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.

***********************************************************************************************

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.

10 Great Tools/Websites For Ecommerce Website Owners

Posted in Ecommerce by

Running websites is not an easy job, especially for the Ecommerce website business. Beside the Management capabilities of running your business, proudcts and customers, you will also have to learn how to manage your Ecommerce website(s). It’s will be easier if you have got a team supporting your practice. But for small business or Solo business owners, there are way too much need to learn and pay attention to for your Entrepreneurship. Here in this post I will share the 10 Greatest tool/websites I have been using for years.

1.Check Website Down or Up & Loading Speed

Link: https://www.uptrends.com/tools/website-speed-test

On this website, you are able to check if your website is up or down in 6 different continents around world.

checking website uptime

And there’s more, you can even test loading speed of your website in different Destinations, it supports a large amount of cities & countries:

testing your website performance

2. Google Adwords Preview Tool

Link: http://adwtools.com

Running google adwords is a great way to promote your business and websites. By using this tool, you can easily preview your adwords displaying plus your Competitors’ adwords. It’s really a great way to check adwords results though Google also has it’s own adwords preview tool in google account, but somehow this tool is more Intuitive and Convenient. It supports you to preview from 24 different countries and two different modes: Just preview or real-time click-able results.

I have been using this tool for a few years I am so into it. It can also help you to check the natural ranking of your website from different countries beside previewing adwords.

3. Google Translate

Link: http://translate.google.com/

No bullshit! Just simple transalation which supporting almost all languages from all over world. And the Automatic language detection function can really help you to save time when you have no idea what kind of language you are reading in your email or customer service center.

4. URL Shorten Tool

Link: https://bitly.com

Short URL is very useful in social marketing.  Bitly.com is the msot widely used URL Shorten tool.

5. Oline Chat Tool

Link: www.zopim.com

Zopim is a very powerful customer service & online chat tool for Ecommerce business. I have been using this website for 2 years, and I really like it. Unlike more other online chat softwares, zopim is very easy to set up and manage, you do not even need to know any program knowledge to set it up. Zopim let you talk to your visitors / customer in real time. They have Free version which has limited functions but enough for start-up business.

6.Google Trends

Link: http://www.google.com/trends/

Google Trends is an awesome tool to check product trends and marketing trends.  It supports you to search trends from all over world.  This process used to be a hard event in last centuries, but right now all you need to do is typing your keyboard and you can find tons of useful information for your business.

7. Website Browser Compatibility Check

Link: http://browsershots.org/

By using this website, you can check your website compatibility in almost all browsers with every version. (Firefox, IE, Chrome…)

8. Thefind.com – A professional shopping search for your business.

Link: http://thefind.com

By registering an account on thefind.com, you can upload your product data feed to this website and will have Opportunity to display your products to visitors on this website. I have been using this website for a few years and gained a few quality flows.

9. Backlink Watch Tool

Link:http://www.backlinkwatch.com/

Checking your Competitors’ backlink is a good habit for SEO. Also it is a very good way to research how other people are promoting their websites and business.  This website can give you access to watch backlink for any website (including your own sitess).They have free version and paid version which you can select according to your demand.

10. Quirktools

Link: http://quirktools.com/screenfly/

A very powerful tool to check your website Interface performance in different device like desktop, Ipad, iphone, android phones..  By using this tool, you can easily view how your website looks on mobile phones, tablet, televisions and other sizes of Monitors. You can even customize the size of the monitor. It supports real-time preview and covers all major device in market.

Best Place to wholesale China Electronic Products – 5 Websites Reviews

Posted in Review by

Trendy electronic items are always popular all around world. As the huge demand of electronic products such as Tablet PC， mobile phones, Smart devices，more and more business onwers are trying to locate and source the best electronic products for their business and bring the latest items to their own country. No doubt that most biggest suppliers of electronic products are located in China where factories, trading companies are working hard to serve customers from all over world.   In this post I will choose the 5 most popular business website which labeled  “China electronic products wholesale & retail”, and digg a little big about their business and service.  No matter you are a business onwer trying to find the most reliable supplier or you are just a regular cusotmer trying to purchase a good Tablet PC, this post might be for you.

The 5 websites I am reviewing are:

Light In the Box (http://lightinthebox.com)- A NYSE listed retail & Wholesale company supplies thousands of different products for customers from all over world.

Deal Extreme (http://dx.com) –  A Hong Kong founded company which carrying over 110,000 items for customers, famous for their electronic products.

Focalprice (http://focalprice.com) – A famous wholesale website with great shopping experience.

DHGATE (http://dhgate.com) – Unlike other websites, this is a wholesale marketplace which has tons of suppliers there.

TinyDeal (http://tinydeal.com) –  They provide more than 50,000 elaborate merchandises and famous brand products online at cheap wholesale price.

Just keep in mind that there are way too many other businesses and websites supplying similar merchandises & service as these websites,  the reason why I choose these 5 ones is that they are top rated both in Google search results and in the wholesale business circles.  And these 5 companies are pretty much the most successful business for China (Hong Kong) located companies which shipping items internationally.

The review contains 3 parts:

1. Sku Capacity.

It is always frustrated when customers can not find the right item they want. More sku capacity means more products & choices. I will pick 10 most searched catalogue as keywords and search on each website. The more sku(s) & products found, The more scores the website will get. The score will be from 1-5. Website which got the lagest sku capacity get 5 scores, the Minimal sku website gets 1.

The 10 catalogue(keywords) will be:

Android Phone

Bluetooth

Tablet PC

Iphone 6 case

Ipad Case

Digital camera

LED watch

GoPro

USB 3.0

Power Bank

2. Price

What stops you buying from a business?   The answer can be Varied，but the most common one could be “Price”. Here in this review, I will selected 5 different products, and checking price of each website to compare, the 5 prdoucts are:

MT8392 Cube 9.7 Inch WiFi/Bluetooth/3G/2G Android 4.4 Tablet

3.5mm In-ear Earphones

Elephone P6000 5.0″ Android 4.4.2 4G Smart Phone

KINGSTON 32GB 32 GB Micro SD TF Card

Slim 2.4GHz Wireless Optical Mouse

For each product, the websites with highest price gets 1 score, the lowest price website gets 5 scores.

3. Customer Satisfaction

Beside product quantity and price, Customer satisfaction is the most important part for an online retail & wholesale business( or for any business?!). Here I will collect Data from a 3rd part review & feedback & complain website(Trustpilot).  Trustpilot has already offered the review scores for visitors. We will display it here.

Let’s get this start!

**********************************************************************************************************

1.Sku Capacity

LIGHT IN THE BOX DX FOCALPRICE DHGATE TINYDEAL
Sku Quantity Score Sku Quantity Score Sku Quantity Score Sku Quantity Score Sku Quantity Score
Android Phone 2608 3 2883 4 1394 2 79501 5 1076 1
Bluetooth 3803 3 14831 4 3505 2 190056 5 2157 1
Tablet PC 1895 3 2113 4 483 1 108624 5 965 2
Iphone 6 case 4927 4 2978 3 606 1 87814 5 1114 2
Ipad Case 2510 3 3681 4 217 2 50107 5 109 1
Digital camera 14855 4 9395 3 1320 2 29480 5 177 1
LED watch 253 1 463 3 308 2 42219 5 672 4
GoPro 2594 4 2189 3 140 1 14838 5 305 2
USB 3.0 1734 2 18750 4 7318 3 15643 5 212 1
Power Bank 420 2 2018 4 200 1 49045 5 472 3
Final 29 36 17 50 18

(All these data is up to 5 FEB 2015)  From the Statistics table, we can see that DHGATE gets highest score on product quantity. This is very understable because DHGATE is a marketplace where many members operating their products instead of itself. So there are too many duplicate items. But after all it gets highest score. Beside DHGATE, DX is the best one amoug other 4 invidvidual merchants. And it is even better than Lightinthebox. Focalprice and Tinydeal are in the same level. During the procedure of checking SKU quantity, I have found that Focalprice has the worst “product search” function in these 5 websites, the search result is very Inaccurate. I have to check the quantiies manually.

So if you want to have large item quantity selection or compare price, DHGATE is a nice place to go, meanwhile you should notice that Dhgate’s products were uploaded by individual sellers, the pictures and description of products can be confusing or messed up. Otherwise, DX is better. Lightinthebox is good too and they are not just carrying electronic products, they also have got tons of other catalogues such as home decor, wedding, clothing,etc.

2. Price

The result of price checking was:

LIGHT IN THE BOX DX FOCALPRICE DHGATE TINYDEAL
price ($) Score price ($) Score price ($) Score price ($) Score price ($) Score
MT8392 Cube 9.7 Inch WiFi/Bluetooth/3G/2G Android 4.4 Tablet 219.99 3 195.99 5 219.99 3 199.99 4 226.99 1
3.5mm In-ear Earphones 3.99 2 3.22 3 2.89 4 4.83 1 2.26 5
Elephone P6000 5.0″ Android 4.4.2 4G Smart Phone 159.99 3 159.99 3 169.99 2 179.99 1 156.11 5
KINGSTON 32GB 32 GB Micro SD TF Card 22.99 1 17.61 3 16.59 4 19.46 2 15.75 5
Slim 2.4GHz Wireless Optical Mouse 7.95 1 6.54 3 5.29 4 6.64 2 4.36 5
Final 10 17 17 10 21

It is surpring to see that Tinydeal got the highest score on “Price”. Focalprice and DX are in the same level. Lightinthebox and Dhgate are selling their items with the highest price among all.  For Dhgate, it is not easy to check their price compared to other websites. Cause it was announced as a “wholesale & trading” website, many items were sold at bulk. The price can be very confusing. For the same item, it could be much lower than other websites, but after you clicked into the detail page, you will find out that they need to order at least 100, 50,etc. So when I check Dhgate price, I only select from the lowest price which allow customer to order 1 unit.  So if you are looking for some cheap deal for your business, I think you can give Dhgate a try, I am not saying their prices are much lower than other websites, but it does make sense to save some budget on bulk buying. But if you want better experience on products, description…, you better try tinydeal, DX or Focalprice.

3. Customer Satisfaction

Let’s bring up the review data first:

Lightinthebox

lightinthebox review

5 stars percentage- 77.3%

1 star percentage  – 8.2%

DX

DX review

5 stars percentage- 59.2%

1 star percentage  – 14.8%

Focalprice

focalprice review

5 stars percentage- 58.9%

1 star percentage  – 19.3%

DHGATE

dhgate review

5 stars percentage- 10.5%

1 star percentage  – 78.4% (WTF!)

Tinydeal

tinydeal review

5 stars percentage- 47.6%

1 star percentage  – 41%

——————————————————————————————–

(All data up to 6 Feb, 2015)

After digging this review thing a little bit more,  it is easy to find out a fact that not only customer can write review on this website, anyone can write review including the companies themselves.  So here I will not just compare them with the rating, I invent a new index called “Customer Satisfaction Index Score(CSIS)”. The Calculation method is:

Customer Satisfaction Index Score(CSIS) =  5 Star Percentage / 1 Star Percentage

The more 5 star a business gets, the higher CSIS will be. In contrast the more 1 star (bad review), the lower CSIS will be.

It is easy to write fake good review about their business, but no one will write bad review (1 star) abou their business.

Let’s bring this to sheet:

LIGHTINTHEBOX DX FOCALPRICE DHGATE TINYDEAL
5 star(%) 1 star(%) CSIS 5 star(%) 1 star(%) CSIS 5 star(%) 1 star(%) CSIS 5 star(%) 1 star(%) CSIS 5 star(%) 1 star(%) CSIS
77.30% 8.20% 9.4 59.20% 14.80% 4 58.90% 19.30% 3.1 10.50% 78.40% 0.13 47.60% 41% 1.2

If you compare my CSIS to the scores Trustpilot provided, you will find out that the Rank is almos the same, except my CSIS is much more apparent to the fact how customer(s) feel.

Lightinthebox gets the highest customer satisfaction scores, DX and FOCALPRICE are in the same level, Tinydeal’s service looked awful. For DHGATE, 78.4% of their customes gave them 1 star (FYI, 1 star is lowest, no 0 star there)

Just need to remind you that, though this post’s subject is about “electronic products”, these review data are not just about electronic products, they cover everything customers buying from these websites.

*********************************************************************************************

It’s easy to sum up some fact here:

1. Dhgate has large selection of product quantity but with worst customer satisfaction.

2. DX and Focalprice are pretty much in the same level of products and service even the price.

3.  In these 5 websites, Lightinthebox has got the best customer satisfaction, but their prices and products quantity are not good.

4. Tinydeal’s price is the best in all but with worse customer satisfaction and sku quantities.

**********************************************************************************************

If you have any experience about any of these business or website, feel free to comment on this post 🙂

International Shipping fee Questions

Posted in International business by

Actually this is a very old post I wrote in 2009, things changed quickly these years, but today when I Occasionally found it in my computer, I decided to post it here as my 1st post on my this very new blog. It is about the shipping fee for chinese merchant shipping merchandises to other countries (eg, USA).  I thought this post might be useful for those people who want to buy some produts from chinese merchant or purchase some wholesale for their business. If you are happening bothered by these stuff, this post might be good for you to read.

The are several shipping ways you can choose(or sellers will use) when shipping chinese made items aboard. The most used ones are

EMS (EUB)

Hong Kong POST
China POST

DHL

UPS

US Special Line

….

Here in this post I will introduce the methods of how to calculate shipping fee. Before we getting started, we should know:

  1. In USA, the shipper will always contact and dealing with delivery companies directly. For example, if they want to send Fedex Order, they will call fedex and pay them the shipping fee. But in China, most shipper and supplier do not deal with shipping company directly. Instead there’s delivery agents between them. Usually the shipping agents are dealing with shipper, and delivery goods to DHL or EMS’s warehouse, and then the shipment was handled.

In this case, even you use the same shipping way, eg EMS, different shippers may quote you different shipping fee. Because their agents are different. Knowing this can explain you why the shipping fee was quoted differently even they use the same shipping way.

  1. EMS, hong kong post, china post will charge you shipping cost based on Unit weight, but DHL, UPS and other shipping ways will charge shipping cost based on volume(when the volume is larger than weight) or weight(when the weight is larger than volume)

So let’s see how to calculate shipping fee now!

EMS

The Basic fee for EMS is RMB 240. The basic fee means no matter how much weight the package is,  at least you will be charged 240.00. And it covers all packages under 0.5KG. If the Package is over 0.5 kg, it will charge RMB 75 for EACH 0.5 KG.(If the exceed weith is not enough for 0.5 kg, it will still count as 0.5 kg)

For example:

0.5kg = 240.00

0.6KG= 240+75=315

0.7kg=240+75=315

………….

1kg=240+75=315

1.2kg=240+75*2=390

1.6kg=240+75*3=465

5.0kg=240+75*9=915

 

Hong Kong POST

Hong Kong post also charges a basic fee for each shipment. The fee is RMB 13. And they use 0.1 kg as the unit weight, the unit price for each 0.1 kg is about RMB 10.00.

For example:

0.1kg=13+10*1=23

0.2kg=13+10*2=33

0.3kg=13+10*3=43

…………………

1 kg=13+10*10=113

 

And please keep in mind hong kong post only accept shipment under 2 KG.

China POST

When you need to calculate china post shipping fee, you can just make it half of Hong kong post price. And all done!

DHL

DHL charge shipping cost based on different volume size.

The volume size is calculated as this:

Total volume= long (cm) * Width ( cm) 8 high (cm) / 5000

Eg, if your carton is 40 cm *40 cm *20 cm size, then your volume will be:

40*40*20/5000= 6.4 KGS.

DHL will charge your carton as 6.4 KGS.

For the shipping fee, it will be:

Under 0.5 kg, 140.00 RMB

0.5KG-1 KG:  160 RMB

1-1.5KG: 180RMB

1.5 KG-2 KG: 200 RMB

2-20 KG: 140(basic fee) + (weight KG -0.5)*40= total cost.

For example

15 KG=140+(15-0.5) *40=720

10kg=140+(10-0.5)*40=520

18kg=140+(18-0.5)*40=840

…….

When the carton is over 21 KG, the shipping unit price is no longer 40 RMB, but 35.

So if the weight is 25kg, the cost will be;

25KG=140+(25-0.5)*35=997.5

50KG=140+(50-0.5)*35=1872.5

Fedex and UPS

Fedex and UPS Is way expensive than DHL in china. So more suppliers do not really use them.

So they are not introduced in this post.

Shipping rate for international shippingments changes from time to time. Buers do not really need to konw the exact shipping rate for their orders always, but it is nice to know some basic Algorithm.