How to Buy from Alibaba? Complete Guide from Sourcing to Receiving Products

Alibaba is the best online platform to find suppliers for all kinds of products but there's still a lot of people haven't used it or don't know how to use it correctly or safely that's why I decided to make this most informative and a comprehensive guide to eliminate all your concerns and show you the correct whole process step by step from searching suppliers until receive products I'm Jake the founder of Jing sourcing a leading China sourcing company since 2015 we help sales and/or people source quality products from China and I will show you all my knowledge about sourcing manufacturing and importing in my videos so subscribe now then you won't miss the next coming video how to buy products on Alibaba this is a very big and complicated question so I decided to organize this video into two sections in section one you can learn basic knowledge about Alibaba platform and how it works if you already have ideas about this knowledge then you can move the progress bar to 8 and 1/2 minutes to start watching a section 2 and I will teach you how to buy own Alibaba from same inquiry to receive products Alibaba Group in China is kind of like Google in America they have so many products like table Alex Presley Moe Ali pay and Ali Babacan is just one of their products and also it's their first products which were spilled around 20 years ago this website is mailing for non Chinese people to find suppliers in China but now you can also find suppliers from all over the world alibaba.com is a dominating b2b trading platform for similar website like global resources or made in China they're kind like search engine Bing or Yahoo when compared with Google over 90 percent of people use Google to search and over 90 percent of people use Alibaba to find supplies online but is Alibaba really right for you or your business don't buy any brand products like iPhone Nike shoes because all these products they have their own distribution network in every countries even though they are made in China but in Alibaba you won't get a good price for buying the in quantity and also you will have very high risk of being scanned if you're purchasing quantity is less than 500 US dollars for one product don't use it even though Alibaba is good for small business but it's not good for too small business if you want to find world-class manufacturers that has supplied big brands like final lingering manufacture for Victoria's Secret's or find shoes manufacture for Nike or adidas I would not say don't use Alibaba but you almost cannot find them here because their target client are usually big company and big buyers but the main bias of Alibaba are usually small to medium size business so alternatively visit ratios like Kendall Fair will be much easier to find this type of factories so how does purchasing Alibaba work essentially Alibaba is like online tradeshow you can find supplies for all kinds of products and learn products fire photos or descriptions and evaluate it supplies background by coming informations but you cannot really complete purchasing process online as simple as Aliexpress or Amazon why because Alibaba is used for international trading and you are supposed to deal with factories trading companies and purchase a product in larger quantity or customize a product and make your own packaging your own brand so every customer they have different kind of requirement on the products and the supplier usually they don't have inventory and they will start producing after you place order because this is international trading in the products or packages usually are customized so if you are not satisfied with the product you received it's almost not possible to return the products back to China and get full refund I didn't see any people really made it together their product returned and almost no one will tell you this truth when you are doing the product research in Alibaba surprises you see are not real because most of the transactions are not a complete online and the suppliers will try to mark their price as low as possible to attract your inquiry and this is a very common tricks they play to stand out from their Seldon of competitors you need to spend a lot of time to find out some suppliers whose business background looks might be good send their inquiries and they will reply you with the real price and then you can start the further communication with the supplier by email I recommend you to download the WeChat app to communicate with suppliers because you can always get a very fast response and this is app that we change people to use for communicating from wake up in the morning until fall sleep at night for all things I have mentioned above it looks like sourcing products and buying product on La Jolla is kind of like full of risks but don't worry Alibaba has provided the following solutions to help you evaluate your suppliers and security purchasing orders so keep watching Alibaba has two types of supplier membership the goat and the verified you might heard about the go-to supplier because there are a lot of tutorial on internet that teaches how to buy from Alibaba and they will say run go to supplier because they are reliable it's wrong they probably don't want to choose that every single Chinese suppliers is go to supplier in China you have to pay around four thousand five hundred US dollars per year you can become the supplier on Alibaba which is the girl supplier verify the supplier is kind of like higher level than the gold because suppliers they usually need to pass a third party audit and also need to pay at least ten thousand US dollars per year to Alibaba then Alibaba will give a verify supply a badge and also more exposure opportunity to buyers by my experiences the goat or the verified membership doesn't really matters but the longer years that being a supplier on Alibaba is more important and then whether it's goat or verify the supplier few years ago Alibaba launched the trade assurance service thus buyers don't need to worry about being scam or receive defect products it works like this when you place order you can write the product specification and delivery requirement in the treatise order and you pay money into Alibaba and they will help you hold a some money onto your received products if you want to learn more about registries and how to use it you can click the link below or link in the description another question is who are the suppliers on Alibaba there are three kinds of suppliers on Alibaba manufacturers trading companies and wholesalers trading company and wholesalers are usually buying product from manufacturers and resell to you but the difference between trading company and wholesalers are trading companies usually specialize in certain product categories while wholesalers usually they sell any kinds of products as long as it can bring some profit and usually their moq is slower and the price will be more expensive most of those Alibaba sourcing tutorials will tell you that you must buy from manufacturers and the trading companies is always a middleman to increase the price and rip you off it's totally wrong for the same product it's very normal that different manufacturers has price difference like 10% 20% or even more and sometimes the trading companies price will even better there a lot of manufacturers so my advice will be it's always better to focus on how to balance between the price quality and the service instead of verifying if it's a real manufacturer and that you only buy from them it's great that you keep watching to now and you probably have very good understanding about how Alibaba sourcing works so let's dive into the section too and let me show you how to pile Alibaba step by step actually buying from Alibaba is kinda like international trading so I will also teach you some basic but very helpful trading knowledge is step one search suppliers there are two ways to search supplies in Alibaba direct search and the years I've queue the direct search is just typing in the keywords in the search bar then you will find all products that has similar keywords from selling of suppliers this method is quite suitable for this kind of situation that when you don't have a specific type of product or specific periods of the product that you want and you can take time to look around until you find attractive products then you can click the contacts apply button to leave the message for requiring a precise called well if you want to source a specific product then I strongly recommend you to use alibaba's I've Q function which is short for request for quotation just typing in the URL i've cute alibaba.com and click try I've Q Now button and you will see this i've q phone just fill it out as detail as you can according to these instructions it's very simple and you can also attach product links or images to describe your requirements better the very important thing you need to know is that describe your sourcing requirement as detailed as possible because every Alibaba supplier can only reply less than 30 I've cubes per month it's limited if your RFQ is too simple then they probably will think that you are not a serious buyer and then they don't want to waste this opportunity to reply to RFQ after submitting the I've queue phone usually in less than one hour during the work time in China you can receive the reply front around 10 suppliers with their quotation and then you can choose the best one among these suppliers if you want to learn more about how to use RFQ effectively to let as many quality supplier to reach out to you in less than 15 minutes click the link below or in the description and you can also get a very practical FQ template step 2 identify suppliers after you filling out the IV q phone you should receive a lot of supplies reply very quick and then you need to learn how to identify and evaluate all then but if you use the direct research you need to identify the supplier first then thinlinc inquiries choosing a long-term suppliers is more important in choosing the lowest call suppliers because you want your business growing that's why you need a reliable suppliers to support you with quality products in a service let me give you six tips for how to choose a good supplier tip 1 check Alibaba membership in section 1 I have explained the basic knowledge about how supplies membership works and I recommend you to choose suppliers who has at least three years membership no matter it's go to suppliers or verified because in China there are a lot of small manufacturers or small trading companies they will try selling on ibaba for one or two years they paying few thousand US dollars per year and they didn't find they make much money so they will decide to close their Alibaba account and in this case you will be out of alibaba's protection tip to check company background it's very easy to judge the supplier is manufacturer or trading companies through their names because Chinese companies names usually consist of these four elements location name business scope and a common type in China for the same type of products usually factories or trading companies they will gather in the same city or the same province and we call this area as industrial clusters and I recommend you try to find suppliers according to the industrial clusters because supplies from those areas they will be like more professional and in their price will be more competitive the simplest way to find where is the industry cluster for your products is just search the product in the search bar and then try to find which province has the biggest numbers of suppliers and it's there for the business scope elements trading company usually use words like trading import/export commodity and factories usually we'll use industrial products or certain product names like stemless plastic you can also go to the supplier profile page to see their business type is trading company or factories but sometimes it could be wrong because there are a lot of tricks to play together trading companies register as a manufacturer tips three check supplies product category a good supplier they should be very professional on products so you need to check their product categories for example wine tumbler is made of stainless steel and it's normal that the supplier is also selling as a kind of product that made of stainless steel but if in his product category there are a lot of any other products that has no relationship with stainless do or drink wears then he might not be a very good option for good supplier there are many suppliers on Alibaba especially for trading companies and hoe sellers they upload thousands and the cells in the products in order to get more inquires from new clients instead of focusing on certain area tip 4 choose suppliers who accept trade occurrence others it's very easy to understand because this kind of supplies it's very confident about their qualities and they know if there's any product defects the client will open this filled with Alibaba and they can get a compensation tip five check complaint certifications for electronics ties most of countries they need compliance certifications for import custom clearance so you must to choose supplies who has a certification to your countries for example electronic products it need FCC for cousin clearance in United States and seee certification for European countries so only when the supplier has related certifications it can prove that their product comply with the regulation in your country and you can also identify the suppliers proficiency by certifications tip six price and minimum order quantity now you probably understand why price is not the most important thing to choose the right suppliers except for choosing competitive my suppliers you also need to think about their minimum order quantity and usually it's not that hard to negotiate the moq like twenty or fifty lower and you can tell the supplier that you are willing to pay little bit higher price for buying less quantities if you want to learn more skills about how to find reliable suppliers in Alibaba click link below or link in the description and I will teach you in another video step 3 confirm price at this step you need to confront a lot of things with supplies like product price the purchasing quantity customer packaging if it has and also the shipping costs for different shipping solutions if you don't have your own free folder here's a very important thing is that what tray turn should your supply quote you f OB e ex works CIF or what else I'm not going to explain the Incoterms in this video so just remember my conclusion if you have your own free for order that have someone who can help you ship product from China then just let your supplier quote you at the FO B price and your supplier will be responsible for all the costs that deliver to the vessel at a seaport or aircraft at the airport and they will also pay all costs for exporting if you don't have a freight forwarder then just let your supplier quality of the product price in the X book turns and then lessen quote you the shipping costs separately which covers from the supplies warehouse all the way to your destination you always need to confirm the shipping costs and the shipping solutions with the suppliers before you place order step 4 get sample before you choose the final supplier to place order you must to get a product sample to confirm the quality and you cannot just judge the quality by the suppliers photo or images you have to get it and to touch and fill it and then you need to reconfirm with the supplier that the quality of the bulk odor it should be the same as a sample otherwise you will have the risk to receive the quality in the bulk order it's not as good as a sample I recommend you to get samples from two or three suppliers and if any one of them didn't offer good quality you can still have other suppliers as a backup solution getting sample usually cost around $30 because the main cause is the express shipping by FedEx or DHL and you will usually receive like three days but it's really very worthy to invest this small money in a small time Step five place order after you confirm with the supplier for the product price simple quality purchasing quantity and the lead time you can place order now supplier will create and send your invoice and you need to pay 30% deposit and they start production and then you need to pay 70% balance before the products shipping out of China I have mentioned in section one that the Alibaba street assurance service is very recommended because it can ensure the product quality is the same as what you expected it's very simple you can create the treat assurance order by yourself or ask your supplier create it for you and then just follow alibaba's instruction and send the money into Ali Baba's account they will help you hold the money until you receive your products if your supplier don't accept trade-ins but you cannot find other suppliers who can offer better price quality or better qualification in other aspects but you believe your supplier is very trustworthy then you need to use wire transfer to send money directly to their bank account for wiring money to China except we're going to Bank you can also choose some transfer website like vieng or transferwise because they are easier faster and cheaper than bank step six is bad quality after the massive production is finished you need to inspect the quality and then paint the balance to the supplier to get a product shipped to you don't think your product should be fine as long as your user trade assurance and you need to be very careful all the time because you don't want to receive defect products and open a dispute to get up compensation it's always not a very good result because you are wasting time and money the simplest way is to let your supplier send you high-resolution product photos or videos and you can see if the color or size is the same according to your requirement I strongly recommend you to ask supplier to send you a sample from the bulk order to check quality even though it will spend around $30 for the International Express fee but it's very worthy you can also hire a third party inspection companies like SGS kheema or V trusts and they will let their people travel to the suppliers warehouse to inspect quality and the usually they need like around three hundred US dollars for one person one day for the inspection and then you will receive a very detailed inspection report and it will includes if all the quantity product size measurement colors or functions all match your requirements if you think 300 u.s. dollars is too expensive you can also use the quality inspection service in Alibaba and it only needs around hundred dollars but I prefer kites meaning inspection because it's cheap and they cannot spend that much time for inspection because for world-famous inspection comments like bureau veritas their trust is very expensive for Hotei inspection step seven ship products finally you are at the last step of the whole process then you need your supplier to assist you to ship a product from China all the way to your home to your country if you are a non seller then you need to ship product from China all the way to amazon fulfillment centers if you don't have own free for orders I recommend you to ask a supplier to have a fine one and they will help arrange the shipping and import and export process and you just pay all the costs to the supplier there are three kinds of shipping methods courier service sea free and every four courier service its most expensive and they are provided by companies like FedEx DHL and TNT and for most countries you will receive product in three to five days you will get tracking code of the supplier shipping the product and you can go to this courier company's website to check the location of your products well force afraid or afraid there's no way to check the shipment status so you can only ask your supplier or ask your own free for order to know that when the product will be arrived report and when it will be delivered thank you for watching this video I hope it can help you a lot if you have any question or something not clear or something that you want to learn more leave your comment below and I will reply or create a new video to help you understand better make sure you can give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you want to import any product from China you can also tell us on Ching sourcing calm we will help you find the best suppliers

Channel: Jingsourcing

Views: 602,794

Rating: 4.9277506 out of 5

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Id: GOSNSlwuLRA

Length: 22min 59sec (1379 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 19 2020