What Is a Taobao Buying Agent?
A person or storefront that harasses a seller on your behalf. Receives the items at a warehouse in China, checks parcels, combines different orders and arrange the delivery to your country. Selecting and forwarding services can be the default one or special such as communicating with the seller, doing QC and taking photos, checking and packaging if defective, doing re-shipping or returning.
Why International Buyers Use Taobao
Great variety of products and categories, first access to popular styles and designs before they show up on other international sites, can buy even just 1 unit and generally speak, good prices. Taobao is great for personal shopping and sampling, fashion and lifestyles items, discovering different product niches, and small-scale e-commerce testing. If you are looking for real wholesale prices and buy in large quantities, 1688 or Alibaba are better places to check.
Direct Buying vs. Freight Forwarder vs. Buying Agent
Direct buying-if you're familiar with Taobao, secure with the payment options, and can function the website in Chinese.
Freight forwarder20handles only to ship; your personal equipment; you know they are bought from Taobao is well known.
Purchasing and shipping agent - handling both the purchase and shipment of the item(s), by far the simplest for most international buyers, new to eBay.
What a Good Agent Does
Apart from purchasing: product link checking, communicating with sellers, confirming sizes and colors, taking photometric inspection, defect checking, repacking, removing excess packaging, receiving multiple parcels, consolidating, comparing shipping method, managing result/exchange, filling in customs declaration and document before sending. Feature: consolidate. When our customers purchase from multiple Taobao suppliers, the goods will arrive separately at the agent warehouse, then all together in one international package.
Step-by-Step Buying Process
Locate items on Taobao what I do next send links to agent get a quote pay agent pay agent pay to seller ship to agent receive.
Take photos of pallets what do I do now assign pictures to develop.
Pin, create list for buying agent consolidate and give you shipping options pay shipping international shipping agent weighs & sends with tracking
Choosing Products and Sellers Wisely
Look at product pictures (preferably real-life customers, not studio photos), seller rating and feedback, number of items sold, size chart, material description and return policy. For clothes always look at size chart (Chinese sizes are different from US, EU, UK and Japanese sizes) if available. Beware of too cheap fake branded stuff (counterfeit). For resale buyers ask for warehouse pictures and dimensions rather than listing pictures.
Agent Fees and Payment Structure
Typical fees layers: service fee (% of product value or fixed), local shipping fee, exchange rate margin, warehouse storage fee, photo inspection fee, repackaging fee, return fee and international shipping fee. Ensure the agent clearly explains all fees, records the exchange rate, free storage time, and international shipping fee before making any decision as most payment structures are very unclear and give surprises at the end.
Shipping Options
Express courier (fastest/most expensive for small/high value parcels or urgent parcels), air freight (mid speed/cost for medium size parcels), sea freight (most inexpensive/slowest for large/large/weighty goods), and special line shipping for some countries (may include customs clearing). Most of the products are calculated charged on volumetric weight- large light weight items (pillows, storage boxes, cuddly toys etc.) are more expensive than the real/actual weight. You can reduce costs by asking for repackaging, consolidation, and empty packaging removal.
Quality Checks and Repacking
Agent warehouse checks are plain nothing like real factory inspection. They should do item arrival, color and size, visible damage, quantity, accessories as stated check. If it's product for resale, you should ask for front/back photo, close up label photo, measurements, poor quality report, carton weight and size. You should always proceed to fragile promotion and exchange domestic weak packages to international context then.
Common Risks to Manage
It can be difficult to get the correct product photographs; mean hinges haven't been manufactured to the specifications expected elsewhere or have arrived before the product had a chance to go through set cameras photographic quality control. Otherwise, issues include sizing differences, poor quality products from retail sellers, and there can be difficult to use limited timeframes for returns, and restrictions and extra charges on shipping from certain countries, especially for batteries, liquids, cosmetics, and branded goods. One can mitigate this number of risks by thinking small, concentrating on sellers operating over a short period of time, making sure the sellers have online reviews from previous customers, sending your own inspection photos back, avoiding trading branded toilet paper, and working out the total landed cost beforehand.
How to Choose a Reliable Agent
What to expect: straightforward fee structure, easy to contact, includes warehouse photo options, offers multiple shipping options, takes care of returns, allowed to store for free, easy to track, and offers customer feedback. Questions to ask yourself: Do they offer free inspection photos? How is the handling of lost items? Can they stack several items? Is the quoted freight fee including customs duties? Do NOT choose any agents that: do not give you clarity on their rate, seem unresponsive during process, or push you to pay quickly.
In Conclusion
In the hands of a personal shopper, e-commerce seller testing and high-volume retail, a Taobao buying agent is the most important as sellers, collectors, niche product buyers and down-market content creators use the site for anything from finding unusual Chinese cheap steals to buying samples to testing unknown lines to ordering small quantities of unusual or hard to find items. Use Taobao to find, sample, order small and order niche, but remember to always include an agent's commission, Chinese intra-national shipping, international shipping and all import tariffs in any total landed-cost calculation before completing.
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