what's going on guys john santos here and if you're looking to build your brand or expand your
business chances are you'll need to be sourcing for manufacturers to fulfill the orders that
you can't find in your own backyard or maybe the products that you want to make can be best made
with a supplier that's located overseas and they have the right tooling and expertise to accomplish
it to the high standards that you expect in this video i want to cover three things that you need
to know before sourcing from alibaba.com who is a sponsor of this video for those of you who haven't
heard of alibaba.com before it is an online marketplace with thousands of manufacturers
located all over the world and you can find literally almost anything on this marketplace from
tattoo equipment to farm equipment and everything in between including apparel and accessories for
clothing brands with so many suppliers to choose from one of the biggest hurdles you'll have is
knowing who to trust and who can actually fulfill your orders correctly you see alibaba.com makes
it possible for almost anybody to register as a service provider and get paid and sometimes this
means that you aren't dealing directly with the manufacturer but you're dealing with the middleman
who lists services from the contacts he has made in that country now when this happens
communication may be delayed prices may be higher and your order may not be made right now
another thing that frequently happens is that the supplier will ask you to send payment outside of
the platform through a wire transfer for instance with so many risks involved with sourcing online
you're probably wondering if this is something you should even take on so instead of dwelling on what
could go wrong in this video i want to share three tips that will change the way you source on this
platform to help you better position yourself for success so let's jump into the first one and that
is finding quality products and suppliers when it comes to sourcing from alibaba.com they have
literally thousands of listings available from any product category now let's dive into the
first point here which is narrowing down what you're looking for now let's say you're looking
for a product right so let's go through and say we're looking for cargo pants maybe you want to
make your own custom cargo pants with your own branding labeling maybe some custom features there
what you're going to do is look that up first and as you look that up you'll see that there are
literally thousands if not hundreds of pages available an ever ending list so you may be
wondering where do i begin where does my sourcing journey take me now the sourcing journey will
begin with you narrowing down with some of these filtering tools so now that we have the trade
assurance and verified you can see that there is a little bit of a lowered list available for you
to choose from 29 pages instead of 100 but you could verify it a little bit more so let's say
you have a certain country that you want to do business with or you know that there needs to be
certifications for those factories this is where you could select the different certifications
and it'll begin to narrow down the list a little bit further for you let's say you want to narrow
it down with where they can export to so if you're living in the united states you need to know that
the supplier you want to do business with can also ship to your country and that narrows it down a
little bit more from five pages to two so now that you've narrowed down your list from the country to
the supplier type that you want to register trade assurance verified supplier the next thing you
want to do is start going through some of these transactions now these little tabs here is what
says if they're verified if their trade assurance and their rating as a supplier now this is all
important information as the higher the rating the better the communication as well as the delivery
may be but at the same time you want to just click around here and take a look at the supplier now
what i want to show you guys is if you're looking for cargo pants in this example we're going to be
going to this supplier you can see that they have a variety of t-shirts jackets pants so maybe this
supply will be able to work with you now you may be wondering well how do i confirm that they'll
be able to customize something now for that you go over to the company overview page and in the
company overview page what you'll find is that this is a verified supplier manufacturer and
a trading company now remember a trading company and a manufacturer they may or may not be the same
thing a trading company may have the ability to export and a manufacturer just has the ability to
make products but when they're a manufacturer and trading company that means that they have a little
bit better logistics and they could export to your country so chances are you'll have a better
chance of doing good business with these types of companies versus others that don't have this
option once you go over to this this is the business information that you're really looking
for the main products is garments hoodies jogger pants you can see the total employees production
capability product capacity they can do knitting cutting sewing ironing and inspection packing and
all of these things have been verified by alibaba or a third party team everything that you need to
know if your product is going to be made right it's important to know how many years they've
been doing business the size of their company as well as employees and any of the equipment
that they might have to make the products that you need now another key thing to look into is a
company profile now in the company profile you'll want to look up their address now in the address
it'll really tell you what part of the country they're located at and if they're located in an
office building that is not a manufacturing facility you may be dealing with middlemen
versus the manufacturer itself and in that case the communication can be delayed you might get
higher price quotes or you may not get the product that you're looking for now if the location and
address that you look up is somewhere more inland away from the ports that are going to ship your
products chances are you may be paying more for shipping so that's also something that you got to
take into account as you're doing your preliminary research which really brings us into the second
point and that's legit checking your factories and making sure that you're going to get the products
that you need now it's easy for anyone to send you photos of any product that you're looking to buy
from them they can easily take those photos have them available send them to you and say yes this
is what i can make for you but it's completely different when somebody actually gives you a
tour of their facility so the very first tip here is to make sure that you guys set up a call set
up a call with the person that you're speaking to to actually do a video call during the operating
hours that they're doing business now you got to keep in mind different time differences guys
if you're calling and you want to get somebody on the phone at 10 am their time but they're
overseas chances are you need to get on a call at the nighttime or closer to midnight to really
get them at the time that you're looking for but either way you're gonna need to do that
due diligence to ensure that you're dealing directly with the manufacturer if they say
they are a manufacturer and if they can't do that or if they give you excuses as to why they can't
then this is a red flag that you need to consider as you go down the sourcing stage now alibaba.com
also has something called a 3d showroom now a 3d showroom is essentially available for any company
that's been verified you can actually take a tour of their facility you can see the showroom that
they have available as well as the offices this helps you verify if you're dealing with
real people or if it's simply a middlemen they also have photos available down here which have
all been verified gonna give you an insight into their manufacturing facility this truly gives
you guys some insight into the working conditions as well as what they may have to offer you can see
the different products that they make as well as the equipment that they have available for that
to really show you if they're doing things in-house or if they have to source some stuff out
now a really cool feature during super september is the live feature that's available for suppliers
on the platform now to go live and actually check out what is happening with them they set up a live
event and now you can actually see what it is that they're creating you can ask your questions
there they can showcase certain products and you can really get to see it and almost as if you're
there with that supplier and they're communicating with you guys with any of the questions that you
may have about the products that you're looking to buy during the super september event this is
a huge push but you're also available to chat or email with them through the alibaba messaging
platform so make sure you guys check out those details through the links down below now before
placing your orders for the products that you're looking to get another key thing that you want to
look for is trade assurance and trade assurance is available by alibaba.com which protects the orders
that you create on their platform so if there's any discrepancies on the quality of the product
that you receive or if there's any shipping delays the trade assurance allows you to work with
alibaba to either get a refund or make your order right the best part about trade assurance is that
it's available through the suppliers that enroll with it always make sure you're looking at trade
assurance for the suppliers that you're doing business with to help you keep your order safe
and what's key about this part is that you want to make sure that all the communication happens
on the alibaba platform so this means that you want to send all the messaging anything related
to the order directly on the messaging system for alibaba you don't want to be doing any other
side emails or text messages you want to keep all the information streamlined because in the
case that something goes wrong alibaba is going to be looking at what was actually communicated
on the alibaba platform and any proof that you have will be submitted through there now what's
key about the ordering process even if you have trade assurance guys is that you want to be overly
communicative on what it is that your needs are now this means that you want to send photos that
you want to send examples you want to get detailed with tech packs anything that will help you make
the product right the first time especially as you're receiving the samples because if you're
overly communicated with a supplier they'll at least know what level of detail they need to go
into on your product if you're just like hey just send me that i want that in blue and they're gonna
send you something in blue and it can be any blue and then you're just wondering like why didn't
they get the right color blue and it's because you didn't put that initial research and that initial
time to really give them what it was that you wanted so in summary in order to make sure that
trade assurance is on your side it's going to be important that you guys keep all of the messaging
on the platform as well as the payments that way you can ensure that alibaba.com is able to help
handle any disputes or issues that you may have with an order that is delayed or perhaps doesn't
come into specs so by now you guys are probably wondering alright now we got all the information
that we needed on vetting suppliers looking for quality products which really brings us into our
last point and that is essentially figuring out the logistics of the orders that you're gonna
place now when it comes to communicating with a supplier for samples it's pretty straightforward
they're either going to be billing you directly to ship the product to your address or they're
going to be asking you for your shipping account information and the shipping account information
can be established by establishing your business entity in your country we have videos of that
we're going to link in the description down below to really help you guys navigate that process
so the sampling process comes a little bit simpler when it comes to actually approving
that sample once you receive it you want to make sure that you're giving that detailed feedback
giving that detailed feedback allows you to communicate with them what it is that you're
actually expecting for the manufacturing run and that manufacturing run can really vary
some suppliers can give you anything between 50 to 100 units others will require a thousand some ten
thousand plus depending on the product that you're making so it's super important that you guys are
crossing your t's and dotting your eyes in order for you to really get the order in right and
correctly and even after that's done one of the main things that you're going to want to look into
is how you're going to ship that mass quantity that bulk production to your country or to your
address to your warehouse or wherever it is you're going to be sending it to and what this means is
that you're going to be looking into shipping terms now every company has different shipping
terms that they're going to have available for you to do business with them now the preferred method
of payment that you're going to want to do is called ddp pricing or it's called delivered duty
payment now what this means is that the supplier is essentially going to be giving you a quote for
all of the production plus the shipping and taxes to get it into your country and to your address
now this is the simplest and most straightforward way for you guys to get your hands on any product
so always look for suppliers and ask for suppliers to be able to bill you on a ddp pricing now when
it comes to a lot of suppliers they may not have this option available and it's because they don't
have the logistics necessary to handle that export to your specific country there's too many unknowns
and variables so oftentimes what you're going to encounter is called fob pricing and this is known
as free onboard now what this means is that the supplier will essentially deliver your products to
a location and then from there it's up to you to ship it to your country or to wherever it is
whether you're going to be sending it through the air or whether you're going to send it through
boat right on board means that they're pricing it all the way to when it gets ready to be delivered
to you now this means that the ownership of that materials gets delivered to you once it hits that
shipping carrier so now anything that happens between the shipping and you is going to be on
the shipping carrier or the insurance policies that you have in place now this is what's really
cool about alibaba.com is that they also have logistical partners that you guys can select
so if a manufacturer isn't able to bring your product all the way to you you can essentially
select services available through alibaba.com's website that allow you to bring your product into
a vessel or like a ship or a container or also bring it in through air depending on your order
volume and the time that you need it in it might make more sense to bearing it through air but if
you know that hey i don't need to have this until a few months from now then you can send
it in through ship and it'll get delivered to you at a more economical shipping price
now if all of this sounds a little too complicated or maybe it seems that you're not at the point
where you're ready to be purchasing thousands of dollars worth of products through this platform a
really cool feature that alibaba.com recently rolled out is called a drop shipping service
let's say the example that we have with the cargo pants you can essentially search through the drop
shipping portal if suppliers are available to essentially ship the products that they create
directly to your customers and what this means is that you can essentially set the price points for
those products that you're sourcing for and the supplier will charge you their fixed manufacturing
as well as shipping fee and then you get to keep the difference of that as profit it's really cool
and super easy to set up and how you do that is just connect your ecommerce platform whatever
your preferred one may be from there you import all the product information and then you publish
it and now you can sell it directly to your market and you don't have to touch
any inventory so there you have it guys i hope you enjoyed this video and that these
three lessons will help you source and better position yourself for success on the alibaba.com
platform if you guys are a new visitor to this channel make sure you hit the subscribe button
and turn on those post notification bells to be alerted to future video drops right now i want
you to leave a comment down below with a product that you're looking to create in the near future
huge shout outs to alibaba.com for sponsoring this video they're helping us bring our vision
to fruition and that is to help bring clarity to business and help entrepreneurs like yourself
build brands that impact the world from the ground up and they're doing this by helping you spend
less and sell more because that's doing business with alibaba.com see you guys on the next one