News & Guides – Page 5 – Online Shopping Reviews

Another Good Way of Shopping Cheap Jewelry Efficiently from China: Finding A China-based Partner

In the previous post as a response to my reader, I introduced one efficient way to purchase cheap jewelry from reliable Chinese suppliers. That is, to shop with online China-based stores which allow you to order products in small quantities at low wholesale prices (read the full post here). Here I am going to talk about another good way to get made-in-China jewelry at minimum cost.

Whether you are running a big store or a small shop, you can choose to use one or more online Chinese shopping sites to stock up on products for your inventory. Once you have established stable cooperative relationships with such sites, everything will go easy and you don’t have to worry about your store’s stock anymore. Besides, by shopping with stores accepting small wholesale orders (as small as I piece per order), you can minimize your risk as you don’t need to hold too much stock or to invest too much money. However, despite that there might be more hassles, cooperating with a partner based in China can help you save even more in terms of cost.

This sounds a little bit like traditional trading, for which buyers may need to visit the destination country in person to negotiable about the details concerning the cooperation. However, it is actually not the same thing. It is always good if you can arrange a trip to China to talk face to face with the person you are interested in partnering with, but it is not always necessary to do so. Everything can be done through the internet, phone call or mailing.

The most key part is to find out a reliable partner who is honest, dependable, professional and competent. In particular, I personally would encourage you to use transaction platforms like Aliexpress.com to locate a good partner for your business. Here are the reasons and the specific ways for your reference:

Why?

It can help reduce your cost. Although most wholesale transaction sites including Aliexpress.com and DHgate.com do not charge any fees on buyers and they claim that they are free to use for sellers, they are not really free. Anyway, they need to make money to support the running of their services and to ensure their staff a good life.

Take Aliexpress.com for instance, it is true that they do not charge any fees on sellers upon membership registration. They earn money by adding a 5% commission to the product prices sellers submit to their site. That is, the prices shown on the site are “seller price + Aliexpress commission”. To balance between the cost and the profit, sellers have to submit a price that is profitable, of course. As a result, the prices listed on the site are not the bottom. And this is the very reason why I believe shopping online with the sites is not the only good way for your business.

Continue reading Another Good Way of Shopping Cheap Jewelry Efficiently from China: Finding A China-based Partner

Best Wholesaele Marketplaces of Fashion Accessories in Guangzhou: Taikang City Wholesale Plaza and Wanling Wholesale Center

As the biggest foreign trade base of China, Guangzhou has a huge number of wholesale marketplaces locating in every corner of the city. Most of the marketplaces focus on one or two macro-categories so that buyers or resellers can shop more conveniently. Every year, visitors from all around the world come to these wholesale shopping centers to hunt for products for their businesses and as a result, these places are always very crowded. That’s why Chinese buyers who go there for their domestic business or foreign trade business would rather choose a public traffic tool instead of driving there – it is not easy to find a parking space.

Yesterday we drove to a Guangzhou-based wholesale centre with several marketplaces that mainly offer fashion accessories like jewelry, scarves, glasses, headpieces or watches. Although we had known that finding a parking lot there could be a problem, we still chose to drive there, hoping that we can luckily find a place to park our car. When the GPS prompted that we are getting close to the destination Guangzhou Binbin Plaza, we noticed a one-way street where a non-standard parking service is provided. It charges 10 RMB per hour. So expensive! Anyway, it seems we have no other better choices so we decided to park there. To our surprise, a wholesale marketplace of fashion accessories is right there at the roadside, named “Taikang City Wholesale Plaza”. We had not known this marketplace before and our target place is another famous wholesale marketplace: Wanling International Wholesale Center.

Anyway, we took a quick tour in the Taikang City wholesale trading building and purchased some really nice fashion accessories including necklaces, bracelets and earrings. The merchants generally offer you wholesale prices as long as you purchase a dozen or twenty pieces per order. If you just shop one piece for your personal use, you have to pay a retail price which is much higher than the wholesale price. The products for sale there are very cheap in pricing, e.g. a vintage bracelet made in real leather is available at ￥5-10 RMB (about $1-2 USD) for wholesale orders.

Then we walked for three minutes to Wanling International Wholesale Center, which is nearing the popular shopping mall Haizhou Binbin Plaza. The major businesses the market runs are: toys, knickknacks, boutique, fashion accessories, home adornments, stationery and more. As the Christmas is right around the corner, we saw many Christmas supplies there, such as Christmas trees, Christmas toys, Christmas decorations, Santa Claus Figures, etc. Not surprisingly, we found that many foreigners were busy shopping there for various products. Continue reading Best Wholesaele Marketplaces of Fashion Accessories in Guangzhou: Taikang City Wholesale Plaza and Wanling Wholesale Center

How Do We Review Chinese Shopping Sites Here?

This post is composed as a response to a comment left by a user of our site, who argued that he couldn’t understand why the reviews we posted for Chinese shopping sites here are mostly positive or neutral. As he claimed, he had an unhappy shopping experience with Aliexpress.com and he believes the site is not genuine as we review. To help more readers understand how we rate the Chinese online wholesalers or retailers, I think it necessary to make the points clearly disclosed so that you can have a better decision.

Hi XXX (name hided to protect our user’s private information),

Glad to see that you come back again to share your comment here. With regard to the doubts you shed on us, we admit that as a review website we are not perfect and have so much to improve. Thank you for your valuable suggestion.

It is true the reviews we post here of the Chinese sites are basically positive or neutral. The major reasons are as follows:

1) Although we are trying to post reviews of as many Chinese shopping sites as possible, we can’t do the job now as we have planned because we are short of manpower – 99% of articles published here are written by one author only.

As a result, we put the sites we believe are better in terms of credibility and service at the top priority. While we understand that all these sites also have much to improve and negative reviews against them can be found easily on the Internet, we also know that they have tons of happy customers who have been trading with them for years. We emphasize the good sides of these stores or marketplaces simply because we are ourselves Chinese and it is our mission to popularize and promote better Chinese sites to the world. However, we never intend to overstate their advantages or spread any fake information.

All information we revealed here about them is based on our research and knowledge. To dig out information that can add values to our readers, we read Chinese newspapers, visit Chinese forums or social networking sites and communicate with Chinese friends who are working for the companies. We have good reason to say that Aliexpress.com is a legitimate and genuine site: they belong to Alibaba.com, the most famous and biggest e-commerce company in China, all foreign trade people here know this site. In fact, many e-commerce talents jump from other companies in order to join them for better career development, including a good number of my old colleges who like me worked for another famous wholesale trading platform before.

In addition, their site visits and customer quantity have been soaring since they were founded in 2010. You can search Alexa or Google trend to check their website ranking or interest trend (see the graphs below). As a young site they are developing very, very fast. I think this at least well proves that they are a serious business, not a scammer. They have defeated many powerful Chinese competitors in a short time. So despite that they do have flaws, can we say they are not genuine? Certainly we can’t.

Aliexpress.com’s three-month global traffic rank is 279! This shows the site has a large number of visits. Only big and legitimate sites are able to attract so many visits. See details here >>

From the web search interest comparison between Aliexpress.com, DHgate.com and Lightinthebox.com, the most famous Chinese international shopping sites, we can see that though Aliexpress.com is founded years later than either of the two sites, its search interest quickly leaps to the highest in 2012 (see details here). What does it mean?

Continue reading How Do We Review Chinese Shopping Sites Here?

Tips on How to Save Money from Deals Offered by Chinese Sites

If you choose to use Chinese sites to shop for cheap products, you are always encouraged to check out the latest promotions in order to further reduce your cost. So the first and foremost important thing is, to get yourself empowered with the knowledge about when and where to find out the offers at the stores you are interested in. Here are some tips to help you out.

Holidays, Festivals & Events

Pay great attention to the big shopping seasons, usually internationally observed holidays or festivals, including Christmas, Halloween, New Year, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Boxing Day, Black Friday, Thanksgiving Day and more. Stores never miss out these important opportunities to boost their sales volumes as well as revenues so they tend to offer deepest discounts on the widest range of products for sell at their sites.

In addition to the widely known international holidays or shopping seasons, some tradition Chinese festivals may also be their promotional events. Seize such chances and you may find astonishing deals. For instance, many China-based trading companies launch promotions during the Chinese Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year), the most important festival of the year for the Chinese people. In the Chinese culture, the New Year means the new start and merchants like to offer specials to attract orders. They believe it is a good way to bring them luck. By doing so, they kick off their new journey to gaining success.

Continue reading Tips on How to Save Money from Deals Offered by Chinese Sites

The 112th Session of Canton Fair 2012

Canton Fair, also known as China Import and Export Fair, is held biannually in Guangzhou, with a history of over 50 years since 1957. As China’s biggest and most prestigious foreign trade show, Canton Fair boasts of the broadest distributions of Chinese suppliers as well as global buyers. With two sessions held in spring and autumn every year, each session includes several phases, which cover different fields of products so that buyers can better arrange their visits to the show.

The 112th session of Canton Fair will be held from October 15 to November 1 in autumn 2012, composed by three phases as listed below:

Phase 1: Oct. 15 – 19, 2012 9:30 – 18:00

Major categories on show:

Building Materials
Chemical Products
Hardware & Tools
Electronics & Household
Electrical Appliances
Lighting Equipment
International Pavilion
Vehicles & Spare Parts
Machinery

Phase 2: Oct. 23 – 27, 2012 9:30 – 18:00

Major categories on show:

Consumer Goods
Gifts
Home Decorations

Phase 3: Oct. 31 – Nov. 4, 2012 9:30 – 18:00

Major categories on show:

Medicines, Medical Devices and Health Products
Food
International Pavilion
Textiles & Garments
Shoes
Office Supplies, Cases & Bags, and Recreation Products

Venue Address: No.380, Yuejiang Zhong Road, Guangzhou, China

Now the first phase of the 112th Canton Fair has ended. Based on the report, the number of buyers who had attended the super show fell off by 11.4%. Anyway, the emerging markets show a robust trend and the proportion of Middle Eastern buyers, Asian buyers and Latin American buyers increased. As far as I am concerned, the performance of 1st phase of the 2012 autumn canton fair indicates that the new markets are a great potential to the development of the future international trade business. At the same time, the fast progress the online foreign trade industry has been making is probably a can’t-be-ignored reason for which the total quantity of the buyers decreased so significantly.

Being China’s most comprehensive foreign trade show at the highest level, Canton Fair targets mainly big buyers who purchase by large bulk (generally 100 pieces or more for a single order). Such a traditional international trade model is seen a gradual decline in terms of attendance number as well as turnover.

Meanwhile, more and more buyers turn to online suppliers as they can procure products in much more flexible ways by doing so. Today China has many online stores that offer whole prices for small orders with MOQ low as 1 piece only, e.g. Lightinthebox.com, Aliexpress.com, etc. Besides, buyers can shop directly online without paying any visits to the trade shows or to the factories and are able to save the time and the cost. Just click on the mouse and the orders will arrive at the door!

Must-read Tips on How to Avoid Being Scammed at Aliexpress.com

Below are tips on how to minimize the risks of encountering scams at Aliexpress.com. We compile the tips based on real scam cases collected from the Internet. Hope they help those who want to buy something from Aliexpress.com but are not confident about shopping safety there.

1. Never trade with any sellers bypassing the Aliexpress.com site. This is extremely important! If a seller offers to do business with you by providing you a much lower price, chances are he or she simply tries to steer you away from the protection system and steal you money. They either won’t send you any goods after they receive your payment, or won’t respond to your complaints or return or exchange request after they send you poor quality products.

2. Check the supplier feedback profile in detail. From feedback score, positive feedback percentage to specific comments left by customers, you are encouraged to read the information as much as you can. The detailed description on the products or services left by customers can generally inspire you a lot.

3. Start with a small or sample order. Once you see a item you are interested in from a seller’s store you never trade with before, even if you have research the store and are quite satisfied with their feedback standards, it is always necessary to start with placing a small order. That way you will be able to test product quality, shipping time and pre-sales or after-sales services with a small investment only. Besides, you won’t lose big money in the case you encounter a scammer.

4. Always use the site to solve problems. For any after-sales problems related to your orders, don’t simply believe in what the sellers say or follow their instructions to solve the dispute. It is OK to negotiate personally with the sellers to reach a solution agreement first but you should then resort to Aliexpress.com to conduct the agreement. Otherwise, the agreement may means nothing and your interest won’t be protected. For instance, if a seller asks you to delete the negative feedback you left for him or her and as a return they will fully refund you, don’t trust the promise as you may not get back your money after you take the action.

5. Use a safe payment method. Although Aliexpress.com is a legit company and there is no problem to send money to them by payment methods like Western Union, we still encourage you to use the safest payment option that can best protect you. In particular, credict card is highly recommended as you can request your credit card company for a chargeback when you believe you are scammed. A safer payment method will give you the further protection in addition to the protection service offered by Aliexpress.com.

Our advice: for any dispute, do remember to open a dispute against the seller through your account at the site before the deadline (see their dispute policy here). By doing so, you can ensure that your money will be withheld by Aliexpress in time. Otherwise, the payment may be released to the sellers in due time while the problem is not solved yet. For the same reason we always encourage buyers to use the site to communicate with the sellers in case any dispute happens – their system will automatically record the chatting history, which will serve as important evidence that may support your claim.

If any party wants to share more tips on how to protect buyers from rip-offs or scams when shopping at Aliexpress.com, you are welcome to leave your ideas at the following comment box. We will update this post when we find valuable suggestions that can really help.