How Importing Works: 9 Steps in the Importing Process

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Importing is the commercial practice of purchasing physical products, raw materials, or fabricated components from an international seller and transporting them across national boundaries into your local market.

Global trade flows continue to expand: According to the UNCTAD Global Trade Update, global international trade reached a record $35 trillion in 2025, driven by cross-border merchandise trade. For independent retailers and growing ecommerce brands, buying across borders can help to secure lower production costs, specialized craftsmanship, and regional raw materials that are unavailable domestically.

Learn how importing goods works from start to finish, how to navigate customs clearance, and how to prepare your store catalog for commercial release.

What is importing?

Importing involves buying commercial inventory or industrial supplies from an offshore entity in an exporting country, then bringing those goods into an importing country for domestic commerce. Companies buy these goods, which are then manufactured into something else or resold. Exporting is the opposite—it’s the practice of dispatching goods outward to international buyers. 

Whenever physical freight arrives at an international port of entry, it becomes subject to statutory oversight by border authorities, such as the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). These agencies verify cargo manifests, inspect physical containers, collect applicable customs duties and excise taxes, and enforce domestic safety mandates before allowing items into local commerce.

Retailers use two primary models when importing. Some import finished commercial inventory, which involves purchasing ready-to-sell products directly from overseas factories or foreign brands. While other importers buy raw materials or industrial components—such as specialized textiles, botanical extracts, electronic circuits, or industrial oil—that feed into domestic assembly lines.

How does importing work?

1. Find and vet a supplier
2. Confirm legal admissibility and license requirements
3. Determine classification, country of origin, and customs duties
4. Arrange transport and insurance
5. Calculate your landed cost
6. Prepare import documentation
7. Clear customs
8. Receive and inventory the goods
9. List the products for sale

Moving commercial inventory from an overseas factory floor to your warehouse shelves involves coordinating suppliers, maritime carriers, customs brokers, and digital catalog systems. Here are the steps involved in importing products from another country: 

1. Find and vet a supplier

Begin by identifying manufacturers capable of producing inventory to your exact specifications via verified business-to-business (B2B) sourcing platforms, commercial trade missions, referrals, or international expos.

Be sure to screen factories systematically, assessing the reliability of production and financial stability. On an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, Dan Demsky, cofounder and CEO of apparel brand Unbound Merino, discusses how he sourced fine wool overseas: “We sent probably 500 inquiries on Alibaba,” he says “From that, let’s say a hundred got back to us. And from those hundred, maybe 20 seemed like we could even talk to them. Five of them we really liked, and we got samples. From those five, three of them seemed good. And we ended up working with two of them.”

Dan emphasizes the importance of due diligence at this stage—Unbound Merino conducted in-person factory visits to ensure the suppliers met their standards. “Our paranoia forced us to go and meet these people, and I think that initial relationship was like a safeguard for us to make sure we got quality,” he says.

Cover your bases by requesting factory audits, verifying management certifications, testing raw materials via accredited third-party labs, and ordering physical pre-production samples before releasing capital.

2. Confirm legal admissibility and license requirements

Before issuing a deposit, confirm that domestic trade regulations permit the entry of your intended product line. Border authorities enforce strict exclusions to protect domestic health, ecological security, and industrial safety. Certain items face outright import bans, while others require specific certifications.

Contact the relevant regulatory agency to identify your exact compliance requirements. Common categories include:

• Agricultural products and live goods. Plants, seeds, and fresh produce require biosecurity permits from the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) to prevent biological contamination. 

• Medical devices, cosmetics, and wellness products. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates items designed for human consumption, topical application, or health monitoring. Importers must secure registered facility listings and submit device notifications before shipping. 

• Industrial, chemical, and consumer goods. Products containing chemical compounds or industrial lubricants require Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) validation under Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) guidelines. Children’s products require Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) testing, and electronics require Federal Communications Commission (FCC) compliance filings.

Check agency restricted lists and intellectual property databases to confirm your merchandise is legally admissible before funding production. 

3. Determine classification, country of origin, and customs duties

Every manufactured article moved across an international boundary requires an official Harmonized System (HS) code. Managed by the World Customs Organization (WCO), the HS standard organizes commodities within a standard six-digit structure. 

Individual nations build upon this foundation to determine specific customs duties, tariffs, and import taxes owed at the border. In the United States, items are classified using the 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) codes:

Determine the country of origin by identifying where the raw materials were harvested or where the product underwent substantial transformation. For example: If you weave cotton yarn and cut fabric panels in China, then sew the finished shirt in Vietnam, you would apply the official rules of origin to confirm which trade rate applies (in this case, it would likely be Vietnam, where the product assembly took place). 

Tariff rates and customs duties vary depending on this classification, origin, and trade pacts between member states. 

4. Arrange transport and insurance

Negotiate commercial freight terms using standardized International Commercial Terms (Incoterms), which define where liability, freight costs, and risk transfer from the seller to the buyer:

• EXW (Ex Works). The buyer pays all transportation expenses, export clearance charges, and insurance starting from the supplier’s warehouse floor.

• FOB (Free on Board). The factory pays domestic export fees and loads cargo onto the outbound vessel. The buyer assumes financial risk once freight is on board.

• DDP (Delivered Duty Paid). The seller covers ocean or air transportation, marine insurance, customs brokerage fees, and domestic delivery to your dock.

Select your transportation channel based on budget and urgency:

• Ocean freight. Provides economical per-unit rates for high-volume consumer goods via full container load (FCL) or shared less than container load (LCL) shipments.

• Air freight. Delivers transit cycles within days rather than weeks, suiting lightweight goods, valuable electronics, or emergency inventory replenishments.

Obtain third-party marine cargo insurance for every international shipment. Carrier liability is typically limited by law, meaning the carrier may not be responsible for the full value of the goods if they’re lost or damaged. Under maritime laws like the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA), these limits may be calculated on a per-package basis. Independent cargo insurance can help protect your capital against losses from vessel fires, accidents, and transit damage.

5. Calculate your landed cost

Landed cost is the total expense required to manufacture, transport, insure, and clear an imported unit into your domestic warehouse. This calculation factors in ocean freight, customs tariffs, terminal handling fees, and cargo insurance. 

On an episode of Shopify Masters, Matthew Burrows, cofounder of independent retailer Plant Material, discusses how he previously relied on de minimis exemptions—a trade rule that allows low-value shipments under an established monetary value threshold to enter the country duty-free and tax-free. 

This allowed them to bring in small-batch specialty tools—such as gardening gloves from Japan—free of administrative duties. Once regulatory shifts restricted those exemptions, every incoming parcel incurred direct entry fees and import taxes, requiring the business to protect gross margins by raising retail prices, bundling smaller SKUs to absorb flat entry fees across more units, and shifting from small parcel air shipments to consolidated freight runs.

Calculate your landed cost before issuing a factory deposit. Paying an upfront deposit legally commits your capital—if you calculate landed costs too late, unanticipated shipping fees and tariff rates can eliminate your profit margin before goods even leave the factory floor. 

6. Prepare import documentation

Customs agencies require a uniform audit trail before clearing cargo, including the following import documentation:

• Commercial invoice. Details the buyer, selling entity, itemized unit values, total purchase price, transaction currency, payment terms, and complete HTS codes.

• Packing list. Itemizes box weights, pallet footprints, gross container weights, SKU tallies, and carton markings.

• Bill of lading or air waybill. The legal contract between the cargo owner and carrier, serving as proof of transport and receipt of title.

• Import declaration. The official submission filed with the border authority stating the nature, value, and origin of incoming freight.

• Importer of record information. States the entity responsible for duty payments, identified by an importer number such as an IRS employer identification number (EIN), a CBP-assigned number, or a sole proprietor’s Social Security number.

• Certificates of origin. Formal documentation providing detailed information on manufacturing origins, used to verify duty exemptions under bilateral treaties.

7. Clear customs

When an ocean vessel or cargo plane nears the destination port, a licensed customs broker transmits your electronic entry filings to domestic trade portals to help with customs clearance.

Working with experienced customs brokers helps protect small business owners from administrative bottlenecks. On an episode of Shopify Masters, cofounder of Canyon Coffee Casey Wojtalewicz shares that professional trade partnerships have kept overseas sourcing viable for his business—specifically when it comes to moving green coffee from Latin America and Africa to Canyon’s California roaster. 

“Professional importers are some of the most underrecognized players in the coffee ecosystem,” Casey says. “Even if a coffee roaster has direct relationships with farms in Costa Rica or Ethiopia, they are not international logistics companies and cannot easily handle the complex freight.”

Your broker files the entry summary, calculates payable customs duties, processes merchandise handling fees, and coordinates physical inspections with port inspectors before the container is released for domestic drayage—the short-distance freight transport of cargo containers from a maritime port or rail terminal to a local warehouse.

8. Receive and inventory the goods

Complete an inventory check when you unload arriving freight. Consider taking some or all of these measures to ensure your inventory is in acceptable condition: 

1. Check the security seal. Confirm the container bolt seal matches the serial number on your bill of lading before the driver breaks the lock.

2. Examine packaging. Document damaged skids, torn wrap, or water exposure on the delivery receipt before signing.

3. Conduct sample audits. Open boxes from different pallets to verify material quality, labeling, and dimensions against your approved production samples.

4. Log warehouse quantities. Count physical units, verify SKU barcodes, and record item totals in your inventory software.

9. List the products for sale

Once incoming cargo clears inspection, quickly sync stock counts with your digital storefront. 

Entering hundreds of products by hand can delay sales. To move imported inventory online efficiently on Shopify, enter your product data in a spreadsheet and upload it via CSV inside your store admin. Ensure your spreadsheet maps required columns—specifically Title and Handle (the permanent URL slug)—alongside variant options, pricing tiers, SKU codes, and image links. If your import catalog exceeds the 15 megabyte file size limit, divide the rows across smaller, separate CSV files.

When your international freight run replenishes existing SKUs across regional fulfillment centers, update quantities by exporting an inventory CSV, adjusting unit balances in the template, and re-importing the file to adjust multilocation counts in a single step. Once published, maintain active inventory controls in your dashboard to log damaged transit units, trigger low-stock alerts, and track product sell-through rates.