If you run a small manufacturing shop and you've ever shipped a part overseas, quoted a buyer in another country, or emailed a CAD file to a vendor in China, here's something most people never say out loud:
You're an exporter. And U.S. export law applies to you exactly the same way it applies to Boeing — minus the floor full of compliance lawyers Boeing has to handle it.
That gap is the whole reason ExChek exists. So for our first issue, let me tell you what we are, why we built it, and what we're going to do for you every week in this newsletter.
What ExChek is
ExChek is export compliance for small and mid-sized manufacturers who ship internationally but can't afford a six-figure compliance hire or an enterprise software contract.
In plain terms, it helps you do four things, in minutes instead of weeks:
Classify what you're shipping (the ECCN — the code that determines whether you even need a license)
Screen your buyer against the U.S. government's denied-party lists
Determine whether a license is required for that item to that destination
Produce an audit-ready memo — with a named reviewer, a timestamp, and the exact regulation cited — that looks like what a Fortune 500 compliance team would generate
It's free to start. No credit card, no regulatory background required. You approve every decision — ExChek walks you through each step in your own words and shows you the rule behind every answer. It runs right inside the AI assistant you already use, pulling live regulatory text straight from the government's own databases.
We're not a black box that decides for you. You stay in the driver's seat. That's deliberate — when an auditor asks "who signed off on this," the answer is you, and you have the paper trail to prove it.
Why we built it
I'll be straight with you about where this comes from.
ExChek was built by someone who spent three years on the wrong side of a multi-million-dollar export violation case. Not because anyone set out to break the law — but because the rules are dense, the stakes are enormous, and nobody hands a 40-person machine shop a playbook for any of it.
The dirty secret of export compliance is that the people most exposed to it are the people least equipped to handle it. The big players have departments. The small shop owner has a freight forwarder who "handles most of it" and a hope that most is enough. It usually is — right up until it isn't.
We built ExChek so that being small is no longer the same as being unprotected.
Every issue of The Loop is going to keep you ahead of the thing that costs SMB exporters the most: not knowing what they didn't know.
That starts with watching enforcement. First is our running tracker of real, verified U.S. export-control and sanctions penalties — pulled straight from the Treasury (OFAC) and Commerce (BIS) public records. These aren't hypotheticals. They're real companies, real fines, real reasons. Read them as a map of where the landmines are.
A few patterns jump out immediately, and they should make every small exporter sit up: the companies getting hit aren't all defense contractors. They're freight forwarders, a property manager, a sports academy, a brokerage, a crypto wallet, a maker of audio electronics. Ordinary businesses that did ordinary deals — and missed one rule.
You don't have to be one of them.
Start here
If you ship anything across a border, the smartest five minutes you'll spend this week is running one item through ExChek and seeing the memo it produces.
Try it free: exchek.us
Read the docs: docs.exchek.us
Want us to set it up for your team? Book a call
We'll be back next week with more from The Loop — new enforcement actions, plain-English breakdowns of the rules that trip people up, and the occasional "you really can't ship that there" story.
Ship internationally. Just don't do it blind.
— The ExChek Team
ExChek is software, not legal advice. Every determination is reviewed and approved by you. American-owned, built to help American SMBs navigate export compliance.