There are alot of new marketplaces and we are spoiled for choice. whats the difference?
I think the first marketplace platform Singaporeans are familiar with would be Shopee or Lazada. These are local marketplaces and they usually stock up on the most commonly used products. You would find your toilet paper, toilet wash, detergent here.
What about uncommon products? amazon started out with books, a proven market but uncommon. Taobao also has uncommon products.
Among those are Aliexpress – which is basically a china site targeted worldwide, using the English language. These sellers are agents that take their products from the wholesaler, who in turn takes from the manufacturer. The seller needs to know English to sell, which basically limits out 95% of all Chinese companies. Pricing in Aliexpress is usually lower than Amazon, but higher than Taobao.
What is Taobao? Taobao was originally created for individual consumers in china to shop, but later expanded to worldwide customers. 1688 is even cheaper, but there are more difficulties and usually they are businesses that are buying in bulk
Taobao contains a very wide range of products. things that you cannot find in shopee, Lazada, aliexpress and amazon. I believe that all the manufacturers should be there, or at least wholesalers. There is free shipping internally within China. you can get free shipping for items less than a dollar and everything else.
You can ship directly from the buyer to your home, but sometimes that would double the price, or cost you somewhere around 30-50% more. this is not a problem considering that the same items if available to you in singapore are already double the price. There is a common practice called consolidated shipping. basically it means that you open an account with a warehouse to receive these goods. and then at a later time they will pack all of it in a box and send it to your place at a much reduced shipping fee. This is easy to setup using the WeChat business function. you can get this setup in less than 5mins. the research on which company you want to use will probably take 30mins.
The stumbling block for Singaporeans is that they cannot read Chinese. Chinese language is hard to learn, and even harder to improve. Fortunately I passed my Chinese and got the minimum level required to communicate in business. The fastest way to learn Chinese is to watch Chinese shows. research shows that this is better than forcing yourself to attend lessons and do homework.
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