

Ask HN: Real-world experience importing from China? - mistermann

Is anyone familiar with the site alibaba.com?  "Global Trade starts here" they say.  As far as I know, alibaba is basically a hub for overseas manufacturers to contact overseas buyers....you buy products in minimum lots of 100, etc.<p>It seems logical to have one central source for overseas manufacturers to market their products to buyers, but to someone in the real know, are sites like alibaba just for suckers?  Are you way overpaying for products vs dealing more directly with someone closer to the manufacturer?<p>Anyoine have any experience in this sort of thing?
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mahmud
I poured my heart out for "you" a few days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=762531>

Alibaba is a hub, but it's a very Chinese company; I was there in Hong Kong
during their IPO and I can assure you, HK and all of China was abuzz. Nearly
every Chinese factory has an account with them. You should be safe dealing
with .cn firm through Alibaba, specially if they have verified accounts. You
can use that post of mine to look for scam clues, but generally, your order
will arrive, albeit a little bit overpriced. If you want fair market you
should be at the market, in person, taking long rides to dusty villages like
the rest of us ;-)

The price hikes are usually done by resellers, middle-men and brokers. Not all
"Chinese" are Chinese; there are plenty of Overseas Chinese (Honkies,
Malaysians, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Vietnamese, even Filipino Chinese, who do
business in the mainland and act as brokers to foreign companies.)

Indians are pretty safe too. The guidelines for doing business with Indians is
different than doing with Chinese, but not by much. Indians are usually less
polished in appearance; the Chinese spend a lot of money on image, so they
have bigger office buildings, fancier sales brochures and the like. In my
experience, specially in generic drugs and pharmaceuticals, the most efficient
Indian "companies" have been a few guys, usually cousins, usually Punjabis,
who did business outside a shared office in Hong Kong or Dubai but they did a
great job delivering the goods as promised. Indians also have trained
practitioners as salesmen; my pharmaceuticals sales guy was an oncologist (In
China he would have been an English major, for example.)

Usually the best way to conduct an important business is to fly there. Even if
you budget is $10k; I would say spend half of that on travel expenses and your
eyes will be opened to the many possibilities out there.

I also dabbled in scrap metal and used cars; those two are the FOREX of the
import/export world, rife with scammers and sometimes violent criminals.

Avoid any business that offers you "government connections"; this is where you
will likely be robbed. If a partner hints at having government links and tells
you he has the ability to avoid customs or shipping expenses, this is their
way of appealing to your greed. There are plenty of Westerners who are dying
to be friends with a rich 3rd world dictator, it's like an undocumented
fetish. Play ball, and play by the rules.

More than Alibaba, I would be weary of any firm that has the label "drop-
shipper" anywhere on its site. Big manufacturers don't sell to EBay kiddies;
that's just weak and disgusting.

~~~
mistermann
Wow, thanks for some of the awesome tips! re: "If you want fair market you
should be at the market, in person, taking long rides to dusty villages like
the rest of us".....do you think it would be difficult to find someone local
in China I could work with, to visit factories, inspect products, take photos,
etc?

~~~
mahmud
Depends on who you know, actually. Most business expats are doing this exact
same thing for their paying employers. If you want a freelancer, it depends on
what business you're in; if you are interested in electronics stuff made in
Guangdong province, I don't mind going through my rolodex and introducing you
to my friends. Shoot me a mail.

The reason I specified the product industry and manufacturing region is that
it's not just a matter of calling up factories and looking at their samples.
It takes a lot of effort to create a _relationship_ with the Chinese. If
anybody tells you they can "get anything from China" they're blowing smoke;
they can't, at least not efficiently and cheaply. Everyone is in an
specialized industry, and whoever has a lead outside his expertise passes it
on to someone in _that_ industry. China is all favors, face, _guanxi_ , and
connections.

The concept of "face" is a lot like consumer rewards and frequent flier
mileage; the more you buy from a factory the more perks you get and the more
face you have with the management. At the high end, people with good contacts
can get millions of dollars worth of products up front :-) reputation is
currency. People who hop-industries, the jacks of all trades, don't get any
deals and nobody knows them. (or worse, people _do_ know them and they have a
negative reputation.)

------
rms
My only experience on Alibaba involved someone sending me a free sample of a
fake product. Whatever you do, get references and make sure you trust them
before you wire the money.

As far as a general answer to your question -- it depends, but Ali Baba is
certainly not only for suckers. It's too big to be worthless.

~~~
mahmud
I don't think it was a fake _product_ , but most likely a fake _brand_.

You should only be buying original brands from their manufacturers, or generic
commodity items. For example, you can get great prices on LCD screens on
Alibaba, but you will get a fake Samsung LCD screen, unless you were buying
from Samsung or a reseller.

People who get fake stuff from Alibaba willingly do so. Counterfeit is a huge
business, and every minute a moron gets ripped off on EBay, so he decides to
rip off others by importing counterfeit products with the intention to resell
them. What he doesn't know is that he will be ripped off again, this time
wholesale. It's for this reason that generic, white-label products are hard to
come by in certain markets; it might even be cheaper, sometimes, to buy new
cases for knockoff products and rebrand them yourself as Acme.

~~~
rms
In my case it really was a fake product but I wasn't buying electronic
components.

~~~
mahmud
:-(

Yesterday my girlfriend bought me a electronic shaving kit from a reputable
chain store and I remembered seeing that same product in China for $10; I was
asked to export it. I have even seen Australian mobile phone company booths
selling knockoff phones without realizing it.

------
jacquesm
I once signed up with alibaba.com to get some leads on sourcing LCDs, since
then they've been spamming me 3x daily about LCDs, so they're certainly
efficient. I wished I could get off their list somehow :) Other than that no
experience with them.

~~~
mahmud
_Sigh_

It's not Alibaba that's spamming you, it's the vendors themselves.

If you're in the U.S. take a trip to any commerce fair for your industry.
Before I got into electronics I was doing lighting and green building
products; I called one of the Chinese companies attending the New York
Lighting Fair and told them I wanted to come to their booth. Next day I drove
to Manhattan, walked to the reception area and told the lady there I was a
limousine driver here to take my Chinese company out for lunch. She printed a
$100 badge out for me for free and I went to Eddy, my friend, we shook hands
talked for hours and he invited me to his factory and his home in Shanghai. I
did the same thing several times in different trade fairs and by the time I
went to China I had organized orders from Arab and American companies for
their products and we're good friends and brothers to this day.

For Chinese companies, it's best to call your sales person up and become
friends. But don't sit on your ass and chit chat all day long, they want
salespeople, get up and make calls on their behalf. I paid good money getting
their product photos edited and printed on glossy materials. If you can
organize enough buyers, the Chinese will let you tack your profit ON TOP of
the cost of the products. Or you can get your clients to by X units and your
factory will sell you X+N units, where N is your own free inventory to do with
as you wish.

~~~
jacquesm
A sample from this mornings batch:

From: Alibaba Trade Alert <tradealert@service.alibaba.com>

Three exactly identical messages. To three totally different names...

~~~
rms
You know you can probably disable that by clicking the link at the botton of
the email and then clicking a radio button. (I never do it myself either)

~~~
jacquesm
I tried unsubscribing from their 'gifts' in several ways, so far without
success.

~~~
mahmud
I auto-archive all sales mailing like that to separate folders. You never know
when you will need to search for patterns in their communication. Do the same
with your competition as well, but read it more actively.

Thanks to this unhealthy hoarding habit, I can produce product samples and
quotes to buyers for stuff I don't even have.

I have seen some sites also publish their user growth in newsletters as well;
it allows me to study their growth patterns.

Ditto with sales mail that's CC'ed to me. Instant mailing list of potential
buyers, for free.

