4 ms·

Hmm, I've never actually seen a "chinese trade site". I am guessing this is what many people use to make money on ebay or shopify account. Do you have more info

by csmeder 16y ago

Hmm, I've never actually seen a "chinese trade site". I am guessing this is what many people use to make money on ebay or shopify account. Do you have more info about chinese trade sites? A blog you could recommend? Or any info at all would be interesting.

blasdel 16y ago
Yep, that's one of the main purposes of the site I linked to. Alibaba is by far the biggest player, their ecommerce empire is easily the third biggest after Amazon and eBay. Their main site is basically for people outside China to hook up with factory agents to buy stuff wholesale. They also have a japan-specific version, and a heavily used internal chinese B2B version. Their http://taobao.com http://taobao.com is super dominant within China, occupying a space between Amazon and eBay stores but with even more marketshare, and with sellers ranging from a kid in a dorm room to multinational corporations. They also own Yahoo China, the chinese paypal-equivalent, the biggest chinese ad network, and a salesforce.com-style CRM. Their equivalent site to TradeTang would be their recently launched http://aliexpress.com http://aliexpress.com that has a full US localization and integrated cart/payment/shipping/etc. You'll find some weird shit on there, like this seller: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/801597/all-wholesale-products.html http://www.aliexpress.com/store/801597/all-wholesale-product... — page through his catalog to find dried seahorses, reciprocating drilldoes, folding bikes, giant inflatable water walking balls, ghillie suits, dried human placentas, cow bezoars, portable titanium stripper poles… By far the biggest hassle with using Alibaba is just communicating with the seller, they hate answering email and if you ask multiple questions they'll cherry-pick the most superficial one to respond to. The only way to get anything done is to be up in the middle of the night and get them on MSN messenger.
- csmeder 16y ago
  > By far the biggest hassle with using Alibaba is just communicating with the seller, they hate answering email and if you ask multiple questions they'll cherry-pick the most superficial one to respond to. The only way to get anything done is to be up in the middle of the night and get them on MSN messenger. Can you elaborate? Is this only true if you need more detailed info about the product. If you know the product is what you want will it be rather easy to order it? Or is it that Alibaba doesn't have "full US localization and integrated cart/payment/shipping/etc"
  - blasdel 16y ago
    It's the latter — on aliexpress or tradetang or taobao you could just add it to your cart, checkout, and pay with no haggling. Shipping is often free, as EMS and Hong Kong Post have normally very low rates. On DealExtreme and many eBay stores you can order a 99¢ item with free airmail from HK and get it a few days later. On Alibaba, you have to talk with the seller for anything to happen. Though some of them work directly for a factory, many of the sellers are total freelance agents, and even the ones that work for a factory will act as agents to resell items from other factories. You can usually suss out how direct a seller's relationship with the ultimate supplier is, and they'll often tell you outright, though none of them seem to be willing to talk about each other. All of the ones I've interacted with have been ~30yo women that seem to be working solo as agents with other people doing the fulfillment. The other thing is that they very rarely put up enough information to find out what the product actually is. Often the product can easily be made-to-order with finishing options up to you (though the factory does all the product development). You end up looking at a bunch of agents and looking at pictures, weights, and options to discern who's reselling what. Occasionally the OEMs will have product data on their websites and you can backtrack from there. It's kind of maddening but none of them really give a shit. Even if you think you know what you're getting, you still want to get spec sheets from them for confirmation, and spreadsheet catalogs of similar stuff so you know you aren't missing anything (they don't keep their listings up to date). Even after that you still have to go back and forth on quantities, prices, shipping, lead times, options, potential setup fees for customizations, etc. They do like MSN and pasting stuff into excel documents to send via direct file transfer. It works ok once you get that far, but it feels really sketchy.
- woodall 16y ago
  MP3 players from 5USD a piece, knock off ipads from 170USD[1]. Take or leave it, but there might be a huge US market here. I wonder what would happen if someone imported these and rebranded them- to be not so knock off. You might have to worry about US regulations- lead, safety- but if you could hook up with a decent manufacture your golden; thats what apple did(foxconn). [1] http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/310761384-7inch-PAD-tablet-panel-PC-MID-wifi-touch-screen-G-sensor-e-book-mini-netbook-wholesalers.html http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/310761384-7inch-PAD-tab...

by csmeder 16y ago

blasdel 16y ago

Yep, that's one of the main purposes of the site I linked to. Alibaba is by far the biggest player, their ecommerce empire is easily the third biggest after Amazon and eBay. Their main site is basically for people outside China to hook up with factory agents to buy stuff wholesale. They also have a japan-specific version, and a heavily used internal chinese B2B version. Their http://taobao.com http://taobao.com is super dominant within China, occupying a space between Amazon and eBay stores but with even more marketshare, and with sellers ranging from a kid in a dorm room to multinational corporations. They also own Yahoo China, the chinese paypal-equivalent, the biggest chinese ad network, and a salesforce.com-style CRM. Their equivalent site to TradeTang would be their recently launched http://aliexpress.com http://aliexpress.com that has a full US localization and integrated cart/payment/shipping/etc. You'll find some weird shit on there, like this seller: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/801597/all-wholesale-products.html http://www.aliexpress.com/store/801597/all-wholesale-product... — page through his catalog to find dried seahorses, reciprocating drilldoes, folding bikes, giant inflatable water walking balls, ghillie suits, dried human placentas, cow bezoars, portable titanium stripper poles… By far the biggest hassle with using Alibaba is just communicating with the seller, they hate answering email and if you ask multiple questions they'll cherry-pick the most superficial one to respond to. The only way to get anything done is to be up in the middle of the night and get them on MSN messenger.

csmeder 16y ago
> By far the biggest hassle with using Alibaba is just communicating with the seller, they hate answering email and if you ask multiple questions they'll cherry-pick the most superficial one to respond to. The only way to get anything done is to be up in the middle of the night and get them on MSN messenger. Can you elaborate? Is this only true if you need more detailed info about the product. If you know the product is what you want will it be rather easy to order it? Or is it that Alibaba doesn't have "full US localization and integrated cart/payment/shipping/etc"
- blasdel 16y ago
  It's the latter — on aliexpress or tradetang or taobao you could just add it to your cart, checkout, and pay with no haggling. Shipping is often free, as EMS and Hong Kong Post have normally very low rates. On DealExtreme and many eBay stores you can order a 99¢ item with free airmail from HK and get it a few days later. On Alibaba, you have to talk with the seller for anything to happen. Though some of them work directly for a factory, many of the sellers are total freelance agents, and even the ones that work for a factory will act as agents to resell items from other factories. You can usually suss out how direct a seller's relationship with the ultimate supplier is, and they'll often tell you outright, though none of them seem to be willing to talk about each other. All of the ones I've interacted with have been ~30yo women that seem to be working solo as agents with other people doing the fulfillment. The other thing is that they very rarely put up enough information to find out what the product actually is. Often the product can easily be made-to-order with finishing options up to you (though the factory does all the product development). You end up looking at a bunch of agents and looking at pictures, weights, and options to discern who's reselling what. Occasionally the OEMs will have product data on their websites and you can backtrack from there. It's kind of maddening but none of them really give a shit. Even if you think you know what you're getting, you still want to get spec sheets from them for confirmation, and spreadsheet catalogs of similar stuff so you know you aren't missing anything (they don't keep their listings up to date). Even after that you still have to go back and forth on quantities, prices, shipping, lead times, options, potential setup fees for customizations, etc. They do like MSN and pasting stuff into excel documents to send via direct file transfer. It works ok once you get that far, but it feels really sketchy.
woodall 16y ago
MP3 players from 5USD a piece, knock off ipads from 170USD[1]. Take or leave it, but there might be a huge US market here. I wonder what would happen if someone imported these and rebranded them- to be not so knock off. You might have to worry about US regulations- lead, safety- but if you could hook up with a decent manufacture your golden; thats what apple did(foxconn). [1] http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/310761384-7inch-PAD-tablet-panel-PC-MID-wifi-touch-screen-G-sensor-e-book-mini-netbook-wholesalers.html http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/310761384-7inch-PAD-tab...