How to Find Good Suppliers on Alibaba like Expert? 5 Steps & 12 Checkpoints - YouTube

It takes just 3 seconds,

Alibaba can help you find thousands of suppliers

for the same product.

And then you will face the biggest problem.

who is the best supplier among these thousands?

I'm Jing, the founder of Jingsourcing.

a leading China sourcing company since 2015.

We helped thousands of people source quality products from China.

I will share with you all my knowledge about

sourcing, manufacturing and importing in my videos.

So subscribe now,

then you won't miss the next coming video.

In my last video "How to Buy from Alibaba",

I have explained there are 2 ways to find suppliers,

direct search or use Alibaba RFQ.

If you haven't watch that video,

then please watch it first.

Because I have introduced a lot of knowledge

about Alibaba sourcing and importing.

For the direct search，

you just type the keywords of product in the search bar.

Then Alibaba will give you all related products

from tens of thousands of suppliers.

Then you choose suppliers who look might be good

and send them inquiries.

So, in this case,

you need to learn how to identify suppliers

before sending them inquiries.

While RFQ is much easier, especially for beginners.

You just need to fill out the form of

your purchasing requirement,

and you will get around 10 suppliers' replies

with their quotation in less than 30 minutes.

and then you just need to choose the best one from the ten.

So in this case,

what you need to do is just identify suppliers,

after receiving RFQ quotes.

No matter you use direct search or RFQ to find the suppliers,

you always need to evaluate suppliers

according to my following 5 steps.

The first step is to check supplier's membership

and some basic information.

Let me just show you an example.

I'm going to search for wine tumbler.

I really like this example because this product is very popular,

and has tons of suppliers.

Most suppliers are trading companies and wholesalers,

and only a very small number of them are real manufacturers.

As you can see, there are countless suppliers.

and now you are going to follow my 4 checkpoints,

to evaluate them by their supplier's information.

Don't judge suppliers just by the price,

because all the price you see, they are fake.

Everyone tries to mark an incredibly low price

to attract your attention.

After getting your inquiry,

then they will quote you the correct price.

Checkpoint 1: suppliers' membership

Alibaba has two kinds of supplier memberships,

the gold or the verified.

I have explained how the membership works in my last video,

In short, the verified membership is

usually better-organized, is richer,

and paying a higher membership fee,

but they are more likely to sell you a higher price.

so the membership is not so important,

because the verified supplier is not always better

than the gold supplier.

Checkpoint 2

So the most important data you should check is

how many years has the supplier been on Alibaba?

and I suggest you to always choose those over than 3 years.

Because there are a lot of small companies, small factories,

they will try selling on Alibaba for 1or 2 years,

and they realize they didn't make a lot of money

after paying thousands of US dollars per year.

So they will decide to close their account.

They are less likely to run it as a long-term business,

and you will be also out of Alibaba's protection.

Checkpoint 3: Respond rate

Response rate means

how efficiently does the supplier can reply to your inquiry.

In order to maintain a high response rate,

a lot of suppliers use tools or automatic reply

to maintain the rate higher than 90%.

The response rate is not so important to evaluate suppliers.

As long as it's over 70%, it's acceptable.

Because suppliers will receive tons of junk messages every day,

especially those promoting, advertising messages from freight forwarders.

So if these messages haven't been processed in time,

the response rate will also drop.

So here is also a tip to identify if the supplier is a real manufacturer.

You can go to supplier's profile page，

and if their response rate less then 60%，

and response time is between 24-72 hours，

and the company is established at least 10 years ago,

it's probably is a real manufacturer.

Because most factories are not good at operating platform

or serving clients like trading companies.

And they also don't know how to play tricks

to maintain a high response rate.

Checkpoint 4: trade assurance

If suppliers have this shield icon,

it means they can accept transactions through trade assurance.

And you can also go to supplier's page,

find the icon at their head bar.

The trade assurance limit doesn't matter,

as long as it can cover your order's value.

There will be some tutorials on the internet teaching you that,

if higher trade assurance limit suppliers have，

the bigger companies they will be,

and the more reliable they are.

It's not correct.

Because there are a lot of tricks

to play to increase trade the assurance limit.

You can see some companies have a very high limit，

such as half-million or over one million US dollars.

and those are trading company and wholesaler

instead of a manufacturer.

because manufacturers are always very humble,

don't know how to promote themselves,

don't know how to rank high,

and Alibaba is just one of their resources to get customers.

After you check all this information,

if you like the supplier,

you can click the red heart icon to add to your like list.

Step 2, check supplier's business background.

In Alibaba, there are 3 types of suppliers,

manufacturer, trading company and wholesaler.

Trading company and wholesaler are usually buying the product

from the manufacturer and resell to you.

The difference is

a trading company is usually specialized

in certain products categories,

while wholesalers are usually selling whatever is popular.

Their MOQ is less, but their price will be more expensive.

I don't recommend everyone buy directly from the manufacturer,

because everyone has different requirements

on how to balance the price, service and quality.

But it will still be very helpful if you can identify

who is the manufacturer, who is a trading company.

And learn how to evaluate the supplier's business background.

It's simple, just follow my 4 checkpoints.

Checkpoint 1:

the simplest way to identify the supplier's business type is

is to check their profile page.

You will see it's written trading company, manufacturer,

or both trading company and manufacturer.

Over 80% possibility this information is correct，

but there are still a lot of tricks to play

to let a trading company registered as a manufacturer in Alibaba.

That's why you need to learn my following checkpoints.

Checkpoint 2:

Identifying a supplier's background by their company name is

the most direct and fastest way

Firstly you need to know

the Chinese company name consists of 4 elements.

Location Name Business scope and company type.

In short,

for the business scope element,

trading company usually use words like

trading, import, export, commodity.

While manufacturers will usually use words like

industry, product, certain product name，

such as stainless, plastic, bottles.

For location element，it's always better to

choose suppliers who are located in the industrial clusters.

For example, the wine tumbler，

most manufacturers have located in Yongkang or Wuyi

these two cities.

They are next to each other, and also next to our city Yiwu.

All these 3 cities belong to Zhejiang province,

so a lot of big scaled companies

will use our province name for the location element.

So in this situation,

you need to ask the suppliers for their real address.

Then you can identify if they are located in the industrial clusters.

Once you are familiar with the industrial cluster in China

for all kinds of products,

you can identify the supplier's type in just 3 seconds.

Just by looking at their names.

I'm planning to make a most comprehensive blog post,

to collect the industrial cluster locations information

for all types of products in China.

Once it's finished,

I will put the link below in the description area.

It's a huge work, and take a while to finish.

So you can follow Jingsourcing's Facebook page

and I will post it there.

Or you can also go to jingsourcing.com to subscribe to my blog,

and you will also get noticed once it's uploaded.

Checkpoint 3: Year of establishment

You can go to the supplier's profile to see

when the company is established.

For most products,

factories are usually built like 5-10 years ago or even earlier,

because the investment for building the factory is huge.

So they usually can not generate any profit like 2 or 3 years

after building the manufacturer.

For recent years in China,

the numbers of small factories are decreasing,

And very fewer people will think about

to invest a manufacturer and get customers from Alibaba.

They are more prefer to become a trading company,

because the investment is much less.

You can also identify suppliers by the numbers of their employees.

For most manufacturers,

their employees will over than 50,

and for trading companies, their employees will over than 50,

and for trading companies,

most of them have less than 30 employees.

Checkpoint 4: product categories.

A good supplier should be very professional in products,

and usually, their product categories will not be too wide.

That's why you need to check supplier's product categories.

Let me show you a very typical example,

I found 3 types of supplier for the wine tumbler in Alibaba,

the manufacturer, trading company, and wholesaler.

If it's a real manufacturer,

it's normal that all the product is the same type,

or they are made of the same type of material.

For stainless wine tumbler manufacturers,

it's normal that they also make other kinds of stainless steel made products.

But if you find they're also selling glass-make tumblers,

then either they are not the manufacturer,

or they get products from other glass manufacturers.

Because for glass or metal-made products,

the production line, the machine, and equipment are totally different.

Well for trading companies that selling wine tumblers,

you can find all his products have relationships with drinking.

You can sell they are selling all kinds of products like bottles and coffee makers.

But for wholesalers,

usually, they have a very wide range of product categories.

There will be no relationship between these categories.

Checkpoint 5: Certifications

There are 2 types of certifications you can check,

Factory certification and product compliance certifications.

When you are doing the supplier searching on Alibaba,

you can easily find these 2 types of certifications,

and use them as a condition for filtering suppliers.

Factory certifications refer to certifications like ISO9000,

factory audit by 3rd party, social liability.

For most big retailers, like Walmart,

they only consider working with factories that have this kind of certification.

And they also have their own standard for factory audits.

So for small business,

this kind of certification is not that necessary,

because usually, this kind of manufacturer has high MOQ and high price.

While for product certifications,

It's so important for all importers,

No matter your business is small or big.

Because for products like electronics, toys,

most countries have the requirements for the compliance certifications

for the import customs clearance.

So, you have to confirm with suppliers,

if they have compliance certifications to your country.

If their products comply with the regulations of your country.

In step 1, we check the supplier's Alibaba membership and information.

In step 2, we check the supplier business background.

And now, you probably have a couple of suppliers look like reliable,

and now, you need to move to step 3,

evaluate the sales rep's proficiency and communication.

I really don't want to reveal Chinese suppliers so many secrets,

because it would get more people to hate me.

But I really think this information is very valuable,

and I want to help you reduce the risks

when importing products from China.

You should know that

the sales rep communication and proficiency is very important,

because he is the bridge that connects with you and manufacturer,

or the manufacturer department.

For Chinese suppliers, especially the manufacturers,

they usually like to hire the new graduate students,

who doesn't have any working experiences at all.

But they're willing to accept the lower salary,

and willing to work in manufacturers

that are always far away from cities.

They don't have much knowledge and expertise in their products

They can't help you a lot, especially when you want to customize new products.

The No.1 key point for good communication is that

the sales rep can understand your requirements.

Let me show you a case study example.

This is the inquiry I sent to wine tumbler suppliers,

and I describe the detail very well for my requirements,

and also the feedback I want to get.

I have mentioned the colors I want, my estimated purchasing quantity,

how I want to customize the packaging.

And also I need a quote for shipping my products to the United States.

I need product price,

condition for customized packaging, and a shipping quote.

And this sales rep didn't reply any single of my questions,

and just copy and paste me a bunch of irrelevant words.

He must send the same content to every customer.

Let me show you an example of good communication with a sales rep,

how does he reply to me.

He does not only quote me the price but also recommends

how they can help me make the product packaging,

and also suggest me to get the sample to see the quality.

Except for understanding your requirements,

a good sales rep also has very high efficiency in communication.

They usually reply to you when they are off work,

or even on holiday, on weekends.

There are time zone differences between China and most other countries.

If your suppliers' sales rep can only reply to you during working hours in China,

the communication will become very slow.

So I recommend you to download the Wechat app,

And use it as a fast communication app for talking with your suppliers.

This is the app we Chinese use mostly,

Every Chinese will use this app for chatting,

and we'll use it literally from wake up in the morning till night.

Step 4 Compare suppliers' lead times,

and write an on-time delivery contract.

Lead time means

after you place an order, how long it will take to get your product made,

and ready to ship.

Lead time is also a very important fact to choose the right supplier,

especially when you have a very tight time schedule for purchasing and selling.

For example,

you want to catch the big selling day like

black Friday, Christmas and New Year.

For most products,

it won't take much time for manufacturing,

and usually, around 20 days will be enough.

If you don't buy a large quantity like

hundreds of thousands of USD valued products.

But manufacturers usually have their production schedule,

and they will arrange when to start making your products

according to this schedule.

That means you need to wait even a longer time,

Sometimes it will take like 45-60 days to get products made,

especially in the latter half of the year.

Because that's the high season for manufacturing.

So when you're choosing suppliers,

you need to confirm each supplier's lead time.

And you can also place orders through the trade assurance.

Let them guarantee on-time delivery.

If there's a delay, you can open a dispute to get compensation.

Step 5 Confirm price, and order sample.

So the price isn't always the first thing you need to consider

when you want to find a long term relationship supplier on Alibaba.

And for the lowest suppliers,

they will have all kinds of reasons to make their products,

like 10% or 20%, even more, cheaper than most of the others.

Maybe the product quality is worse, or have a higher defect rate.

Or they don't sell you brand newly made products after you place an order.

They probably sell you the overstock products for cleaning their inventory. Or they don't sell you brand newly made products after you place an order.

They probably sell you the overstock products for cleaning their inventory.

For the brand new made product, they would have a new price.

So you have to get the samples from 2-3 suppliers

to confirm the quality,

even though the sample from each supplier will cost you $30,

and it will take 3-4 days to deliver to you by courier service.

But it's worthy.

After receiving the sample and check the quality,

you can remove the bad suppliers from your list.

And for the good sample suppliers,

if the price is acceptable, then you need to confirm

if the quality of the massive production is the same as the sample,

And confirm the product size, weight,

and material thickness should be the same as the sample.

You can write all the details when you place a trade assurance order.

Very appreciated for watching!

I hope all the strategies can help you a lot

to find the best- matched supplier on Alibaba for your business.

And remember, reliable and long term relationship suppliers are always

the foundational factor for a successful business.

Leave your comment below if you have any questions,

or tell me what other topics you want me to talk about.

If you need me to help you find suppliers in China and import to your countries,

Please go to Jingsourcing.com, and let us know there.

Don't forget to give me a thumbs-up, and subscribe to my channel.

I will see you in the next coming video.