4 Ways to Find a Reliable Wholesale Supplier in China

In this article, DocShipper explains that in order to market a product after market research, it is important to find a trustworthy wholesale supplier in China, as the country offers favorable conditions to produce high-quality goods at the lowest price.

With the advent of the Internet, it is no longer necessary to travel to China to find suppliers, and Alibaba is the most well-known site. However, the MOQ can sometimes be too high for beginners. Therefore, in this article, you will be presented with 4 different strategies to locate Chinese online suppliers other than Alibaba, which are suitable for all businesses, large or small, with different budgets.

Method 1: Look for vendors on DHgate and AliExpress

A quick overview of DHgate and Aliexpress

For people who own tiny enterprises or merely wish to buy a very small amount of goods, AliExpress or DHgate will be the greatest options for finding Chinese suppliers and importing such goods from China. Considering that both of these websites are incredibly user-friendly and tailored for small-batch purchases, making online buying from China on them as straightforward as possible. The only thing you need to do is look at the reviews and the selling history of the providers, and then you can click your mouse to complete the entire purchasing process.

When you select a delivery option or a quantity, the cost of international shipping is automatically computed. Because all packages are either sent by FedEx or DHL courier services or by China Post airmail, you don't need to have any expertise in import or export. You can easily seek a refund if you're unhappy with the product quality you received.

Which is better for you, AliExpress or DHgate?

First off, AliExpress is best suited for small orders under $100; purchasing a single item for personal use is OK. Most of the time, the price difference between purchasing 1 unit and 100 units of the same product is negligible. And it goes without saying that you must use AliExpress if you operate a dropshipping business. DHgate, meanwhile, is better suited for purchases between $100 and $1,000. It's fairly simple to discover that many vendors on DHgate would set several price tiers for different order sizes, such as 10, 50, 100, or 200.

DHgate is a great site to check out if you feel that the amount of merchandise sold by Alibaba suppliers is too high and the wholesale prices charged by AliExpress are too high. This site is great for small business owners, especially if you own a brick-and-mortar store. I'll use one product as an example. The heavy-duty band set has been a very popular item for the past few years, whether sold on Amazon or drop-shipping. On AliExpress, a pair costs about $8 and arrives in 30 days in America. On DHgate, the price ranges from $4.5 to $5, including shipping.

Also, if you buy more than 100 pairs, the supplier will send your order by DHL, which takes only 7 days to arrive in America.

The second distinction between these two sites is that AliExpress has more suppliers and a wider selection of products than DHgate.

Both Taobao and AliExpress are owned by the Alibaba Group. Alibaba Group encourages Chinese manufacturers to transfer all their inventory from Taobao to AliExpress. Then, with the help of tools, Chinese sellers can quickly convert each product description from Chinese to English.

AliExpress has more suppliers and a wider selection of products than DHgate, but DHgate is an independent company and may not have the exact item you are looking for.
AliExpress and DHgate are not suitable for growing businesses because most of their suppliers are online wholesalers, not producers. This makes it difficult to guarantee consistent quality for different batches of products.
If you plan to buy the same product in the long term and spend thousands of dollars, these two platforms may not be the best choice.

Method 2: look for suppliers on Alibaba or other Chinese wholesale websites

If you have set aside a few thousand dollars in your budget to build a long-term, rapidly expanding business. It goes without saying that you must utilize Alibaba or other B2B platforms to locate trustworthy manufacturers or trading firms to serve as your wholesale supplier.

Alibaba is similar to an online trade show in that you can only choose vendors by perusing their product descriptions and photographs. Before placing orders, you must contact suppliers via email or Alibaba trade messaging to discuss pricing for various purchase amounts or how to personalize products with your own packaging or design.

The wholesale supplier will assist you in creating the contract and invoice, and after they have received your cash, they will begin manufacturing brand-new goods and organize transportation to your nation. This is a typical workflow for a classic trading business.

Two main categories of suppliers on Alibaba

On Alibaba, there are two main types of suppliers:

Manufacturers and traders

The person who manufactures goods and sells them directly to international customers is the manufacturer. In trading businesses, the products are obtained from producers with whom they have a working relationship and then sold to customers abroad.

Trading firms always favor manufacturers with very competitive prices who don't employ English salespeople. You will have a difficult time locating these manufacturers on Alibaba. It follows that even if you'll be purchasing from trading firms on Alibaba, the manufacturing costs won't be significantly greater than if you were to purchase. Even those trading firms can provide a more skilled and effective level of service.

2 methods to find suppliers on Alibaba

On Alibaba, there are two methods for finding wholesale suppliers. You can either utilize RFQ to submit your purchasing question and have the best-suited wholesale supplier get in touch with you, or you can directly search the product keywords and contact suppliers one at a time.

Transaction on Alibaba

When you make orders, you can complete the transaction similarly to conventional trading by sending money to the provider via a wire transfer. Because there is no third-party organization to safeguard you, it doesn't sound safe. You could also process your transaction using Alibaba Trade Assurance. Alibaba offers refunds if you don't get your order in a timely manner, or if it is of low quality.

Other B2B trade platforms

Compared to other B2B trading platforms, Alibaba has the most wholesale supplier and products, and it can meet the needs of the majority of buyers. The only two options you have, though, if you really want to explore any alternatives, are Global Source and Made in China.

Made-in-China has greater benefits when it comes to manufacturing machinery, but during the past ten years, they have fallen behind Alibaba in the B2B trade space. They must therefore concentrate on the machinery sector, which Alibaba does not. Most likely, Made in China has more wholesale marketplace of machinery.

Gifts and electronics are better off at Global Sources. Finding some large-scale, venerable manufacturers will be simpler on this website because of the platform's $30,000 annual membership price for suppliers. Small manufacturers or trading enterprises cannot afford this price. While Alibaba only costs about $4,000 for membership annually.

Top Chinese wholesale website to import from

Alibaba: It is one of the largest B2B online marketplaces in the world, with millions of suppliers and buyers from around the globe.
DHgate: DHgate is a popular B2B e-commerce platform that connects China wholesale vendors, manufacturers, and retailers with buyers from around the world.
Made-in-China: Made-in-China.com is a B2B e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of products and services, including manufacturing and product sourcing services, for buyers from around the world.
Global Sources: Global Sources is an online marketplace that connects buyers from around the world with verified suppliers from China and other Asian countries.
Chinabrands: Chinabrands is a wholesale platform that offers a wide range of products, including electronics, clothing, and accessories, at competitive prices.
AliExpress: AliExpress is a retail marketplace owned by Alibaba, which offers a wide range of products from Chinese manufacturers at wholesale prices.
LightInTheBox: LightInTheBox is a global online retailer that sources its products from Chinese manufacturers and offers a wide range of products, including clothing, electronics, and home goods.

Method 3: Find suppliers by using Google search.

One might question how so many suppliers can be found on B2B trading platforms like Alibaba. This is due to the high volume of potential customers who visit them.

Since Alibaba's fame, it receives a lot of traffic because whenever consumers want to discover suppliers, they just think of the name of Alibaba. They invested a lot of time, money, and effort to create this well-known brand.

Another significant factor is the significant amount of traffic Alibaba receives from Google, whether through paid or organic search results.

Alibaba provides suppliers with access to these buyers' traffic in exchange for yearly member fees ranging from $4,000 to $10,000 as well as PPC marketing, allowing the suppliers to compete with one another. In other words, Alibaba generates revenue by bringing in customer service and selling to suppliers.

The cost for suppliers to receive acceptable consumer queries has increased significantly over the past few years due to the intense rivalry amongst them on Alibaba.

Some of them consequently came to the realization that they could also create a company website and use Google Ads or Google SEO to attract more potential clients at a reasonable cost. Instead of remaining on Alibaba, they can gain more exposure to clients and face less competition.

How can I use Google to find Chinese wholesale suppliers?

By combining the following suggested keywords with the product keywords, you can locate a Chinese wholesale supplier on Google. Then, take a look at the Top 100 search results, whether they are organic results or advertisements, and note which websites resemble Chinese trading companies or manufacturers. You can email them or use their website to send them a message, and often you'll hear back from them within one or two business days.

How can I evaluate Google Search suppliers?

However, if you utilize Google to look for a wholesale supplier, your main challenge will be determining whether the provider is trustworthy because there is no independent party to confirm whether the supply is genuine. Let me share some helpful advice with you. If they have an Alibaba store, you can inquire. If they have, you can complete the purchase using the Alibaba trade assurance. If not, you can convince them to utilize PayPal in order to conduct a secure transaction.

The majority of Chinese vendors, however, are unable to take PayPal payments of more than $1,000 since they have heard several horror stories of sellers being duped by consumers. For instance, some con artists who purchased things nevertheless requested refunds despite receiving them for a variety of fictitious justifications. Additionally, you can still utilize Who is to determine the date that the wholesale supplier's website domain was registered. The less likely they are to be con artists, the longer the domain has been registered, and the firm has been operating.

When you visit their websites, you can see their actual address in China as well as pictures of their office, suppliers, and staff. Or they upload several images and details about going to various trade exhibitions. They should then be more dependable. In a similar vein, you should exercise extreme caution when working with vendors who never publish business or team images on their websites. They most likely consist of just one person's home office-based firm.

For the same goods on Alibaba, there are far too many vendors, many of whom are wholesalers. Therefore, it can be challenging to select the expert ones from among these many wholesale suppliers. In certain cases, it will be more effective to search for suppliers on Google rather than Alibaba, particularly if you don't have a specific product in mind to purchase and are instead just looking for a reputable manufacturer to assist you in developing a new product.

Method 4 :Use Facebook or LinkedIn to find suppliers

Alibaba and the Canton fair are typically the only two reliable routes for Chinese suppliers to interact with overseas buyers, since they are so hungry for foreign business. Instead of remaining in the same location with too many competitors, some of them start to try whatever method they have heard of that has a possibility to attract customers.

Due to the fact that it's free, they frequently use Facebook and LinkedIn to discover consumers. To find new customers, they frequently choose a keyword that is associated with the product or their sector. And after that, strive to attract more potential customers by advertising their items, providing information about their company's products online, or writing articles about them. The same method can be used to locate them on LinkedIn or Facebook.

To find out if Chinese supplier websites publish relevant information, simply search for product keywords and associate them with certain company-related terms.

Consider the perfume bottle as an illustration. On LinkedIn, you can perform a keyword search for "perfume bottle manufacture." Finding salespeople from glass bottle manufacturers, salespeople from trading firms for cosmetic packaging, or even business owners, is quite simple. Additionally, a lot of product details or images from the manufacturer are shared by vendors.

However, using this method to find suppliers has significant drawbacks. Compared to Google or Alibaba searches, you can never locate too many vendors. Additionally, it is very difficult to comprehend the suppliers' corporate history or product line by simply visiting the salesperson's Facebook or LinkedIn page. To request their product catalogs, you must get in touch with each individual company separately. Alternatively, you can inquire whether they can assist you in creating the precise item you require.

DocShipper’s advice

After choosing where to find a Chinese supplier, it's crucial to select a reliable one. Here are 2 of the most important criteria to help you select the right supplier

Get samples to assess the quality of the production

Situation 1: If a hand-made product sample is possible

For products like clothing, bags, and plush toys, manufacturers typically charge between $100 and $200 to assist you in customizing a sample. A prototype may be made in about one week if all the fabrics and accessories are ready. We advise you to request samples from one or two providers at a time, and if you're not happy, go on to the next.

Situation 2: If a mold should be produced before the product

Molds are generally made out of plastic. Typically, it costs thousands of dollars to create molds and takes at least 30 days to provide a sample. In order to examine your suppliers thoroughly, we advise comparing them first based on other criteria before paying them to send a sample. After all, sampling costs money and takes time.

Shipping Method and Shipping Price

Some suppliers offer exceptionally low product prices in an effort to draw customers. This means that instead of trying to profit from the sale of their goods, they choose to increase delivery costs after you place an order. In other cases, a supplier with no prior experience in exporting goods to your country would receive more expensive shipping quotations from freight forwarders, which would eventually raise your overall cost.

Therefore, it's crucial that you examine the overall cost across various providers by adding the costs of the product and delivery together.

Additionally, you should choose suppliers who have shipping options to your country rather than those who offer lower product prices if you are from regions or countries like Africa, Latin America, or East Europe where there are fewer services available to deliver to your doorstep and handle the importing customs process.

FAQ | 4 Ways to Find a Reliable Wholesale Supplier in China

How to find a wholesale vendor?

Finding a wholesale vendor can be a bit overwhelming, but there are some steps you can take to help you find a reliable vendor:

Research: Start by doing research online to find potential wholesale vendors. Use search engines, online directories, and marketplaces to identify vendors that offer the products you are interested in.
Check references: Once you have a list of potential vendors, check their references and read reviews from other buyers. This will give you an idea of the vendor's reliability, quality of products, and customer service.
Contact vendors: Reach out to the vendors you are interested in and ask them about their products, prices, and terms. You can also ask for samples to test the quality of their products before making a larger order.
Evaluate pricing and terms: Compare prices and terms from different vendors to ensure you are getting a fair deal. Be sure to consider shipping and handling fees, minimum order quantities, and payment terms.
Build a relationship: Once you have found a reliable vendor, work on building a long-term relationship with them. Maintain good communication, pay on time, and provide feedback to help improve their products and services.

Why DocShipper instead of a different one?

Perhaps just because we approach the market differently. Look for a competitor who can handle the whole product cycle, including 3PL services, international freight, customs clearance, compliance & standards, and quality control.

You've finally located a collaborator to manage your global trade without anxiety.

How might DocShipper help us in selecting a trustworthy wholesale supplier?

DocShipper is the best freight forwarder that can assist you if you're looking for a reliable wholesale supplier in Asia, specifically in China. With the help of our sourcing services, our experts can accompany you through the entire process and audit the ideal and trustworthy wholesale supplier in accordance with your needs.

How can we guarantee that the goods the factory delivers won't be flawed?

Three services from DocShipper take care of it for you: The specs are a list of the requirements that must be followed by the product, both functionally and non-functionally.

Quality control: To monitor and regulate the goods' quality throughout the production cycle, we dispatch skilled inspectors to the manufacturing facility. This action enables a production error to be fixed before it is too late, hence it is strongly advised.

The sample: To make sure the product has been created in accordance with the specifications, we request that the manufacturer provide you a sample of the product. This is a crucial step that needs to be completed before making a big order.

How to find a trustworthy manufacturer?

An alternative to this time consuming process is to visit trade shows. You can easily meet hundreds of manufacturers at the same time, saving you weeks of effort. It is also possible to find some manufacturers at your local watch trade as well.

DocShipper Advise : We help you with the entire sourcing process so don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!

Having trouble finding the appropriate product? Enjoy our sourcing services, we directly find the right suppliers for you!
You don't trust your supplier? Ask our experts to do quality control to guarantee the condition of your goods!
Do you need help with the logistics? Our international freight department supports you with door to door services!
You don't want to handle distribution? Our 3PL department will handle the storage, order fulfillment, and last-mile delivery!

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