How AtlasAQ evaluates a product opportunity

A demand signal is observed evidence that people are already buying or searching for a product — marketplace sales rank, review volume and rating depth, search-interest direction over time, and whether the product appears in more than one place we can check.

A demand signal is not a sales forecast, and not a promise that the product will sell for you. It is evidence that demand exists somewhere, observed at a point in time. Your price, listing, timing, ad spend and competition all sit between that evidence and your result.

Every opportunity carries a single letter grade. The grade is relative: it ranks an opportunity against the others in the catalogue on the evidence available at the time it was graded. An A is a stronger candidate than a C on that evidence. It is not a probability, a score out of anything, or a guarantee.

We publish the letter and not an underlying number deliberately. A number invites false precision — a product does not become four percent better because a figure moved from 71 to 74 — and the letter is the part that should change your decision.

A grade can change. When the evidence behind a product moves materially it is re-graded, and a product you are tracking can move up or down.

A supplier candidate is a supplier listing we matched to the product. It means: this listing exists, it is offering something that looks like this product, and here is what it says about itself.

AtlasAQ has not vetted, verified or contacted that supplier. It is not a recommendation, and not a confirmation that the item is identical to the one you are looking at. Matching is done from listing data, and listing data can be wrong, translated badly, or describe a different variant, quantity or grade of the same idea.

Confirm the exact item, quantity and specification with the supplier before you order. AtlasAQ narrows the search; it does not replace your own due diligence.

An estimate starts from the supplier’s stated unit cost and adds the costs that are usually forgotten: freight, estimated from product weight; import duty; and the tax treatment of your selling market. Sales tax or VAT is taken out of the revenue side rather than added to the cost side, because you do not keep it.

Every figure is an estimate, and it is shown as a range where the inputs are uncertain. Real freight depends on your shipment size and method; real duty depends on classification; supplier pricing moves; and a minimum order quantity can change the unit economics entirely. Where a component cannot be computed honestly, it is marked unavailable instead of being shown as a number.

You can run the same arithmetic on your own numbers with the margin calculator.

Each opportunity carries the date its evidence was last refreshed. Demand data ages: a rank, a review count or a supplier price observed weeks ago may no longer hold. Treat an old date as a reason to re-check, not as a reason to discard.

• It does not guarantee demand, profit, margin or sourcing success.
• It does not verify suppliers, inspect goods, or check authenticity.
• It does not decide whether you may legally import or sell an item — restricted, regulated and branded goods remain your responsibility.
• It does not price your listing or predict how competitors will respond.
• It does not observe every marketplace. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and is reported as unknown rather than as zero.

• Branded products are usually not sourceable. A product selling well under an established brand generally cannot be sourced legitimately, and a cheap match for one is a counterfeit risk rather than an opportunity. These are excluded rather than shown with an attractive margin.
• Supplier matching is imperfect. Some matches are category-level rather than product-level. Where confidence in a match is lower, that is shown.
• Coverage is uneven. Some categories carry far better evidence than others, and a thin category produces a thin opportunity.