You can’t start an online business without a product.
So it makes sense to use Alibaba, the world’s biggest supplier marketplace.
But is Alibaba safe?
The short answer is yes, Alibaba is absolutely safe.
…the longer answer is that Alibaba is completely safe when you know the signs to look for.
It’s important to choose the right supplier.
And the most dangerous obstacles to finding the perfect supplier are the scammers and middle-men.
Luckily, it’s not difficult to avoid these low lives.
Below, you’ll find a step-by-step guide on how to safely buy products on Alibaba.
What We’re Going to Cover
- Step 1 – Review the Company Profile
- What is Alibaba Trade Assurance?
- Best Payment Methods to Use on Alibaba
- Best Supplier Status to Look For
- Step 2 – Safely Communicate With Your Supplier
- Requesting a Quote
- How to Negotiate with Alibaba Suppliers
- Step 3 – Review Your Suppliers Product Catalog
Step 1 – Review the Company Profile
The Company Profile has information that is both verified and unverified by Alibaba.
You can get a good idea about whether the supplier is legit or not by looking at the following sections:
What is Alibaba Trade Assurance?
There seems to be a lot of confusion with Alibaba Trade Assurance…
Trade Assurance is the safest way to buy products on Alibaba.
And, according to Alibaba, Trade Assurance is a free program to use through them. This means that your orders are protected until you get your products.
So if for some reason you place an order and you never get your products then Alibaba accepts full liability. Afterward, they handle disputes with the supplier for you.
Alibaba wants to create an easy and safe buying experience for the customer. That’s why they guarantee your money back if your order didn’t meet the exact requirements you and the supplier agreed to.
And on the supplier side, Trade Assurance started using a credit-rating system. It gives the suppliers an incentive to ensure you get your products on time, in perfect condition.
If you’re interested: We wrote a huge guide on safely buying products on Aliexpress if you want to place smaller orders than Alibaba allows.
We partnered with JungleScout to put together a supplier/manufacturer database to help you find the right factory for your products. If you want to check it out, it’s right here.
Check Out The Supplier Database
How do you pay with Alibaba Trade Assurance?
Here are the steps to pay using Trade Assurance according to Alibaba:
- Order with a Trade Assurance suppler
- Pay the supplier following the steps on Alibaba
- Recieve the shipment
- Leave feedback on the order for the supplier
When you’re looking for a supplier look for one with a trade assurance symbol and place an order like you normally would with any other supplier.There’s nothing else you need to do on your end because Alibaba is the one securing your order. Remember: When you pay using a credit card, PayPal or Alipay your order is protected.
Next, let’s look at the most common questions asked about Alibaba.
Another way to be safe on Alibaba is to make sure the supplier accepts secure methods of payment.
Best Payment Methods to Use on Alibaba
Legit suppliers on Alibaba will accept these payment methods:
- AliPay (Fairly Safe)
- PayPal (Most Safe)
- Credit Cards (Fairly Safe)
So yes, you can pay with credit cards on Alibaba. Truthfully, you’re 100% protected just by making sure the payment terms are protected until the products are in your home. If you never receive the products Alibaba will credit you back your money. Then they’ll open a dispute with the supplier on your behalf.
Supplier Status
Another way to quickly check if your Alibaba supplier is safe to work with is by seeing if they have onsite checks and are gold suppliers.
Suppliers cannot put these icons on their listings. Alibaba has to send third party inspection companies to their factories and verify everything they claim is true and there is an actual business in the registered address.
Legit suppliers make sure that their businesses are verified by multiple inspection companies so you feel completely safe and comfortable to work with them.
The supplier below went a step beyond Alibaba onsite checks and paid for their own verification from a company in France (Bureau Veritas) to come in and inspect their factory.
Next:
Company name
(Note – Applies to companies registered in Mainland China only)
- City: Small and medium-sized companies have the city they are located in as part of their company name. For example, “Ningbo Trading Co., Limited”.
- Province: Larger companies can be named after the province where they are located. For example “Zhejiang Trading Co., Limited”.
Business Type
- Manufacturer: This means the supplier is only selling the products it manufactures. A manufacturer is limited by its production line, set-up, and tooling. Because of this, manufacturers tend to be highly specialized in their field of products.
- Trading Company: Some Trading Companies are independent while others own, or are owned by, a manufacturing company. So while everybody wants to cut out the middleman, keep in mind that many factories in Asia don’t have the knowledge or experience for exporting what they produce. On the other hand, some Trading Companies offer no added value and will only raise your costs.
- Manufacturer & Trading Company: Many factories have expanded their operation by not only selling and marketing products made in their own facilities, but also by trading similar products manufactured by other factories. While this Business Type indicates that the company is indeed a manufacturer, you cannot be sure whether they are manufacturing or subcontracting your products. So it’s tough to be sure if this supplier is a safe choice or not.
Management Certification
Quality is a serious risk when importing from China. In fact, quality issues are a bigger reason to lose money than getting scammed. Quality issues can never be completely eliminated, but they can be minimized if the supplier applies a Quality Management System (QMS) such as ISO9001.
- A “good manufacturer” is continuously monitoring quality. You know it’s time to walk away from a Chinese supplier when they claim to be completely free of defective and damaged products.
- ISO compliance is more than having a quick check up before the products are packed and shipped. The supplier must inspect incoming raw materials and components before production, set up inspection stations during productions and do final inspections after production.
Registered Address
- City, Province: Many cities in China are highly specialized in one or more industries. A manufacturer is dependent on the surrounding support industries such as logistics, component suppliers, raw material suppliers, and labor. For this reason, a supplier that is based in an industrial cluster is likely to be more competitive than a supplier that is not.
Now:
What are the exact things you need to do to protect yourself from middlemen, scams and low-quality products and be safe on Alibaba?
Focus on this next step.
Step 2 – Safely Communicate with Your Suppliers
First, why this is important…
It’s always the buyer’s responsibility to make sure your Alibaba supplier is legit and that the products are of high quality. Because if you’re thinking about buying a product in bulk, you might want to do deeper research and make sure.
Top 3 Tips to Stay Safe on Alibaba
- Reach out to them and begin a relationship. Ask for photos of their business license. Contact the phone number in the company listing on Alibaba and ask them what their procedure is for sampling products.
- Get samples. There is no way that you can confidently invest in a product without samples or “small test orders”. That’s the only way to verify the quality. Be wary of suppliers that only allow you to place large orders.
- Think abundantly. There are plenty of suppliers out there. If one doesn’t work out then you can move on to the next one.
It Gets Better:
Communicating with the companies on Alibaba is a quick way to sift through the safe ones to work with and the fakes.
Initial Outreach
You want to keep your emails numbered, short, and minimal errors (if any). Doing so will give the representative the best chance to properly communicate with you.
Alibaba Communication Tip: Number your questions. The representative will see and answer your questions easily.
Requesting a Quote
Here are a few important questions to consider for your email:
Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ’s) – If you notice in the picture above the minimum order is 50 pieces. You can negotiate MOQ and suppliers can send one or two items for free if you ask.
Pricing For Samples – Make sure that you ask what their price per unit is when they are sending samples. Because sometimes it’s much higher than their production pricing.
Production Pricing – Above you see that the production price is anywhere between $3.5 to $5 dollars. It depends on the large order that you place if you get the lower price.
Payment Terms – You want to make sure that the supplier accepts the payment terms you’re most comfortable with. If they don’t then you should move on to another supplier.
If you want the in-depth to negotiating and communicating with Alibaba suppliers then I highly recommend the video below!
How to Negotiate with Alibaba Suppliers
Step 3 – Review Supplier’s Product Catalog
This final step is icing on the cake when looking to be safe on Alibaba.
Look:
An Alibaba suppliers product catalog can give you a lot of information.
And it’s the most important factor when selecting a supplier. Product specialization comes with a number of benefits that will have a large impact on your business.
Checklist
- Is your product mentioned in the supplier’s company name?
- Does your product making up the majority of the supplier’s product catalog on Alibaba?
- Is the supplier listing products that are completely different from the type you’re looking for?
Example: (E.G. Shenzhen Golden Watch Factory Co., Ltd) shows me the factory mostly makes watches.
Legit suppliers that are highly specialized in a certain product are better at managing quality. Pricing can also be cheaper since they buy large volumes of materials, components and tooling that is used only for the manufacturing of your product.
You can’t use the same workforce or tooling for the manufacturing “a little bit of this and a little bit of that”.
An “opportunistic” supplier is also more likely to discontinue products than a professional manufacturer.
How to use the Alibaba supplier search to identify specialized suppliers
Alibaba introduced the suppliers search, a useful feature for finding specialized manufacturers. In the beginning, all it did was presenting a list of suppliers with the product in the company name. Now, it also searches the suppliers product catalog and shows the number of matching products each supplier have!
- Go to Alibaba.com
- Change the search box from “Products” to Suppliers
- Enter the product name and search
- Now you will get a long list of all suppliers selling the product you just searched for. This can save time when sourcing suppliers since you can skip the manual review of the product catalog.
Case Study
Guangzhou Guanghao Watch Co., Ltd is manufacturing and exporting LED watches. That’s in fact the only thing they do since they have listed 900 different models. When you work with this company, you can be sure about the following:
- This supplier only cares about wristwatches, and certainly LED watches. They will develop new models and your company can grow your product selection together with them.
- 900 different models equals hundreds of thousands of different components. This supplier certainly know how these things work, and more importantly – what doesn’t work. Perhaps not today, but in the future you might want to create your own product with its own unique design and features.
This other supplier offers only 6 different LED watches.
So how can they be competitive?
Thousands of first time sellers fall for the trick of low prices and positive answers to every question. Don’t be one of these people that think they’ve are smarter than everybody else – until they realize they just got what they paid for.
Alibaba itself is not the problem. There are people that use the platform to scam people out of their hard earned money. If you take these tips and put them to good use then there is not reason that Alibaba can’t be a safe place to find a profitable product to sell.
Any other questions?
Feel free to comment if I’ve left anything unanswered!
We partnered with JungleScout to put together a supplier/manufacturer database to help you find the right factory for your products. If you want to check it out, it’s right here.
Check Out The Supplier Database
Additional resources that you may be interested in:
- 3 Amazon Product Research Tactics Working in 2019
- How to Write Product Descriptions That Sell
- How to Invent a Product from Scratch
Special Offer…
For 2020 we’ve completely updated and launched a brand new Amazon business course that teaches first time entrepreneurs how to launch their very own physical product Amazon business fast. Importing taxes, negotiating with suppliers and minimizing risk are big sections in our new course. If you want to check that out and see if it’s right for you click here…
Or -> Join us live for the free presentation on launching an Amazon business in 90 Days <-
Shame on you for advising buyers thsy Alibaba is safe!! Do not honor they’re trade assurance!! Horrible company!
Alibaba is absolutely NOT safe and DO NOT follow through with theyre tr3sde assurance. You are advocating for a terrible company. Shame on you!
Nice to meet you bro!
I made a trade assurance order back in March.
These orders are assured and protected, supposedly. In the small print however, it states that you have up to 30 days, sometimes 60 to dispute the order after delivery.
Now, what I’ve found is that they supplier takes absolutely ages to do anything and spreads their communications real thin over time. Then they send you a sample, or prototype. This is recorded as item shipped and delivered on the Alibaba system. Tricking the system into thinking that the order has been shipped, unless you notice this happening and intervene.
I didn’t, I assumed I was dealing with a business and we were spending a lengthy amount of time to get the product right.
In the end, once they proved they were unable to meet quality and order requirements, I requested a refund. There was no action for this on Alibaba’s system as the allotted time after ‘delivery’ had run out. Therefore it was basically me asking my contact to cancel the order and send me a refund.
They initially said, ok they’ll send it through. For 4 weeks I asked them for an update and where my money was. They continued to send one word answers effectively, saying be patient, the finance department is dealing with it.
Eventually, they stopped responding completely.
I’ve now lost that money, have a crappy ‘prototype’ I could have made easily myself at home, and absolutely no contact with Alibaba in the slightest, no phone numbers or email address at all, 0% customer service that is not a looping AI chatbot. They have a completely locked down system and your only ‘potential’ help here is to initiate the refund process within the small print time frame of 30 days from ‘delivery’. After that, Alibaba is quite happy that you’ve been screwed out of really hard earned and hard to come by startup capital for a new business, while they collect the membership fee from the scammers in Shenzhen.
Good afternoon Will, my son and I are currently rebuilding a vehicle and found a set up which includes lights bumpers and various other parts we require. I am new to Alibaba and was hoping you could please help us out. Since the amount being sent is $4000.00 USD. I can sent you more info via Email, to include an Invoice they sent me “to get the order shipped out tomorrow” feel free t email me at [email protected] In the mean time this is the seller, you will see on his page that he has various post for these car parts, thank you for your assistance.
https://globaleu.trustpass.alibaba.com/?spm=a2700.12243863.0.0.51313e5fkeSHR4
Danny
Danny, I would not wire money to anyone on Alibaba. If they don’t accept credit card transactions then I would not work with them. Even if the deal you’re getting seems good, when you wire money there is no way to get it back. But with credit cards both Alibaba and your credit card company can dispute, cancel and refund the order if something goes wrong.
Best affortdable shipping company to send my items from china to Philippines? (door to door) spoke to one supplier in alibaba she said SOFIA? is there any sofia shipping company?
Hey Tin, to be completely honest with you I haven’t heard of that company so I would be a bit hesitant to tell you to work with them. I like to stick with well known global companies like DHL or FedEx International.
Thank you so much for spending your time to give us the core of your experience.
Thank you so much Mohammed for reaching out and reading the article 🙂 If you have any questions at all please let me know.
I found a product that is reasonably priced and the company verified and has trade assurance. Is it safe to order from them even though their not Good Members?
Hey Chris what do you mean by “good members”? Do you mean Gold? Either way if the company is verified and covered by trade assurance you are safe to order from them.
I’ve seen a few times on Alibaba they’ve mentioned they could put “personal logos” on the items you ordered as well. How does that work🤔
We have a post “How to sell on Amazon” and there’s a video showing exactly how to do that!
I have already made the mistake of paying a textile company by western union and now communication has really dropped off. My communication after the very first one were not through Alibaba. Looks like I have been scammed and made every mistake possible. I was looking for any company with Trade Assurance that did custom printed tea towels out of India and I didnt see a single one with this listed on their companies. Only marking any of them had were Gold Supplier. Amy I not looking somewhere I should be? China had it on most of their companies. Is this a regional thing or how do I
know for sure what is the best safest companies to use out of India? Thanks
Hey Lee, I answered another one of your comments 🙂 I would love to help you out and talk more about the issues you’re having! Can you email us bros@startupbros(dot)com so we can talk about this further and figure something out for you.
I want to buy an agricultural raw material by the ton. I have negotiated MOQ but the most favourable prices are from Thailand and I can’t match the companies i am interacting with to the ones on the Alibaba.com app.
One has refused to send samples as he believes my low order is considered a sample order.
Our discussions have been by mail and WhatsApp and I would like to return to the app for discussion. But one of them claims the company is on several sites and he doesn’t know where my contact is from even though Alibab is the only site I use.
One of the things you might want to consider doing is finding that company in Thailand’s website and contacting directly on there. Do you think that’s a possibility?
What’s your opinion on using sourcing companies like Noviland to handle all of the sourcing instead of using directories like Alibaba?
If I had to pick something I would recommend using what’s known as “contract manufacturers”. They work sort of like sourcing companies where they will go out and find the best manufacturers for the individual components of your products. I don’t have too much experience with sourcing companies so I will personally look into Noviland but I personally can recommend Morpho Manufacturing. They’re a fantastic contract manufacturer.
Hey Will-nice to meet you here. Great article by the way. Also listened to your video on negotiating and took some notes. Whats the fee structure on a comp like morpho manufacturing? Thank you!
Hey Paul, it completely depends on what you’re looking to accomplish with them and how much you’re willing to spend on products. The larger the order the more they charge. But their most popular affordable service is $997 for a new design.
I’m pleased and so grateful with your teachings.
Thank you.i
Thanks for checking out the article!
What does acre mean when buying shoes on the site does it mean a pair or ??
Can you share the link here? We have never seen that measurement for shoes but we would love to help!
Is there a way of knowing what manufacturer/supplier won’t steal your design and sell it to other buyers? Thank you for your article, it was extremely informative!
Hey Brit, truthfully there is no way to 100% ensure a supplier in China won’t steal your design and sell it on their own. You can have then sign NDA’s or non compete contracts to start. You can also get a US patent for parts of your design. The issue is that China doesn’t respect US Intellectual Property laws because there is no way for us to enforce our laws on them. You can also file a patent in China but that would cost more money.
I would say that if you really are worried about them stealing your design then you should keep everything in the United States. There are companies that can design and manufacture something for you here in the US, fully protected. Then what you can do is have some parts manufactured overseas and some parts here. It’s possible and people do things like that all the time. In general, I would say that if your product is good, you should bring it to market no matter what and make sure your brand is registered with the US patent office. People knowing your brand is more important than the actual product because then people are going to be loyal to the brand.
Thanks for checking out the article 🙂 Hope I helped and if you have any questions at all please let me know!
Hi Will How do you check on boat motor suppliers
Hey Harry for something like boat motors I would shop domestic and talk with boat manufacturers and boat yard owners to find a good motor.
How safe is it to order goods from alibaba agent ?
We wouldn’t recommend using an Alibaba agent. There’s no reason that I can think of to use one. Go on the website and place an order. Before that make sure you shop around for a great price.
I have contacted a supplier and on a Turkish invitation letter and he sent his WATS up number,we talked on WATS up and I asked how am I secure he told me that he has no time to waste with me
I want to buy babe puzzle from this company Yiwu Feisheep Import & Export Co., Ltd.,but I am not okay with there profile. The MD (Melody Zheng)gave me his WhatsApp contact, I called him on video to see his face, but he never pick. I told him to snap the products he sent he sent internet downloads.
By the basis of my inquiry on the Alibaba site, on nov.2017. the first person from cpmpany Wenzhou Best Rigging Co., Ltd who contacted me is one woman – introduced as JoJo. After that, another person who contacted me introduced himself as Huang See. I agreed the business with him. That person contacted me through Whatsapp – on my mobile number. JoJo confirmed to me in writing that Huang See was their supervisor. I paid to him an agreed amount for the semple of climbing carabiners, rope and herness – by the invoices. I paid on his paypal account. After that, I never got the goods and the person Huang See stopped communicating with me through Whatsapp. After that, I again contacted JoJo through the Alibaba site and explained her this situation. First, she told me that they don’t have Huang See in their company, and after that she told me that Huang See did not tell her about me. She was confused in the reply.
When I started an investigation about this case of scam, by Alibaba site, JoJo told them that there is no Huang See in them company and that she did not tell me that Huang See is supervisor in your company. The person JoJo is lying.
After that I sent mail to the company several times, but they never reply me.
But the even bigger problem is that people from Alibaba did not want to approach this case professionally. Although I provided them with all the written evidence of this fraud ( screenshots of my communication with JoJo on Alibaba site and with Huang See by Whatsapp, invoice, proof of my payment to paypal account of Huang See ) they persistently demanded from me to provide proof that I made the payment to the company account.
I opened the case on Alibaba website 4 times, but they asked me the same thing – proof that I paid it to the account of that company.
So be careful! People, be sure that people from Alibaba will not help you if someone deceives you on their site – although you have very clear evidence.
Since u paid by paypal, lodge a fraud report and your money wont go to them, simple.
Super post! Thank you. About Paypal, the rules probably changed.
Q: Can I pay via PayPal and still get Trade Assurance protection?
No, if you pay via PayPal or make payments to the supplier directly, your order is not covered by Trade Assurance, which offers protection for on-time shipment and product quality. Only orders placed on and paid for through our site are covered by Trade Assurance.
Hey Martin, thanks for the info. We’re going to look into this right away. Extremely useful!
Very true. Don’t ever make the mistake like myself. I order a few laptops for cheap and they wanted me to send via MoneyGram. It was cheap, so I didn’t think nothing of it. It turned into a nightmare. Please do not ever, ever, and ever pay anyone outside of Alibaba. Always use Trade Assurance. Don’t get scam like me.
I have a client who is a supplier of restaurant equipment, both producing his own products as well as reselling for others. If entering alibaba as a supplier, should he include his own products or the products he resells as well?