Alibaba is one of the largest online retailers in the world, which is based in China. This online retailer is known to have been established by the year 1999, and it was formed by an English teacher by the name Jack Ma. This online retailer in China is well known as a massive and international business that deals with many different arms. Alibaba is known in dealing with e-commerce, technology, banking services, and on top of that, they also deal with cloud computing services, and these are just a few of the services that they render to their customers.
The foundation of Alibaba just began in the same way aliexpress, amazon and eBay began. Its aim is being able to connect business to the consumers, bringing together businesses to other businesses, and furthermore bring consumers to consumers. All of these functions are categorized into three different sites; Taobao, Tmall, and Alibaba.
Taobao
Research proves that this is the largest e-commerce store in the universe and making it the 8th most visited website also. This form of e-commerce is mostly considered in connecting consumers to other consumers. This platform provides consumers to be able to sell different things amongst themselves. In the year 2014, Taobao was seen to increase in the number of their merchants to seven billion merchants.
Tmall
This is another retailer that is known by connecting all of the interested merchants with consumers. Just after Taobao, Tmall is the next known largest e-commerce platform. Holding more than 70000 Chinese and when it comes to the international brands holding a population of more than 50000 merchants. This site is also known to be serving a total of more than 180 million buyers.
Aliexpress
This one seems to be looking like Alibaba since it is used in bringing together all of the interested merchants to most of the manufactures that reside overseas. With the help of Aliexpress, you will note that it assists their merchants in getting all of the wholesale products that they might be interested in. The reason behind them being involved in these is all because if they get to buy these products in high, there are chances that they will be given discounts.
Means of finding products and manufacturer on Alibaba
There are different ways in which one can use in getting a supplier for your products through Alibaba.
Product search
In their site, you will be provided with a platform where you can key in what are the products that you might be thinking of sourcing out. From there, you will be provided with results of all of the things that you might be looking for.
Request for quote
From this method, you will be required to publish an advertisement for the things that you might be needing to be manufactured.
Risks involved when using Alibaba
Language barrier
In using Alibaba, it might not be that effective in case you might not well used to it. it is not that effective since there are those people who end up being faced with a language barrier.
Scammers
Even though you will get to find a lot of security protocols that users are protested with, you might end up coming across a scammer. In avoiding all of these, it is advisable if you would consider performing due diligence when you are using the supplier database in ensuring that the supplier is genuine.
