Alibaba is the most popular B2B platform*(according to Alexa worldwide rank) in the world. Every businessman who want to buy goods from China will visit this site. With this point clear in mind, almost every supplier in China also want to be listed in Alibaba. This brings you into a trouble: too many suppliers to choose. For example, if you search “laptop keyboard”, 1,845 suppliers & 116,178 listings (data on 4th, Dec.2017) will be available. It is impossible to check suppliers one by one, then how to make choice? How to get a good supplier in Alibaba?
First of all, we should make the searching result precise by narrowing range. You’ll find out there are filters on left side of the webpage. There are 3 main options: “Related Category”, “Product Features” and “Supplier Features”. Only about 50% listings left if you make filtering like this:
Generally speaking, we should focus on these gold suppliers with several years’ membership. Alibaba official website give the explanation of “gold suppliers” like this: Gold Supplier is a paid membership for suppliers on Alibaba.com who have a serious interest in doing business with buyers worldwide. Meanwhile, we also need to pay special attention to top listings from rank 1 to rank 5 from sponsored suppliers. These sponsored suppliers want to develop business of this item and they may have some advantages.
Click the company name of top sponsored listings of laptop keyboard, we’ll enter the “company profile” page. From the pop-up menu of “Product Categories”, we’ll find out laptop keyboard is only part of their products, so this supplier won’t be a manufacturer. You’ll be more certain after checking information on the right side (though they claimed they are “manufacturer”). But most products from this supplier are for laptop use. This tell us: it is a professional supplier of laptop parts. If you are doing business of laptop parts, then it would be a good choice. (In fact, laptop keyboard are made by big factories like Sunrex and Chicony only and it is made as one part of big brands laptop. So we cannot source it from any manufacturer if we need original brand new one.)
We also need to check the “contacts” information carefully. A serious business organization will have an office telephone number and it would be made of 3 parts: country code, city code and phone number. Country code of China is 86, city code is normally made by 3 or 2 digits and phone number is often 7 to 8 digits. Take our contact telephone number +86-755 8348 2201 for example, 755 is the city code of Shenzhen and 8348 2201 is our phone number. If you find someone show their telephone number like +86-1XXXXXXXXXX (1 is the 1st digit of Chinese mobile number, rest part is made of 10 digits), then you should know clearly it is a mobile phone number.
Company address is another important part. Most electronics manufacturers from China come from Guangdong province, Zhejiang province, Jiangsu province and Fujian province (these 4 provinces are in east & south part of China). Suppliers out of these regions are traders normally. If you combine several items in one shipment, you’d better order from the same city or same province to save time and freight.
For small buyers who fail to meet the minimum order quantity, we suggest they make good use of the “TradeManager”. “TradeManager” is an instant messenger tool from Alibaba. You can chat with the supplier online and this will bring better understanding between two sides.
You’d better take samples from 3 to 5 potential suppliers before order. Sample work will give you a chance to know not only product but also the company’s cooperation way. A good professional supplier will do good sample preparing work. You may even kick out some potential suppliers during this process.
Hope these tips will be helpful when you choose suppliers from Alibaba. Welcome to share your thoughts with us.
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