How to Find Quality Suppliers on Alibaba?
Finding a suitable factory or supplier is not an easy task. Many of our clients ask for tips on how to find good suppliers and factories.
When you are just starting off, Alibaba is the best place to search for a supplier, as there are so many to choose from. However, it’s tough to pick a good one. Let’s take a look at what makes a great supplier.
First, let’s open the page at: www.alibaba.com.
Step 1, let’s say we’re looking for umbrellas.
First and foremost, we need to ensure that the keywords are used correctly. We must ensure they are used as precisely and as effectively as possible to search for the best results. If the keyword is too vague, we will get many different results. So we’d better narrow down our search in this case by making it more specific.
Searching for a specific umbrella type can sometimes be hard to find exactly what you’re after. A search for “umbrella” might bring up results for everything from parasols and golf umbrellas to folding umbrellas, so it can be difficult to tell which exact products you’re likely to purchase. To ensure that we do not come back with any misleading or wrong results, let’s change our keyword from “umbrella” to “golf umbrella.
Results can be filtered by different criteria, including:
- Supplier types
- Supplier Country/ Region
- Product types
- Order Quantity
- Price
- Certifications
- Features
These help us narrow down our product search.
What is the difference between Trade Assurance and Verified Supplier?
Trade Assurance: suppliers accept payments directly through Alibaba.com’s payment portal, enabling Alibaba.com order protection.
Trade Assurance is a free service offered by Alibaba that is designed to help create trust between buyers and suppliers. Trade Assurance covers you in the event of shipping or quality-related disputes. Buyers are covered if products are not shipped on time as per the contract with suppliers and if products do not meet the quality standards as per the contract with the supplier.
Verified Supplier: businesses whose company profile, management system, production capabilities, and process controls have been assessed, certified, and inspected by independent third-party institutions to assure reputable and consistent expertise on Alibaba.
Which options should you select?
If you are outside of China, you should check both Trade Assurance and Verified Supplier; this may help you narrow down your search results.
If you can come to China or you have a sourcing agent in China, you do not need to worry, and you may choose from more suppliers on Alibaba.
Now it’s time to sift through and sort suppliers effectively.
Do a quick scroll-down through the page, and take a glance at some key points on their page:
- Products
- Keywords
- Location
- Time listed on Alibaba.
If they are more than 5 years old, it means they have a little bit more experience. But please note that just because a factory has only been a gold supplier for a short time doesn’t mean they haven’t been operating for longer.
We’ve met a lot of factories that were listed as gold suppliers for 1 year but had been in operation for over 20 years. They chose not to be listed on Alibaba and grew their business solely by word-of-mouth.
next, when we see this title, we may find it may be the golf umbrella that I’m looking for
From here, we get some information:
(1). From the title, we know: that this manufacturer/supplier manufactures umbrellas/golf umbrellas.
(2). price range: between $4.23-4.65/pc depending on what quantities.
MOQ:1 piece; (Normally, they write 1 piece doesn’t mean MOQ is 1 piece, you need to contact with them and ask).
(3).this supplier has been on Alibaba for 10 years and has a good review.
After clicking the title, we could see more information about this supplier; we could find it is a manufacturer and a trading company, a 10-year member of Alibaba, has less than 3 hours response time, has a 100% on-time delivery rate, transactions record on Trade assurance, how big is the factory.
You may also find more information about this product on the page, like the open way of this umbrella, whether it is manual or auto-opened, what the material it is, the ribs material, the size of the umbrella, etc. if you have different material, size… or a printed logo be needed, you’d better contact with them.
If you just want to check manufacturers only, not trading companies, you could view more suppliers until you found like this:
You may find this supplier is a manufacturer only. It is located in Zhejiang Shaoxing (Shangyu city), which is a production base of umbrellas; they’ve 11 years of membership with Alibaba.
Then you may send a message to them or click: contact supplier, and the supplier will reply to you shortly.
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