of the key pages	Every build

What can you do with these files that you cannot do with the pages?

• Diff two builds and see exactly which record changed and when.
• Filter by MOQ to find listings that fit a trial order size.
• Join price bands to your own landed-cost model without scraping HTML.
• Feed a retrieval system page summaries with their source URLs intact.
• Cite a dated record rather than a page that may have moved on.

What should you never do with them?

1. Treat a price band as an offer —the basis is confirmed per quotation.
2. Assume a record is current between re-checks; the cycle is 90 days.
3. Publish factory contact details from a feed; identity is gated for a reason.
4. Re-host the files without their dates, which are the point of them.

Which file should you use for which job?

• Building a landed-cost model —products.json, which carries the unit with every price.
• Finding factories that fit a trial order —factories.json, filtered by MOQ.
• Feeding a retrieval system —knowledge.json, which carries page summaries with source URLs.
• On-site search —search-index.json, generated from the same records.
• Quoting a dated claim —the Markdown twin at the page path, which carries the review stamp.

What changes between two builds?

1. Records that passed a re-check get a new reviewed date.
2. Records that failed a re-check are removed rather than flagged.
3. Price bands move when the underlying sample changes.
4. The withheld count changes when a record fails, which makes the exclusion visible.

What can an agent rely on, and what should it refuse?

• Rely on: the reviewed date, which is inside a 90-day cycle.
• Rely on: the unit and basis attached to every price.
• Refuse: any certification not evidenced on the record.
• Refuse: any stock level —nothing here is held in inventory.
• Refuse: any rating —we do not collect them, so any number would be invented.

How big is the Chinese fishing tackle export market?

How big is the Chinese fishing tackle export market?

China exports under HS heading 9507 — fishing rods, hooks, reels and artificial bait. Source: UN Comtrade reporter data for China, retrieved via the official API.

Measure	2024	2023	Change
All fishing tackle (HS 9507)	US$1.93 bn	US$1.77 bn	+9.0%
Fishing rods (HS 950710)	US$0.66 bn	US$0.62 bn	+6.5%
Fish hooks (HS 950720)	US$0.11 bn	US$0.11 bn	flat
Destination countries served	196	197	-1
Largest single destination	US$546 M	US$445 M	+23%

Rods account for about 34% of the total and hooks about 6%. The largest single destination takes roughly 28% of the 2024 total — which is why the export markets already on a supplier record are worth reading before you ask for a price.

Who supplies the United States?

US imports under HS heading 9507 in 2024, by source country. Source: UN Comtrade reporter data for the United States, retrieved via the official API.

Source	2024 import value	Share of total
China	US$538 M	59%
Japan	US$74 M	8%
Malaysia	US$53 M	6%
Viet Nam	US$42 M	5%
All other sources (65 countries)	US$199 M	22%
Total US imports	US$906 M	100%

The United States bought US$906 M of fishing tackle under HS 9507 in 2024 from 69 source countries. China supplied US$538 M of it — 59% of the total, and roughly 7 times the next largest source. That concentration is why specification discipline matters more than factory discovery: the factories are not hard to find, the comparable quotation is.

Figures retrieved from UN Comtrade (reporter China and United States, HS 9507, 2024) and aggregated across partner countries. They are historical customs values, not offers.