My online wholesale experiences from China

Few days ago, one of my friends asked me which online shop is the best for wholesaling women’s clothing in China. Actually, I do not know much about it, fortunately, I have a friend who lives in Jakarta and he has done wholesale clothing business for nearly two years, so I asked him for advices. And this article is reorganized by his wholesale experience from China.


Bekasi is quite small and near Jakarta, so the wholesale price is quite high. So I followed my competitors to wholesale from China online shops since March.

The first time: Disappointed
The first online shop was yesstyle. This website was very beautiful and had more than 8000 types of clothes. So I decided to have a try. This online shop belonged to Hongkong. I knew that Hongkong was a part of china. But at that time I didn’t know that price there was much higher than China mainland. For example, a jacket sold in Jakarta only at $40, but at yesstyle, it needed $20-30. I bought 2 T-shirts, one skirt and it cost me $74. The shipping fee was $14. It was quite expensive, but comparing with that of Jakarta, it was a bit cheaper. So I moved on to payment. However, the staff of West Union told me I had to pay excess fee for service. So at last I used Paypal.

7 days later, my goods arrived. The new arrivals sold good. The first T-shirt (buying price $17) sold at $29 and the skirt (buying price 32) at $50. And another T shirt (buying price $21) intended to sell at $40, but nobody wanted it. Obviously, goods from Hongkong are only suitable to sell at exclusive shop, not for retail. So I googled some new online shops.

The second time: happy but not satisfied
Fashion wholesale is my second online websites. It really surprised me because there are more than 22000 kinds of products and a lot of them are only $5, even some priced $2.99. The city of this online websites named Hangzhou and located in China, a place where I first felt should be very poor, and the gap is probably the same with the difference between Jakarta and Irian Jaya. Things on this website are very cheap, but I worried about quality and decided to only buy a few, so I purchase with a small order tentatively. 7 items of clothes totaled $ 25.76, and parcels weighted 1.95 kg and DHL shipping was $17.4. Because this incredible low price, I only paid $43.16 by paypal.

5 days later, I received a package sent by DHL. After received the parcel I could not wait to open, and I find that clothing quality is good, but not good enough, and comparing with Hong Kong's clothing, there is no substantial difference. It was really a surprise to me compared with my last buying, on the contrast, I got the feeling of excessive profit after I had bought a long dress at the low price of $ 4.65 and sold out the next day at $ 28, a t-shirt priced $ 3.8 soled out at $19, and 3 chiffon dresses priced at $ 1.99 sold out at $15. This purchase was a little bittersweet, my delight is that this online shop is suitable for me, what disturb me was that I don’t know whether it was the best. Aiming at pursuit for a better one, I kept on searching.

The third time: annoyed
The third website, asia-fashion-wholesale, was the ugliest online shop I had ever seen, which has only 2600 types and is absolutely in disorder. But what attracts people most is the low price, most are usually at $ 4 or $ 5, when I first saw the price lists I was wondering how can they sell at such low prices? They must be from the poorest part of China, because I once got this kind of experience from Maluku Utara. But at last I found out that this is from shanghai, the biggest city in China.

I ordered 6 items and cost me only 24.9 dollars. Their customer service said that parcels weighted 1.7 kg and EMS shipping was $ 20.6, so the total cost was $ 45.5. Because it was a small sum of money, I paid to their wired-looking Paypal account yangdefang@gmail.com directly. And I thought EMS, a well-known express delivery company I heard before, was the best.

The parcel had not arrived until 9 days later. I was confused and emailed the customer service and two hours later I finally got their reply. They told me that the speed of EMS was always unstable and I should wait patiently. I have no idea except waiting. 16 days passed and finally the postman arrived with my parcel. I asked him why it took so long time, but he answered reluctantly, “you can chose DHL anyway, why EMS!”

I was very reluctant to pay the freight because this is higher than the items’ price. What’s more, one of the 8 Clothes lost a button and another skirt had a hole. And one cloth, purchased at 7 dollars was taken back by one custom an hour later after sold. Because there was a crack on the shoulder. This time I really believe in the saying, what price, what good. Goods from this online shop was cheap, but the quality was shoddy.

The fourth time: failure
My fourth attempt was a new website zipia. This one had very nice pictures and more than 4500 kinds of products. At first sight I felt it looks like the first website I mentioned. Price on this Website seems even higher than the stores in Jakarta. After searched for a long time, I do not know where to start.

Finally, I Chose a "714-washing zipper skinny-41-K04506". This one asked for $31. I originally intended to know what kind of clothes was so expensive. However, at the step of payment , suddenly such a dialog box came out.

Of course, I gave up. With 300 dollars you could only buy a maximum of 10 on zipia, but can buy almost 50 on fashion wholesale.

Learned to shop around
I have purchase cargo from more than a dozen places before, and after comparison of China's goods, it is clear that gross profit of Chinese cloth can reach 100% in general. From my four different shopping online experiences, I have summed up some conclusion.

First of all, price is very important. The price of yesstyle and zipia online shop is ridiculously high, plus shipping freight, sometimes more expensive than to buy in Jakarta shop, so buying from these two on-line shop can not make money.

Clothing from Asia-fashion-wholesale is indeed cheap, but the quality is really bad, so it is not a good choose. Comparatively speaking, the price in fashion wholesale is slightly higher than asia-fashion-wholesale’s. However, product quality and packaging are all good, so only in term of goods, fashion wholesale is the best.

The second point is the range of products. For wholesalers and retailers, we need a lot of styles to attract customers, so the range of products is very important. The current situation, zipia, asia-fashion-wholesale, yesstyle have only about 3000 items, while the products suit to be sold in Indonesia is around 1000 items. However, fashion wholesale has about 22000 items. So there are about 5000 items suitable for sold in Indonesia.

In addition, shipping fee is also an important factor. Among the four websites, zipia is the cheapest. However, thinking of zipia’s ridiculously high prices of goods, it is not a good choice.

Yesstyle set a package shipping fee of $14, which only suit for the small parcels with 4 or 5 clothes, but clothes are too experience. Shipping fee of fashion wholesale is relatively reasonable. The first weight 500 grams needs $9.99, added weight 500 g $1.99, and if you order more than 10 kg, only need 4 dollars per Kg. So the advantages of wholesale are obvious. Asia-fashion-wholesale’s shipping fee is the highest, to Indonesians the first weight 500 grams of $10.6, added weight 500 grams $3.4, and their parcel delivery speed is really slow. In fact, asia-fashion-wholesale is the worst in delivery.

Summarization: Selecting the right supplier
In fact, the cost and quality of wholesale resources is very important for the wholesalers and retailers. From several months of non-stop attempt, I have learned to shop around. Taking pricing, product quality, delivery cost and delivery speed into comparison. Therefore, the fifth time, I directly chose fashion wholesale and bought 65 clothes. Product price, coupled with DHL's delivery charge is only $ 605.9. From my different shopping online experiences, I learned that although fashion wholesale’s goods are not the cheapest, but their delivery service and speed are the best. In my fifth purchase, the fashion wholesale customer service told me that they are 24-hour online. Even though the island of Java and China have no time lag problems, but it is very good for us who do business during the day, shopping online at night.


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