Searching for suppliers in China

Let's talk about where you can find the right product and suppliers of this product in China. I emphasize China, because finding suppliers in Europe or the US is different from finding suppliers in China. And finding the right supplier in China is actually much easier than in the US, for example. And today's review will be devoted exclusively to the search for goods and suppliers in China.

The easiest thing is to take 3000 US dollars, spend a week of time and go to a specialized exhibition in China.  Touch everything on the spot and conduct the first round of negotiations directly in China. It doesn't take much intelligence, that's why I was never interested in it, and now this quarantine situation completely crosses out all the advantages of this kind of product searching. Almost everything you pick up every day is made in China, everything you buy every day is someone else's business. Someone else's, but not yours yet, and if businessmen traveled to China personally for every product you take in your hands, you would probably have heard about the development of business tourism to China. It is certainly there - I mean business tourism, but not as global as visiting electronic business sites on the Internet to search for goods and suppliers in China. There are several such sites, but for a full-fledged start of work with China you will be enough only one BUT very and very cool - meet https://alibaba.com/ site on which Chinese manufacturers exhibit their goods. This site has been in operation for about 20 years. If a Chinese manufacturer's company is not on the alibaba.com website, then we just don't think it's in business. On this site you can find everything you need, I will say more - absolutely any product that is produced in China. The fundamental difference between alibaba.com and Aliexpress and Tabao is that on alibaba.com there are only representatives of Business (both from the seller's side and from the buyer's side) and on Aliexpress and Tabao there are representatives of business - sellers and final buyers. Yes, some moms on maternity leave or students buy on Aliexpress and received goods through the postal service then resell through Avito in Russia or OLH in Ukraine. But this is not a business guys, it's all childish crafts. Everything is easy in such a business, but there is one BUT, postal delivery costs cosmic money one, you have a huge crowd of competitors moms and students who are afraid of dumping - two. Plus prices on Aliexpress and Tabao are much higher than on alibaba.com - this is three.

Yes to check the scheme of delivery from alibaba.com must have its own LLC or individual entrepreneur. But believe me it is all easily organized and in the following articles I will reach and to this issue and we will discuss everything in detail, and to give you hope now I will say that there are companies that can and are ready to gladly act for 2-5% of the invoice value in the role of importer and take on all matters of buying currency to pay for the goods, delivery and customs clearance. With this kind of work you do not need a company at all. In google you can find such companies at the request - importer service. Another small remark, when I say about customs clearance I mean the usual official customs clearance, I am not talking about shipping and customs clearance through CARGO companies, and in the next articles we will also discuss what are the Cargo companies and why I think that CARGO is evil. The issue of Cargo companies is very important and we will discuss it and talk about all the advantages and their HUGE disadvantages!

All go and register on the site alibaba.com, I will skip this moment I think you can do it yourself. I will note that you need to know English to communicate with the Chinese. However, if you have a tight English, Google translator to help, when we communicate on supply issues, we use simple phrases that are fully Google translator to clearly understand the correspondence of both sides.

Let's try to find a round kitchen table. We write in the search - round kitchen table and in the results we get all round and non round tables that are offered on Alibaba. 

I select tables that I am interested in and open them in a new tab to then write a request to the supplier and find out all the important information for me to decide and make a purchase from this or that supplier. 

Click send message, this form opens where we will enter the text of our request. 

Looking ahead, after you send a request, this vendor (if it deems it necessary to answer us) will answer us in chat. We will return to the chat later, now I want to say that if you correctly write a request, then within 1 -24 hours you will get answers to 8-9 requests out of 10 sent. The Chinese are very responsive and usually do not forget to respond to each request. If you have sent a request and within 1-2 days no one has answered you, feel free to write a second request, starting it with the words that you wrote a few days ago and that you are very interested in their goods, it usually helps and you will get an answer. I said that the response from the seller will come in chat, and we can go to chat as follows 

and here in the CHAT we see all our correspondence with all our suppliers. Some suppliers have a link to their chat room on their product page and you can write to them directly in the chat room or even make a video call. However, I usually write inquiries and it brings quite a high response rate.

We have all solved the question of how to find the product and supplier we need. In the next post we will discuss the question - how and what to write in the request to get a response and what information to request in addition to the price, because the price is an important information but not the only one that affects the decision to order the product from this supplier or not.