Tag Archives: fraud

How to find a good Supplier on Alibaba? Some Insider about Alibaba Vendors

Posted in Alibaba, B2B by

As “Made in China” products are rolling into people’s daily life all around world, as a business owner, sometimes it is hard to source the best item for their business without dealing with Chinese suppliers. As the most used & Well known Chinese Ecommerce Business group, Alibaba might be one of the vendor & Products sources you can not miss out.

Actually Alibaba Inc is a big group company, it contains 20+ Subsidiaries. The most known for trading & Whoelsale business are:

Alibaba.com

Aliexpress.com

1688.com.

  1. Alibaba.com is their global B2B website where you can find almost everything item you are sourcing about, to be a supplier on Alibaba.com, the supplier must have a formal business license no matter as a factory or trading company. (In fact there are way too many trading companies there also many sole business guys on it as long as they have decent business license issued by Chinese Government).
  2. Aliexpress.com is their so called “retail & deal” website, which are basically full of individual sellers, they do not require any business license there. MOST of the sellers are not professional both on product and customer service, in fact, many of the sellers on this site just list as many items as they want(legal or illegal), when order roll in, payment received, they will buy it from local marketplace or 1688.com then ship to customers.
  3. 1688.com is another wholesale site belonging to Alibaba group. But it is all in Chinese language, and it is for Chinese market only. If you happen to know Chinese, or you can find a vendor on it who can deal with English customers, then you should check about that. The good thing about 1688 is that for the same product, the price will be much better than alibaba.com and Aliexpress.com, and some suppliers there are very decent business owners as most of who need to pay about RMB 60000 (USD 10000) Per year to Alibaba as a Membership fee. There are lots of real factories on 1688 who actually manufacture product by themselves. But keep in mind there are also lots of middle man business who purchase items from local marketplace.

As a matter of fact, tons of products are made in china. And there are many factories in China. But that does not mean you can easily find a factory on Alibaba which can happily produce the perfect product for your business.

How to find the best vendor for your business?

What kind of suppliers can I find on Alibaba?

Personally I would like to Classify all business Units from China as 4 different grades/levels, they are:

AAA  factory

AA  factory

A   factory

Sole Business

AAA factory: Those factories who produce high quality products with mass quantity for brand companies. For example, the factories who make Nike shoes, UGG boots, Gucci bag & accessories. These factories are big and famous in their business circle, they never sell anything or market themselves online. Basically you can’t find them anywhere online (including Alibaba.com), and most of them have strict contract with brands and they hardly manufacture products for other companies beside their customers.

 

AA factory: Those factories make decent quality products for OEM customers or small brands. Most of these factories have marketing department with well-trained Employees who speaking great English, they are proud to present their factory to customers, they always willing to take more orders or customize products for your business. Sometimes These factories are the most popular vendors in industry cause they making decent quality products with decent prices, plus some even with great customer service & communication. But sadly, most of these factories are not on Alibab, 1688 or Aliexpress. Because most of which have got steady customers & orders already, they prefer to take orders from old customers like trading companies from Hong Kong, Tai wan, USA. But still, a few of these factories are seeking orders online, these factories can be trusted and if you deal and communicate with them well, you can get pretty awesome results.

 

A Factory: This kind of factory is the most common ones you can find on Alibaba or other B2B platform. You can call them “small factory” or “workshop”, these factories do manufacture products for customers, but they have got poor quality control, they have very few employees (some of them do not even have workers until they get orders need to be produced), some of which are family business. Some of them only take second-hand orders from other factory or trading companies. I am not saying that these factories can’t be trusted, in fact many customers love them because they can always provide the “best price”. The most awful thing about these kinds of factory is that some of them do not have business Ethics, for example, they do not value copyright, they might sell customers’ products to other folks without permission, they might delay customer’s orders without notification or reparation… In fact when you are dealing with these factories, most time the result really depends on the factory owner! If the owner is a good & kind person, it can turn out great! Otherwise dealing with them can be very troublesome.

Sole Business:  As long as you can get an official business license in China, anyone’s product can be listed on Alibaba.com. So here comes the sole business type. Those guys who believe they can serve international customers’ product need are happy to present themselves to you. Some of them have their own small trading companies while some do not. Usually these guys are working closely with one or more “real factories” and list factories’ products as their own. Some of them will lie to you to claim the he/she is factory, while some may tell you the truth that they are trading company or sole business, usually these guys really know something about their products &niche, and are able to provide pretty well customer service & communication. Some of them even provide you free samples if you show your honesty. The ugly thing is that most of them can not control factory (because it is not theirs), if the order procedure goes wrong, they might get you in a ugly position without a valid solution.  Meanwhile, most of these sole business owners do not take risk at all instead they transfer risk to their customers, they require full pre-payment or half pre-payment. At same time, if the order goes wrong, they hardly make any reparation to their customers. To deal with these business, you are going to need luck. If you are lucky enough, then everybody wins. Also it is very important to test and verify the qualification of the guy if you decide to use them, both for product Knowledge and Honesty. Once you find a nice one who working well for you, it really can save you money & time and deliver good result.

By getting some insider of the business type of Chinese vendors, I am sure you can easily find out the fact that most time you are only able to get access to” A factories” and “sole businesses” from Alibaba. I have heard too many people Complain about “made in china” products are junk, and the products & vendors Alibaba presented are bad, somehow it is true because there do have many good suppliers but only very few of them are listed on Alibaba.

So here comes the question: How to find the best supplier for your business?

Every business owner has different demands, finding the best supplier who working perfectly for your business can be challenging. Here’s some tips I would like to advise if you happen to look for vendors for your business on Alibaba;

  1. Browser their Alibaba site or page. Check their product image quality, decription & title quality. Qualified suppliers will only use their own pictures with great quality and clear contents, some of them will watermark their picture with company logo to protect their image property. Qualified suppliers have rich experience about product title, description and product properties, check as much as you can to make sure they really know the stuff they are manufacturing(or purchasing).
  2. Communicate with their sale person. The better language skills they got, the more reliable the supplier will be. Good companies will hire skilled employee for sale department. “Not so good” companies usually hire graduate who might not able to handle business query.
  3. Take serious actions about sample. Ask for sample from the supplier you interested to work with, or send your sample to the supplier to discuss further procedures. Sometimes suppliers do not understand your requirement until them seeing your sample. And sample is very important for quotation. Close the door if supplier is not able to provide you samples or do not want to receive your sample.
  4. Acting like big companies for your business Practice. Be professional about your products, marketing, package, artwork, inspection and shipment. Make budget plan for your items before supplier starting to make them. And tell everything you concerned about to your supplier and check their response to verify if both sides understand each other. Ask as many questions as you can before placing your order.
  5. Do not bargain excessively! Every business deserve a good product source & price, but as long as your supplier providing you the correct cost for your project, I would like to advise you to stop bargaining too much, making your supplier staying in profitable, that will make all transactions smoothly.

(To be Continued..)

 

Is Wish.com a Fraud?

Posted in Review by

I ususally do not do not visit Facebook very offen, but yesterday I logged into my facebook account trying to browse around, I found some interesting comment on Wish.com’s page. (As a merhcant, I have followed wish’s page for quite a long time!). Untill then, wish has got 1,202,438 followers for their page. It looked like the Wish APP (Shopping made fun!) is extramely popular on internet or in people’s smart devices. But when I tried to browse the daily post from their page, the comment & feedbacks from fans looked a little anomalous.

wish.com-feedbaca3243k-&-Review wish.com-feedbacak-&-Revie3 wish.com-feedbacak-&-Review

Shopping Made Fun. Join over 30 million others that have made their shopping more smart, fun, and rewarding. – That’s what Wish introduce themselves. No doubt Wish is growing fast and with more and more sale volume each month.  It is very commom to see negative feedback for deal sites & Online marketplace, but it is not that commom to see huge negative feedbacks on a business’s facebook page as this.   I checked the page for a while and summed up some of the Complaints， they are most about:

1. Cheap item with poor quality, item does not match display pictures.

2. Clothes size issues, size too small or too large.

3. shipping issue, no shipment or shipping too slow.

4. Bad customer service (No contact or difficult to contact)

As an online marketplace, any of the above issues can easily destroy a business and from their fan page, it looked like Wish have got 4 all. So here comes the question, what’s wrong with Wish? is Wish a fraud at all?

To begin digging Wish’s issues, we should start with how Wish’s business runs.  Here’s some fact I found about Wish:

1. Though they claimed that they have many vendor (Sellers) from all over world,  while most (or All?) of their sellers are from China. And most of their items are shipping from China (International shipping).  Most sellers on Wish comes from another marketplace called “Aliexpress” which is another marketplace belonging to Alibaba group.

2. When customer using Wish APP checking products, they have 2 options:  Wish it or Buy it. The more wish or buy a product gets, the more Exposure the product will get. The review & feedback of a product does not affect the exposure. Plus products with lower price will get more sells.

3. Wish is changing their seller policy frequently to adjust their marketplace rules plus trying to improve customer & business experience.

4. Once a while, Wish was declined by Paypal for selling Imitation （Knock off items) products. Then they decided to have all products inspected before they are live for sell. Also new sellers will be inspected when they are trying to upload new products.

5. Wish holds merchants’ fund until the first day of each month, sellers must provide active tracking information before they got paid.

6. Wish does not supply fulfillment service unlike Amazon. All products are shipped from individual sellers.

It is easy to find out why customers complain about the shipment and product quality. As a matter of fact, there are really very few restriction for selling on wish. When customers set up a dispute or complain about the purchase they maid, wish will make Intervention to the case and refund the payment to customer. But seller has no pulishment except the refund. I think this is the main reason for a mass amount of cheap & Poor quality items on Wish. At same time lots of sellers steal product pictures from other brands but send poor quality items to customers instead.  This matter can be critical for online business. Sellers can do this because there’s no restriction or pulishment.

Many marketplaces have strict policy about Jewelry, clothes and beauty products. Sellers must get approvel before they listing their items for sell, and if there’s issues with products or customers, their selling account should be closed or limited. If Wish really want to improve their business performace, I would strongly suggest they do so.

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If you are reading this post, you should be noted that I wrote above post in April 2015, now it is Jan 2017, how time flies!

It is almost 2 years now, and there’s still new comments about wish rolling in my blog comment.  Looks like wish does not change much.

I have summed up some of the complains or issues customers shopping with Wish, there’s not much “fun” part in it.  We know that there are still  tons of questions or problems out there, but that’s not what I am about to digg, instead I am trying to explain to you guys why the hell those issue happens, hopefully it helps you to decide if wish is the right shopping APP you should install in your phone.

Clothes Size

While we already know that the sellers on wish are from China, generally Asian people wear smaller clothes than people in USA & Europe.   The problem is many sellers set up clothes listing with Asian measurements.  If there’s size tag on clothes, you will be about to find out the clothe is the right size you ordered, but it just does not fit you, because IT IS FOR ASIAN PEOPLE.  But most of time, there’s even no tag on clothes!  It is almost “blind-shopping” buying clothes items. The pictures might be stolen from some other brands, the actual merchandise you received could be produced in any small workshop.  Sure there’s plenty of large factories manufacturing decent clothes for Foreign brands, but barely any of which were sold on Wish.

NO Shipment

Many customers have had experience on wish that their shipments were never received.  Well most time when you shopping online, you should be alerted if the shipment is coming from outside of your country.   All shipments on wish are from china, meanwhile, to save shipping cost, most sellers choose to use the most cheap shipping method to carry your order which means:  No tracking number (you will never know if your order was sent out or not, some sellers just mark their order “shipped” no matter it happens or not)

Extra long shipping time

Your order may come in a month, 2, 3, half a year or over a year,  indeed there are express shipping ways from China to other countries, but it does not happen much on Wish, no one would buy a 3 dollar item with paying 30$ shipping cost, needless to mention that lots of products are marked “free shipping” on wish. So most of time, sellers use un-registered regular mail to carry your order,  the shipping time was never guaranteed, the package is not safe, you can expect your order to come in a long time or never.

Poor Quality Products

I know While a product is labelled as “made in China”, you should perhaps not expect much quality about it. However,   I do not believe that’s the issue for wish case. Prove is When you buy some items from Walmart or Amazon, even it is made in China, the product should still be usable, most items are with decent quality. How come shopping with Wish could be so lousy？

I believe it is Wish’s Fault, the wish system does not have any Elimination mechanism upon sellers. In the early days when shopping on line became a thing, I am sure there are all kinds of sellers out there, good one and bad ones, professional sellers and Amateur sellers, but as time goes, only the best of best can last to end.   Each online marketplace has their Evaluation mechanism to keep the quality sellers and ban un-professional ones. Like Ebay and Amazon, sellers can easily get banned for bad feedback or customer complains.  Plus most other marketplaces are setting up more and more strict selling policies for their merchants to ensure excellent shopping experiences for their customers. Wish sounds very tolerant to sellers failure and their policies are loose.

Why?

I do not know exactly. But here’s the big picture I imagine:

  1. Wish is a new marketplace compared to other sites (ebay, amazon), they do not have enough merchants or vendors while they want to recruit more sellers, currently they might consider it is their best option to keep a loose requirement upon vendors to avoid vendor loss.
  2. Compared to other marketplace or shopping APP, Wish want to provide customers “Extra value” & “extra low price” products for customers,  cause there’s not much other advantages for customers shopping on Wish,  especially when you expect to receive your order over a month or so, what would you expect when you buying an item for 1/3 price of regular price?  Wish has to allow merchants selling low quality items for extra low price, it helps the APP to attract more customers, at least Newbies!  Or you tell me what made you placed your first order on Wish!?

Anyway, these 4 issues were mentioned mostly there, hopefully the post helps you a little bit to understand why they happens.  I have gathered information around from some of my friends who are or were selling on wish, in 2016, some new policies were released by wish and they were trying to raise their standards on merchant behaviors and improve their shopping experience for buyers. Also they are setting up fulfillment centers in Local (Wish is a USA based company, not chinese!)    Only time will tell if  things will change but at least they start to do their job.

What’s your experience with Wish?  Feel free to Comment below to share with me and readers.