When we buy from China, most of us will consider Alibaba as the first thing. As the largest online B2B marketplace in the world, Alibaba has the most diverse categories and products, we can find almost all that we want. There are thousands of suppliers providing the same or similar products, including factories, trading companies, and distributors, too many choices make it a hard decision, so here comes the problem, how can we make a good purchase on Alibaba? In this article, we share some tips from our experience and hope they can help in buying from China.
1. What is called a good purchase on Alibaba?
Everyone has his own understanding of a good purchase, some prefer low price regardless of other factors, some like top quality, and some have a special requirement of MOQ(minimum order quantity), there is no right or wrong since it’s not a yes or no question. However, we still have a universal agreed standard, that is a purchase at a competitive price with low MOQ and good quality, and a short lead time is definitely a good purchase, then how could we achieve this?
2. Tips for making a good purchase on Alibaba
According to our years of work experience, we summarized 6 tips, it will be helpful to follow when we make a purchase on Alibaba.
2.1 Check the supplier’s identity information
A reliable supplier is essential for a deal, we can use the official website of the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System to check the supplier’s identity, on this authoritative website, the company’s basic information, administrative license/penalty information, serious violations of laws and blacklist information, announcement Information. On the basic information part, we should pay attention to the registration status to see if the company is in normal business status, and on the business scope part, we should check what the company does exactly, and we can compare this information to the one the company announced on Alibaba to see if the 2 information matches or not. It is better to avoid the companies that have a lot of cases in court.
2.2 Check the supplier whether it is verified or a gold supplier
First of all, all Chinese paid suppliers for membership on Alibaba are gold suppliers(Japanese companies with Chinese corporate entities can also apply), so we can see almost all suppliers from China are gold suppliers, those companies who are not gold suppliers are limited to functions on Alibaba, they are less likely to be displayed to customers when we search by keywords.
A verified supplier is in-depth inspected by an independent third-party institution, to qualify as a Verified Supplier, a supplier’s company profile, production capabilities, products, and process controls have to be inspected, assessed, and verified by independent third-party institutions to assure reputable and consistent expertise on Alibaba.com. That is to say, we know much more details about the supplier, and the inspection is carried out by an authoritative professional third party which makes the supplier reliable.
2.3 Check the vendor’s location if it’s in the industry cluster and business duration on Alibaba
We discussed how to find a qualified sourcing agent in our previous article, manufacturers in the same industry centralize in the same area to form an industry cluster, it is definitely a great advantage to source a factory from the industry cluster area over other places, there are so many choices in the place, and prices are competitive, competition creates a high degree of professionalism, we can compare and select a good supplier in the area. The other checkpoint is the business duration of the supplier, a 10 years supplier on Alibaba should be more reliable than 1 year, this is easy to understand.
2.4 Compare the Quotation
Normally we send inquiries to different potential suppliers, and we will get a few quotations. By comparing the quotes, we can easily find which one is more professional than the other one, some quotations may lack important information like lead time, and packing, while some may be out of our expectations, these suppliers not only give the required information but also add more useful information about the product and their factories, which let us know better of them. Comparing the quotations is not just comparing the prices, we should take all aspects into consideration in a comprehensive way, price is pretty important, but it’s not the only thing when we make a good purchase.
2.5 Evaluate the Communication
Communication is always important when we make a deal with suppliers. We communicate with qualified suppliers and get helpful information from them, they reply to us in a timely manner and answer all the questions that we are caring about. It’s painful to wait for a reply without telling us when we will get the answer. Like comparing the quotation, communication also indicates whether the supplier is professional or not. A good conversation with a supplier does not mean a good deal, we have to see what they do actually, but a bad conversation will definitely not lead to a good purchase.
2.6 Trade Assurance Service and Customers Reviews
Remember to make the order online if we are not very sure about the supplier. The orders are protected by the Alibaba service Trade Assurance. The Trade Assurance is a kind of Escrow service provided by Alibaba and it’s free, it’s a built-in service that covers orders placed on and paid for through Alibaba.com. Trade Assurance protects the buyer in the event that the supplier fails to ship on time or the product quality varies from what has been agreed upon, we can apply for a refund if that happens.
The customers’ feedback can help us evaluate the supplier, we can pay attention to the negative reviews, read them carefully and figure out what happened, normally bad reviews reflect the truth even if there is only 1.
Please apply the tips to actual transactions when buying on Alibaba, we hope it will be helpful, let us know what you think and share with us your ideas, we are looking forward to your comments.
