Online Shopping Reviews

DHgate Review: China Wholesale Site for Small Merchants

DHgate.com is a Beijing-based China wholesale website serving Chinese sellers and global buyers. If Alibaba is the forerunner of the first generation of e-commerce in China, DHgate is no doubt the founder and leader of the second generation. Unlike Alibaba, DHgate does not “sell information” to sellers and buyers, but “sells services” to both parties.

Target Clients & Wholesale Volume

As a transaction platform, DHgate targets mainly at small and medium-sized buyers from all over the world—wholesale quantity can be as low as 1 piece only. For some items offered on DHgate.com, you can get a very low wholesale price for a remarkably small order. If you are a business owner selling either online or offline to your customers, sourcing your items from DHgate.com can be a most economic choice as there you will find a lot of sellers offering the item you want at unbeatable wholesale prices. And the best thing is, you have many price options to choose from!

Buyer Protection—Escrow Service

Safety is always the first and foremost concern for online shopping. DHgate has an authoritative buyer protection system—Escrow. Every transaction on DHgate will be fully protected by this system. When a buyer places an order and makes the payment for it.

The payment will arrive in DHgate’s account not the seller’s account. DHgate will not release the payment to the seller until the buyer confirms that he/she has received the order and is happy with the order received. DHgate has been doing serious business since 2004 and its buyer protection system works quite smoothly. As a buyer, you can be confident that the money you pay to DHgate.com will meet your expectation. Otherwise, you can apply for a refund or return to protect your interest.

Sellers & Items

All sellers on DHgate.com are registered members. When they register, a professional team from DHgate will verify their qualifications through checking their business license and other legal certificates. Only verified sellers can become DHgate’s members and sell items on the China wholesale website. But like many other online wholesale website, fraudulent and scam sellers are a headache for DHgate. For years, DHgate has been trying hard to crack down fraudulent or scam sellers. And they always severely punish these sellers to maintain a good transaction environment. Continue reading DHgate Review: China Wholesale Site for Small Merchants

Myesoul Review: Another China-based Online Store of Clothing and Accessories

History & Background

Myesoul.com is another China-based online store offering a wide range of apparel and accessories for the global retail market. Their major customers are from USA and Europe, based on the traffic analysis of Alexa.com. Lolita dresses, cosplay & costumes, prom dresses, fashionable shoes for women, swimwear and baby dolls are among the hottest categories at the site, which makes it a similar site to Milanoo.com.

When you mention Myesould.com, rare people know this name as it is pretty new. But as a matter of fact, their business is not that new. According to my research, they were running their business using the other domain name Ftcline.com. For details, you can read the post here.

You may feel a little odd when you hear that the company changes their website name, but it actually is nothing weird for the Chinese stores. For instance, the electronic store Ahappydeal.com used Davismicro.com and Brandsdragon.com in the past and they are still selling the same products with the current domain name. Here I don’t want to explain too much why they are doing so this way. They might have violated the policies of the hosting service provider, be trying to acquire better organic search rankings or simply be attempting to get their branding more easily to be recognized or familiarized. For whatever reason, the key point is: they are truly a legitimate business entity and deserve our trust.

Legitimate or Not?

Although they indicated on their website that their office address is based in Hong Kong, I seriously doubt that their major operation is really located there. Many small Chinese suppliers play the same trick. That is, in order to win trust from global buyers, they disguised themselves as a Hong Kong supplier instead of a Mainland China supplier because Hong Kong enjoys a much better global reputation when it comes to business credibility. On the other hand, technically they are really Hong Kong businesses as they are officially registered in Hong Kong. Anyway, most of them in practice run their business in cities across the Mainland China such as Shenzhen.

I don’t think it a big deal if a shopping site like Myesoul.com does not reveal their office location in a honest way though it does slightly reduce my confidence in their legitimacy. Normally I would try to confirm the truth by communicating with their service people. If they insist that they are Hong Kong based without valid evidence, I would abandon using them immediately. However, if they confess that their orders are shipped from the Mainland China, I would applause for their honesty and put them into my “trusted Chinese stores” list after I also find other signals showing that they are legit. Continue reading Myesoul Review: Another China-based Online Store of Clothing and Accessories

A Panoramic Review of Milanoo.com: Things You Must Know about This Chinese Fashion Store

General Background

Based in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, China, Milanoo.com is a fast-growing online retailer of fashionable apparel and lifestyle products. This company was founded in 2008 by Albert Feng, who had been a government clerk before.

Major Catalogs

Milanoo.com started from selling popular Lolita supplies and cosplay costumes and was best known for the product line for a couple of years. Soon they successfully opened up the highly profitable catalog: special occasion dresses and is doing better and better in this field. Now you can shop for gorgeous wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, prom dresses, cocktail dresses, evening dresses, homecoming dresses or any other kind of formal or semi-formal dresses there with plenty of choices.

At the same time, their other lines are growing rapidly too, including women’s clothing, women’s shoes, women’s bags, women’s beauty products and home fashion. The site is basically a fashion store for ladies though they also carry kids’ apparel and men’s clothing & accessories such as men’s watches.

Website Improvements

As a third-party reviewer, I have been observing the performance and the changes they are making since they were born. One particular thing about them that impresses me deeply is their constant effort to improving their website user experience. Look at their site and you will be easily attracted by the lovely banners and product images as well as the neatly sorted categories. To be fair, they now look much, much better than how they were years ago!

Continue reading A Panoramic Review of Milanoo.com: Things You Must Know about This Chinese Fashion Store

Deals on Sexy Backless Dresses from Chinese Store Sheinside.com

I hate myself keeping talking about fashion products here and I was really trying to move my eyes onto something else. But when I came across the beautiful sexy dresses on sale at Sheinside.com (read review), I just couldn’t stop the urge to share them as soon as possible. That is exactly how this post comes out.

The Sheinside sale offers 25% off on a variety of backless dresses that fit different occasions and taste. There you can find long-sleeve backless dresses, short-sleeve backless dresses and sleeveless backless dress. No matter what sleeve type you prefer, you will get plenty of styles to consider. On top of that, you will be even more astonished by the stylish designs of the dresses. With so many colors, patterns and styles to choose from, you will easily find a backless dress of your dream from that promotional collection.

Note that you should enter the coupon code “20130717” to redeem the coupon at checkout. The offer probably will last till the end of this month only. So if you find a dress you love, order it before the sale ends. The discount scope is quite impressive compared to all other deals on fashionable products available at Chinese stores. The original prices of the dresses range from $15 to $55. Plus, as long as you choose standard shipping, free shipping is available on any order to any destination of the world. Click here to see all deals.

Where to Get Best Deals on 2013 Back to School Supplies

If you haven’t got any specific idea about what to prepare for the new school yet, you can read the 2013 back-to-school checklist for inspiration first. If you already have a come-to-school shopping list, let’s go straight to the deals part. Note that this post will focus on the best back-to-school 2013 deals available at Chinese international stores only.

Deals on Stationery:
1. Aliexpress.com
2. Dinodirect.com

Deals on Apparel:
1. Lightinthebox.com
2. Dinodirect.com
3. Aliexpress.com

Deals on Electronic Gadgets:
1. Focalprice.com
2. Miniinthebox.com
3. Priceangels.com
4. Eforchina.com
5. Tmart.com
6. Ahappydeal.com

Deals on Novelty Items:
1. Dinodirect.com
2. Aliexpress.com
3. Miniinthebox.com

Deals on Shoes:
1. Milanoo.com
2. Aliexpress.com
3. Dinodirect.com

Deals on School Bags:
1. Aliexpress.com
2. Dinodirect.com
3. Milanoo.com

The shopping websites offering the 2013 back-to-school supplies are all base in China. When you shop with them, you should pay attention to the processing time and shipping time required for the product you order just in case it does not arrive in time for the first day of your new school year.

In particular, Aliexpress.com is a wholesale shopping site for small and medium-sized businesses but you still can buy products from the sellers as an individual as long as the product does not require a MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity). The other websites are online retail distributors, just like the local stores near your home.

In addition to the back-to-school deals for 2013, you can also take advantage of their latest coupon codes for better savings. Just use the search box at the right top of my site to search for valid coupon codes for the websites you are interested in trading with.

A General Review of Lightinthebox.com

Based in Beijing, China, Lightinthebox.com is a New York Stock Exchange listed Chinese e-commerce website (NYSE: LITB). Having been in the online foreign trading business since 2007, their major categories include wedding dresses and other special occasion dresses, women’s fashion, home and garden and electronics.

While the site offers a variety of consumer electronics, it also has another website www.miniinthebox.com exclusively for all kinds of cool gadgets, including Apple accessories, Samsung accessories, watches, LED lights and lots more. Unbeatable pricing is the very advantage of the gadgets for sale at this channel of
Lightinthebox.com, followed closely by the huge range of choices of gadgets. Quality is also commonly rated as good by their customers all around the world. Read the detailed review of Miniinthebox.com >>

Personally Lightinthebox.com is my No. 1 choice if you ask me to recommend a globally reputable online trading company in China. Here are my reasons:

1. It was founded by an elite group of leaders who had been famous for their outstanding achievements in the internet circle. Its founder and the current CEO, Quji Guo, was a former advance executive officer of Google China.

Continue reading A General Review of Lightinthebox.com