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This seems like the beginning of an interesting idea. But while they're addressing the important issue of inspecting the goods, it seems they're missing a more

This seems like the beginning of an interesting idea. But while they're addressing the important issue of inspecting the goods, it seems they're missing a more important concern when sourcing manufacturing in China. Namely, knowing if someone is actually a manufacturer, or just a middleman. It doesn't take much searching on Alibaba to find several companies offering the exact same item. Often with the exact same photo, with the only difference being the watermarks they slather over the shot. Another more important service might be to offer on-site quality control. Of course, that might increase the cost over just taking photos, as you'd need people who were fluent in both Chinese (perhaps several dialects) and English; and who had domain expertise for the goods being manufactured.

dsugarman 14y ago
This is very true. You will not always know who is a middleman and they will certainly be on our platform. What we can guarantee is that if you are dealing with someone on our platform, they have never misbehaved before. We have enough picture and video documentation to ban anyone who does, and our network of suppliers is tightly monitored. You should never be scammed even if we did not handle dispute resolution because of our inspection technology that makes sure you can interact with your product before it is paid for and shipped. You may deal with a middleman, but you certainly will not have to deal with order inaccuracy, bait and switch, low quality products or any other types of scams that are currently saturated in B2B marketplaces.
- mistermann 14y ago
  > What we can guarantee is that if you are dealing with someone on our platform, they have never misbehaved before. It will be interesting to see how you manage that! A few things I find sorely lacking with Alibaba and China in general, some of which I'm sure you have in your crosshairs, others not so sure: 1. Language - Obviously English isn't their first language so some complications are to be expected, but: a. I think there has got to be some serious disconnect going on between people with relatively proficient English speaking and writing skills, and companies that need that skill. I've been in contact with some rather large companies ($25+ million in sales or much more) whose sales people are just helpless. b. Product Descriptions - sometimes just bad spelling/grammar or honest mistakes, but other times they're just plain wrong - like, differentiating details that are really important are ambiguous, or worse. Perhaps this is deliberate to a degree (which I would also like to see go away) 2. Culture - There's stretching the truth, and then there's lying, and it seems where this line is drawn varies greatly between cultures. It's very frustrating when you're trying to source a product, and every person you contact has it, in fact they have everything. Except they don't. Maybe there's something you could do along the lines of a comprehensive catalog of products, so when they list something, they "have" to tie it to a "fairly" strict item number(s), so I don't have to rely on text searches (which go against dishonest product descriptions). And, if they are doing a deal on 2 items and the buyer needs a 3rd, maybe you could somehow offer collaboration capabilities between sellers, ideally ones that they'd actually want to use (share the profit on a sale perhaps?) 3. Product listings - I'm sure you know all the issues here, but the ones that most bother me are the atrociously low-res pictures, pictures from other unrelated products the seller has listed showing when clicking "next", terrible ambiguous/misleading descriptions, etc. 4. Quality control - With modern technology, why some sellers don't do what your platform offers on their own (provide hi-quality photos, etc) is an absolute mystery to me, so it will be nice if you can show them how to do this, and affordably for them so it doesn't cut into their margins. However, for a lot of sellers, the total lack of quality control is a tremendous benefit to them so they can bait & switch, ship different product than ordered, etc. 5. Affordable Escrow service - as others have mentioned, a lot of sellers like to move transactions off the system. I hope you guys can resist the urge to take too much of a cut of the action and find some affordable way to provide security for the buyer and not cut into profits for the seller. It's good to see some competition for Alibaba that's for sure, I really hope you guys can pull this off. I wish you the best of luck!

dsugarman 14y ago

This is very true. You will not always know who is a middleman and they will certainly be on our platform. What we can guarantee is that if you are dealing with someone on our platform, they have never misbehaved before. We have enough picture and video documentation to ban anyone who does, and our network of suppliers is tightly monitored. You should never be scammed even if we did not handle dispute resolution because of our inspection technology that makes sure you can interact with your product before it is paid for and shipped. You may deal with a middleman, but you certainly will not have to deal with order inaccuracy, bait and switch, low quality products or any other types of scams that are currently saturated in B2B marketplaces.

mistermann 14y ago
> What we can guarantee is that if you are dealing with someone on our platform, they have never misbehaved before. It will be interesting to see how you manage that! A few things I find sorely lacking with Alibaba and China in general, some of which I'm sure you have in your crosshairs, others not so sure: 1. Language - Obviously English isn't their first language so some complications are to be expected, but: a. I think there has got to be some serious disconnect going on between people with relatively proficient English speaking and writing skills, and companies that need that skill. I've been in contact with some rather large companies ($25+ million in sales or much more) whose sales people are just helpless. b. Product Descriptions - sometimes just bad spelling/grammar or honest mistakes, but other times they're just plain wrong - like, differentiating details that are really important are ambiguous, or worse. Perhaps this is deliberate to a degree (which I would also like to see go away) 2. Culture - There's stretching the truth, and then there's lying, and it seems where this line is drawn varies greatly between cultures. It's very frustrating when you're trying to source a product, and every person you contact has it, in fact they have everything. Except they don't. Maybe there's something you could do along the lines of a comprehensive catalog of products, so when they list something, they "have" to tie it to a "fairly" strict item number(s), so I don't have to rely on text searches (which go against dishonest product descriptions). And, if they are doing a deal on 2 items and the buyer needs a 3rd, maybe you could somehow offer collaboration capabilities between sellers, ideally ones that they'd actually want to use (share the profit on a sale perhaps?) 3. Product listings - I'm sure you know all the issues here, but the ones that most bother me are the atrociously low-res pictures, pictures from other unrelated products the seller has listed showing when clicking "next", terrible ambiguous/misleading descriptions, etc. 4. Quality control - With modern technology, why some sellers don't do what your platform offers on their own (provide hi-quality photos, etc) is an absolute mystery to me, so it will be nice if you can show them how to do this, and affordably for them so it doesn't cut into their margins. However, for a lot of sellers, the total lack of quality control is a tremendous benefit to them so they can bait & switch, ship different product than ordered, etc. 5. Affordable Escrow service - as others have mentioned, a lot of sellers like to move transactions off the system. I hope you guys can resist the urge to take too much of a cut of the action and find some affordable way to provide security for the buyer and not cut into profits for the seller. It's good to see some competition for Alibaba that's for sure, I really hope you guys can pull this off. I wish you the best of luck!