6 Things You MUST Do Before Placing Your First Alibaba Order

Hello everyone, I'm tatiana and today I'm going to give you

your

alibaba

checklist, six

things

to do before

placing

your

order

on

alibaba

.com, so what I would recommend is that you go ahead and bookmark this video just because. It's good to watch this video in full so we can plant these seeds in your mind right now; however, when it comes time to place your

order

, you will want to refer to this video again and review it just to make sure that you are checking all of these boxes, so it is very important because we want to make sure that we protect you from illegitimate suppliers, but we also want to protect your brand by sourcing only the highest quality products from top suppliers, so let's get started.

We have a lot to cover, so the

first

thing I want you to check is to select only qualified suppliers. What makes a supplier qualified. I have four

things

I would like you to review, number one is understanding Alibaba's badge system. They have a kind of badge system. You may see two gold supplier and verified supplier badges. The gold supplier means that the supplier has paid a membership fee, but more important than that is the verified supplier badge, which means that the supplier has been audited by a third party, whether online or offline, so your production capabilities, your management system, your products, all of that has been audited and verified and that will give you more peace of mind knowing that the supplier is who they say they are and are. a trusted supplier so this is useful because when you search for a product on alibaba.com you will see thousands of products listed and they have a filter system and you can verify that you can only select verified.

Vendors will show up and that will help narrow down that list. The second thing I want you to check is how many years the supplier has been a supplier on alibaba.com. This is useful because there are some providers that are only one year old. or two years they've been on alibaba.com and you know that maybe they just haven't been on the site long enough, they haven't seen as much demand for their products as they expected and then all of a sudden they decide not to. You no longer want to be listed on alibaba.com and that is not helpful to you because you want a supplier that has been around for a long time and has experience because that gives you the certainty that three years from now you will know when you want to order again.

They will still exist, so I recommend only looking for suppliers who have at least three years of experience selling on alibaba.com. Anything below, yes, it is still worth contacting them and finding out more details, but there are many suppliers who have between 3 and 10 years of experience selling on alibaba.com. Ok, now the third thing I want you to check is to choose suppliers who accept trade assurance, so trade assurance is something that alibaba provides and it is a type of insurance for your order. I highly recommend that you take advantage of this, so I place all my orders through alibaba.com.

I use alibaba to find my suppliers and then once I find them I place my order using Trade Assurance and that gives me peace of mind about my order. I know that I am going to receive the products that I expect to receive, so essentially when you place an order with Trade Assurance you are going to send the money to alibaba and alibaba alibaba will hold that money until you receive the products from the supplier or until their supplier ships those products and you have received them anywhere, whatever the destination, so it is like a guarantee deposit and this gives you a lot of security that you know that you are going to get what you expect to receive, which is why there are many suppliers that accept guarantee trade assurance, so I recommend filtering those suppliers to make sure the suppliers you are looking for accept trade assurance now, the fourth thing you want to check is the compliance certification for customs clearance, so depending on the products you want to import, you may need certain certifications for those products to clear customs and, for example, if you are going to sell electronics in the US, you will need an FCC certificate, so suppliers often They may provide these certifications and you can check them in advance to make sure they have them, so I recommend looking into it if you know what products you want to get from alibaba.com.

You can find out what kind of certifications are necessary for customs clearance in your country and that way when you search for suppliers on alibaba, you can make sure these suppliers provide those certificates in advance. Number two, reach out to these suppliers so alibaba.com has this messaging system like an instant messaging system and I think it's great because it helps you stay organized with all these suppliers that you're going to be contacting and communicating with a lot of them so that if you just go To be you know, sending them WhatsApp or WeChat messages is also fine, you can absolutely do that, but it seems a little more disorganized to me because you can be chatting with a person but then you forget, oh, what's the name of the manufacturer ? and you forget what the name is, compared to if you just use the built in messaging system on alibaba, then you can easily reference that, click on the suppliers link, see the suppliers website, see their catalog very easily, so I recommend doing it now, what should you ask?

Your supplier,

first

of all, the price you see on alibaba.com when you search for products is usually not how much the product is actually going to cost. Yes, sometimes they are accurate, but usually the prices are a little lower because the suppliers want to get your attention, so if you want to get an accurate quote, you should contact the supplier and ask them directly now how you get an accurate quote. First of all, you need to ask them what their moq is. minimum order quantity so this is the minimum number of units you can order from the supplier so for some suppliers it could be 200 units some could be 500 and for some it could be a thousand so now it depends on the supplier .

While this is something that can absolutely be negotiated, sometimes it's a little difficult to negotiate the price, but you can certainly negotiate the minimum order. I might even suggest letting you know that I'm willing to pay more per unit if you could lower the minimum order. If it's too high and you don't want to order such a large inventory for your first order, ask them what the minimum order quantity is and then ask them for the price levels so that the price levels, you know, the price per unit depends . It depends on how much you are ordering, so if you order 200 units, you will pay a higher price than if you order one thousand, two thousand or five thousand, so generally speaking, the larger your order quantity, eh, the cost per unit is cheaper so they want to do that to incentivize you to place a larger order so ask them about price tiers you know 500 units, thousand units, 1500 units and that can give you a better idea of ​​whether it's worth it.

If you would like to get a larger order for me at this time, the cost savings is worth it. The next thing you may ask is about customization, so if you are private labeling a product, you will probably want to put your brand on the product. packaging and possibly customize it a bit, so you want to ask them about the details of that and in particular you want to find out the cost, so the price they quote you may not include the additional cost to put your brand on the packaging. or to customize the packaging, so ask about those details because you want to make sure that the quote you receive will be as accurate as possible and the last thing you should ask them is about the packaging, usually with a product, if you decide which product you are ordering , the supplier will include free packaging, which is very basic, it is a very simple thing that comes with the product for free.

Now you can usually upgrade the packaging that each supplier has. Learn about different options. Some suppliers have more packaging options than others, but it's good to see what those options are because maybe the basic packaging looks horrible and you just don't want to sell it on Amazon and then you'd rather pay a little more to upgrade. that packaging or maybe the packaging that it comes with is good for now good enough for now let's get on with this you don't need to pay the extra cost so ask them these questions because this will give them a much better idea of ​​you.

Know exactly how much this product will cost you, but what's also valuable is to start building the relationship with the supplier by reaching out to them and seeing if they're answering all of my questions. Are you willing to work with me? How fast is the response? time, you need to keep in mind that yes, you may be in a different time zone and respect that, but it's also valuable to know how quickly the supplier contacts me because you want a supplier that wants your business and is willing to communicate with you in an efficient and timely manner, so number three is knowing the different types of suppliers, so they are trading companies, wholesalers and manufacturers, and they are all different, so trading companies and wholesalers will generally buy products from manufacturers and will now resell those products to you.

The difference between trading companies and wholesalers is that trading companies will usually specialize in a particular product category, while wholesalers will sell pretty much anything that is a good selling product and wholesalers usually have a lower Moq, so that the minimum order is lower, however the cost is slightly higher, so understanding those differences, now the manufacturers are actually producing those products in-house, so they are manufacturing those products, so they are not I can say that no one is better than him. Plus, you know there are benefits to working with a manufacturer that produces the products themselves.

It has more customization options. There are also benefits to working with a trading company that can source products from multiple suppliers and have more options for you or the wholesaler where your product is. The catalog is quite large, but I prefer to work with manufacturers. It's just a personal preference. You don't need to filter them. It's good to take note. It is good to understand whether you are contacting a manufacturer, a trading company or a wholesaler. Now you may notice that there are companies that are both, so you can find a manufacturer and a trading company, so they are two in one and, noting that again, it is not that there is one that is necessarily better than the other .

Each one has its advantages and disadvantages, it's just a personal preference for you preference number four, the best way to search products on alibaba.com rfq, so if you don't know what product you want to sell and you just want to browse the alibaba catalog .com, then you'll be able to search for the product or search for a particular niche in the search box and you'll see a bunch of suppliers and a bunch of products pop up, which is great, you could totally do that, but if you know specifically what product it is that you want sell, know the details of the product, know what it looks like, then the most efficient way to get this product to find suppliers is to take advantage of alibaba's rfq, which means request for quote, so you can go to rfq.alibaba.com and get it.

What you can do is submit a request and when you submit this request you are essentially specifying the details of the product that you want to get, you can insert photos if you have photos and then once you submit that request within 15 minutes to an hour you will have many qualified suppliers that They will produce those products for you, so instead of having to go out and find suppliers, you can submit a request using the RFQ. and have suppliers come to you and this will save you a lot more time and help you find suppliers that specifically source the product that you want to sell now before I share with you my last two tips and if you Stay tuned for the end of the video.

I'm going to share with you a couple of additional tips. I want to take this moment to share with you Alibaba's March expo, so March is typically the time of year for global suppliers. They are adding new products to their product catalog, so thousands of thousands of new products are coming and being introduced during this month and usually there are in-person exhibitions where people can go and the suppliers will present these products, but because of cobit everything has been moved online, which is great for all of us who live internationally because we don't have to travel anywhere, so alibaba.com is hosting the March expo.

It will be the largest exhibition in the world and you will be able to see thousands of new products from the best suppliers, so Alibaba will introduce something new called Trendy Hunter, which helps you see the top 10 products in each category every month. Now I love this idea because for us private label sellers, if you don't know what the next product you want to sell is. This could be a great way to get some new ideas to inspire you since you know Alibaba has a lot of pointsof data. They know a lot. They have a huge catalog.

They know what products are selling and that's why they are using this information to share with you what the top 10 products are in each category, so this could be a great idea to get inspired by new products now, during the March expo, Alibaba will announce the elite partner event that will allow you to discover high-quality, pre-vetted suppliers from around the world, so each month 10 of the best suppliers will be highlighted. and now I can show your products. I love this idea because again, this is an easy way for me to find out who the best suppliers are and what products they sell.

All suppliers during the elite partner event are carefully vetted by alibaba and have to go through a strict process to be selected in the event, let's take this first example of suppliers, as you can see, here is a big poster of elite partners which shows that they have been selected for this event. Those elite partners often have their own proprietary technology. You can see that the supplier has something called copper protective cloth which claims that the materials they make can be self-sanitized and cannot be washed for 15 days. Those are great selling points that you can include directly in your product description if you choose to work with the supplier.

Of course, it also has many certificates. If you scroll down the page, you can see that the supplier has a rating of 4.5 out of 5. In fact, suppliers in the elite partner program have on average a super high rating of 4.8 out of five. The whopping 91.4 percent on-time delivery rate when you consider that those products are often shipped outside of the US, this is actually a very impressive number. Vendors in the elite partner program are also guaranteed to respond to your request super fast, as you can see, this vendor has a 91.4 percent response rate. We all know how difficult it is to get a real support person who will answer your questions well when shopping online.

If you talk to those suppliers, you won't have this problem if you are new to alibaba.com and don't have an idea of ​​which suppliers you should choose from millions, then the elite partner event is a good resource to start with. You can check the link in the description below for the list, so let's get back to our tips with tip number five. Check the suppliers. product catalog, so once you've found a supplier you like, it's helpful to click on their page to see their full catalog and see what other products they sell, what other niches or categories they sell products in.

Now I like to do this because number one, it's helpful for me to determine if this is a vendor I could work with long term. For example, if I want to build a brand in the fitness niche and the first product I want to sell is some sliding discs, then that's great. but what else does the supplier sell? Do you sell other products in the fitness space? If so, then the supplier is a supplier you could possibly work with long term. I could get my second, my third, my fourth product from the same supplier and this simply represents a lot less work for me having to find a new supplier for my future products, so it is worth checking their product catalog to see if There are other products that pique your curiosity or products that you might be interested in selling in the future.

Tip Number Six is ​​to get samples, so once you've contacted several suppliers and narrowed that list down to your top three suppliers, I recommend getting a sample from each of those three suppliers, it's important because you need to see the product. you need to feel the product, you need to use your senses to experience the product and you can't do that from your computer screen, so it's very helpful to have those samples sent to you and yes, it will cost you between $30 and $60 to have them. You were sent those samples, but it's going to be worth it because ultimately, if you're going to be a brand owner, you want to sell the best quality products, you want to make sure you're top of the line, and you want your customers to have a fantastic experience with your brand, you don't want them to have products that fall apart or are low quality and you don't want the negative reviews that come with that, so it's important to get samples from your suppliers.

They understand that they will be more than happy to send you samples, you just have to ask for them, so again I recommend getting a sample from three unique suppliers so that you can compare the samples and determine which of these suppliers produces the greatest quantity. Quality product. Now I'm going to give you a couple of extra tips because you followed me to the end of this video and if you enjoyed it, please like it and let me know in the comments section. If you have any questions about the process so far or about alibaba.com, I will do my best to answer you, so the first additional tip is to send your deposit, once you have received your samples and decided on a supplier.

If you want to go ahead with you then you will place your order and in order for your manufacturer to start production they will ask for a sample. The advice is to make sure that the stamp on this deposit does not exceed 30. of the order total it does not need to be 50 or 70 percent, 30 is enough for them to start manufacturing and then once they are manufactured the products, you can pay the remaining balance of 70. Now the last additional tip is to have the products inspected by a specialist. third party inspection agency, what this means is that a third party that is not affiliated with your supplier will go to the supplier's facility and manually inspect the products will inspect the products within your order, whether they inspect 10 percent of the inventory 50 of the inventory or 100 of the inventory is your choice and you can choose how much you want them to inspect, but the point is that you want to make sure they pass inspection so that the products you received as a sample match the products you are receiving in your order and that are high quality so that when you ship them when they are shipped to your home or to an Amazon warehouse, there are no damaged items or items that just aren't up to par. standard so hire a third party inspection agency and another thing is if you hire a third party inspection agency you want to postpone paying the balance until the inspection agency notifies you that they have passed the inspection so if they have not done it.

If you failed the inspection, then you do not have to pay the remaining balance. You can ask them. Hey, there are 10 broken units. Can you provide me with 10 new units or can you ask them to just fix the situation? contact the supplier and once the situation is resolved and you pass inspection you can pay the remaining balance so it is valuable because if you have already paid 100 of the order then it doesn't really incentivize the supplier to help fix things . you or make a deal with you so I recommend doing so that's my extra tips for you and if you're not sure where to find an inspection agency that alibaba offers is something you can get when you place your order with alibaba.

They have a third party inspection agency, it doesn't cost much, so it could be a great option for you, so I hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to learn more about alibaba.com, they have a YouTube channel that Below I will link helpful videos with really great information where you can learn more about suppliers and how to navigate the alibaba.com website and understand how you can find suppliers better . I also have another video that I will link in the description box below. on how to find the best suppliers on alibaba.com, so if you want a step by step guide, that's something I'll explain to you on a screen share and show you how to do it, so I've been talking about it enough.

I hope you enjoyed this video again, please give me a thumbs up if you liked it and make sure to check out the March expo coming up very soon because there will be thousands of new products that suppliers will showcase on alibaba. com, there are a lot of new product opportunities there, so thanks for looking and I'll see you next time.