Need products to sell online? Check out China

It is easy to start an online shop, but where to go when it is time to find products to sell? You probably already have some ideas for the products – perhaps your dream has been to start selling e.g. men’s ties, aquarium supplies or bouncy castles online.

Where do I find a suitable wholesaler or factory?

Unless the idea is to sell a well-known brand, such as Iittala, Rapala or Crocs, you should get as close as possible to the source manufacturing the products. There is often no room for intermediaries, especially in the era of online shopping, as they only complicate matters and increase the prices. There are also many fields where only wholesalers and importers make money, and online traders put themselves and their money on the line, in the hopes of some little profit.

Why not become an importer yourself?

A supplier from faraway lands?

By far the largest and most popular meeting and product introduction place for B2B wholesales in the world is www.alibaba.com. In the event that the quantity of the orders is larger, you can set the search word for Alibaba as “Men’s tie” and write an e-mail to contact the factories as follows:

“We are an online shop in Finland looking for high quality, low price ties. Our order quantity is about 50 pcs per model. Please email us your catalog and prices”

Alibaba also has a wholesale outlet at www.aliexpress.com, where it is easier to order also individual items with familiar international payment methods, such as credit cards or PayPal.

Other websites similar to Alibaba are e.g. www.made-in-china.com and www.globalsources.com.

Factory contacts to China are often quite laborious, especially if the product selection is very large. Often a specific supplier, e.g. for alibaba.com, cannot provide more than a few different products, and those only in large batches. Therefore a better option for small batches might be online shops operated from China. The largest one is www.dealextreme.com. There are also Finnish operators, such as www.e-ville.com. The model for cooperation with existing suppliers could be so-called dropshipping, where the products are shipped to the trader’s customers directly from wholesaler’s storage, and therefore the trader does not have to bear the risk for the value of stored items.

The most exotic and, relatively speaking, the cheapest way is to find products for an online shop selection is to look for them directly where the Chinese do business, e.g. www.taobao.com or www.tmall.com. These sites could be compared to ebay or amazon. Taobao is the 8th mosts popular website in the world (alexa) – on the same list where Google is No. 1 and Facebook No. 2.

Taobao online market place has 5 million registered users and 800 million products to choose from (wikipedia). Since taobao (and tmall) are still fairly unknown shopping sites outside China, it is possible to have unrivaled competitive advantage for their supplies.

For the moment, it is still impossible to make purchases via taobao and tmall outside China, but the agents operating in China, such as the Finnish www.kiinatukku.fi or the international www.engtaobao.com, are happy to help. The trader selects products from taobao or tmall (e.g. using Google Translate and/or translating the page directly through the Chrome browser) and gives the agent the commission to order the products in question from Chinese traders.

When the agent receives the products inside the borders of China, they are photographed and sent for the trader to approve. If everything is ok, they will be forwarded to the trader in Finland.

See what you can find in taobao with e.g. the following search words on Google Translate.

(click on the Chinese translation and see the taobao search results and prices, RMB 10 = approx. EUR 1,2)

• Men’s tie = 領帶
• Bouncy castle = 充氣城堡
• Doghouse = 狗窩
• Goggles = 游泳鏡
• Wheelchair = 輪椅
• Porcelain tableware = 瓷餐具
• Fishing reel = 魚竿
• Infrared sauna = 紅外線桑拿
• Lawn mower = 割草機
• Sailing boat = 帆船

Wishing you all fun and inspiring shopping!

Writer

Ville Majanen, ville.majanen@kiinatukku.fi
www.kiinatukku.fi
www.e-ville.com

The writer has lived in Shenzhen and Hong Kong in China since 2006. In addition to online shop operations, Majanen’s company offers Finnish companies purchase, storage and mailing services from China. He is also an active guest lecturer and seminar speaker on Chinese trade.