Alibaba.com claims to be the world’s largest online buyer to buyer (B2B) marketplace. It’s like Craiglist and Ebay combine. Considering at the website main page itself, it is really hard not to be true. Looking from categories like Consumer Electronics Equipment, Export Garment, and Agriculture Farm Machinery to Transportation Manufacturing, Mobile Phone, Chemical Supplies, they have almost everything you might be looking for if you’re going or looking for business ideas.
Founded by Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou,with 17 other founders in 1999 as a trading platform for small manufacturers to sell their wares. Since then Alibaba.com has grown into the premier online marketplace for small businesses around the world to identify potential trading partners and interact with each other to conduct business online. Alibaba.com completed its US$1.7 billion initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November 2007, the biggest Internet IPO at the time since Google's 2004 offering on the NASDAQ.
- The largest online sourcing community has suppliers from almost every country in the world. Meaning you can outsource outside your country for more varieties of product.
- Good source for online business education, I personally learn a lot in Alibaba.com when it comes safe buying online. You can look at their forum and participate.
- There is also a Trade Manager (live messenger) which you can contact the seller immediately if they are online as well.
- There are lots of forms of paying namely L/C Letter of Credit, Paypal, Alipay, Escrow and not so good paying practices like Western Union, Moneygram and Bank Transfer TT etc.
- In the end of 2008 Alibaba.com lunched 6 B2B sites for non-English language versions which a very big help for native Traders to source product easily.
Spanish: http://spanish.alibaba.com/
German: http://german.alibaba.com/
Italian: http://italian.alibaba.com/
French: http://french.alibaba.com/
Portuguese: http://portuguese.alibaba.com/
Russian: http://russian.alibaba.com/
- When it comes to price of the products. No question there, it is very cheap. If you are a buyer sourcing for a cheap China products it definitely one of your first stop.
- There are some companies registered on the site are legit and they will send the products over before asking for your payments. There are frauds or people who different intentions other than your products that might be lurking in the site itself but everything got it risks.
- And finally it opens your eyes in Import/Export business, how to communicate cross-border and cross-culture because it really a big Marketplace making it very helpful when it comes to branding yourself to differentiate you to your online/offline competitor. And if you could find products that aren’t available to your competitor it is huge for your business.
http://resources.alibaba.com/trade_safe/home.htm
http://ggs.alibaba.com/trade/servlet/page/static/paid_memberships/ggs/tour