Category: China Shopping Sites

Be honest, I had never heard of Bywholesale.com until one day I was asked to review the Chinese jewelry shopping site at my blog. People leave questions in the comment boxes, requesting me to help review or confirm on the legitimacy of a certain China site quite frequently but I don’t always have time to do the favor. Anyway, the site Bywholesale.com raised my interest instantly simply because its domain name sounds quite special and impressive. Below I will share my findings about this site just as a reference to those who are interested in shopping jewelry from them or from any other Chinese wholesale websites.

Website Legitimacy

Before you trade with a site, you should first of all check if it is legit or fraudulent. Also, see if it is infected with fishing, malware or fraud. You know, safety is the most important thing when it comes to online shopping.

Based on my research, Bywholesale.com seem to have all the certificates that can prove they are legitimate, including organization code certificate and tax registration certificate, but I can’t confirm whether they are true or not. One thing I am pretty sure is: their McAfee and Norton Secured logos are not clickable, which may mean the site is not really supervised or verified by the two authoritative website security certification providers.

A plus point of Bywholesale.com is: they indicate clearly their contact details on their website. Besides email address and phone number, they also provide a detailed office address. They are based in Guangzhou, China. I checked the legitimacy of the address and it does exist. They claim they have their own factory and showcase the pictures of the warehouse and workshop at their site. You can ask to visit them if you have a chance to visit the city. Generally, those welcome you to pay them a visit are more likely to be trustworthy.

Continue reading Bywholesale Review: Company Info, Real Customer Reviews & Similar Sites

In early 2010, a friend mentioned to me FocalPrice.com and asked whether I know this electronic gadget online store or not. My answer was “No.”. To be honest, at that time my focus was all on giant e-commerce websites like Lightinthebox.com and AliExpress.com. The friend told me FocalPrice is widely known among stores around Huaqiangbei, the famous trading centre of consumer electronics, computing products and communications products (3C) in the Shenzhen city. Months ago, I started to extend my attention to smaller China-based international shopping sites and have posted reviews of some such sites. Below is what I’ve learnt about FocalPrice.com.

Created by Peiliang Li at his early 20’s in 2008, the customer base of FocalPrice grew quickly as the young man has already developed plenty of customers with his team at eBay. Many small and medium-sized Chinese foreign trade websites have similar stories. They are established because their founders are no longer satisfied with the success they have achieved at eBay as big sellers – they want their own websites to further expand their businesses. However, not all such sites turn out successful. FocalPrice is one of the few that survive well. It earns huge revenues every year and it never needs to attract any venture capital to keep itself go on.

FocalPrice specializes in the 3C product lines and offers a variety of electronic gadgets to global buyers. Popular items there include accessories for Apple devices (iPhone4, iPhone 4S, iPad, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, Mac, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, iPod classic), made-in-China cell phones, Chinese featured tablet PCs and laptops and accessories, car accessories and lots more. Both wholesale and retail orders are accepted and dropshipping service is available. When it comes to the China wholesale electronic market, FocalPrice is ranked the third in my personal list, following DinoDirect.com (see DinoDirect Review) and ChinaVasion.com (see ChinaVasion Review).

If the complete collection of electronic gadgets is one big reason for the great success FocalPrice.com has made, the competitive pricing should be another equally big reason. Generally, the prices FocalPrice offers are 10%-17% lower than market wholesale prices (and times lower than market retail prices). The fact that most of FocalPrice’s cooperative suppliers come from Huaqiangbei well explains why the site is able to offer such low factory prices. As I mentioned above, Huaqiangbei is the hub of electronic shops. Almost every shop there has one or more factories behind. By building long-term business relationships with such shops, FocalPrice can always get the bottom manufacturing prices in order to enhance its own competitive capacities. As I know, the supplier network of FocalPrice is extremely huge.

Go to Focalprice.com >>

When it comes to the China wholesale market, it is interesting to mention that some of the wholesale shopping websites are making huge revenues every year while they may not be widely known in the arena. In particular, three names are the best representatives: DinoDirect.com, DealExtreme.com and ChinaVasion.com. I have introduced some basic facts about Chinavasion in a previous post (See ChinaVasion Review), and here I would like to share my findings of DinoDirect.com.

 

Business Model

DinoDirect.com adopts a special business model. It looks like a transaction platform as you can find supplier information on the product description pages. However, the website handles orders through its own order processing system and keeps a number of warehouses in the United States, Canada and other countries or regions. I was stunningly impressed by its advanced warehouse management system – it’s hard to find another wholesale site that has the same good warehouses.

Offices, Warehouses, Brands & Products

Based on my knowledge, DinoDirect is owned by DinoDirect China Limited and has a head office in Chongqing, Sichuan Province. Their major warehouse is located in Shenzhen — based on the latest report, the city’s foreign trade volume is the biggest in Chin this year. Besides, it has 10 branch offices in different countries and regions. The products sent to buyers are basically from its overseas warehouses.

Continue reading DinoDirect Review: A China Wholesaler or A China Wholesale Transaction Platform?

Headquartered in Chongqing, Sichuan Province, the Chinese shopping site has two domestic branch offices in Shenzhen and Xi’an. Meanwhile, they also own three branches that are not located in the mainland China: Hong Kong office, UK office and Singapore office. Their major warehouse is located in Shenzhen, the manufacturing hub of consumer electronics and other products. They also have a warehouse specialized in stocking made-in-China tablet PCs from various Chinese brands in the United States, which targets US customers only.

Just similar to the famous Chinese domestic online supermarket 360buy.com, Dinodirect.com carries a very vast array of products covering all fields, including apparel & accessories, shoes, handbags, computers & networking, cell phones & accessories, jewelry & watches, video games, books and much more. They are a little bit like Aliexpress.com in terms of product range. The biggest different lies in the business models they adopt. While Aliexpress.com is a transaction platform offering service for both buyers and sellers, Dinodirect.com is itself a super big store with a huge warehouse and handles all pre-sales and after-sales issues by their own staff. Each product is stocked into their warehouse after quality verification and sent to buyers also the second quality check. By doing that, they have everything under control and quality is thus better guaranteed. That is their very attraction, I guess.

As for company credibility, I tend to put Dinodirect.com into the same rank of Lightinthebox.com and Dealextreme.com. The three use the same business model and are definitely the leaders in the Chinese online foreign trade market. Their difference: Lightinthebox is best known for fashion and accessories, Dealextreme for electronic gadgets but Dinodirect for a variety of products including their hottest categories like women’s clothing, men’s clothing, tablet PCs, cell phones Continue reading About Dinodirect.com: Key Information that Can Help You Explore the Nature of Dinodirect

I often see comments left at my site questioning with anxiety why the addresses the Chinese sites use to send their orders are different from their office addresses introduced at my site. They were wondering if they had encountered a scammer and asking for my help to confirm on the real facts. Actually many China-based international shopping sites have their own warehouses in the destination countries or regions – the most common places are the United States, the UK and Hong Kong.

Focalprice.com, the online electronics store whose office is in Shenzhen, China, have a warehouse based in Manchester, the United Kingdom. Their UK warehouse has a rather independent shopping system with an exclusive domain name Mixwall.co.uk. You can find the access to the UK shopping site at the left navigation area of their main site homepage. If you want to shop with their UK warehouse, you need to create an account at the Mixwall.co.uk first. It seems you can’t use your Focalprice account to place an order at the UK site. I don’t understand why. Maybe they are doing this for better management. But honestly, I personally don’t think it good for user experience, how about you?

The UK channel of Focalprice.com do not carry as many categories as the main site do. Anyway, it does have quite a wide range of products across Apple accessories, cell phones, home & outdoor, toys & hobbies and electronics. Free shipping is available sitewide so you don’t have to worry about the shipping fee. Besides UK, Mixwall.co.uk also ship to other countries or regions of the whole Europe including Russia. This means US customers or buyers from other continents are not allowed to order with the site.

As all the products are already stocked in the UK warehouse, it takes only 2-5 business days for the orders to arrive at the destinations based on the shipping method you choose. For Royal mail & Register Royal mail, the site guarantee that the orders will arrive within 3 working days including Saturday; for Next Day Delivery, they promise the package will be delivered to your door before 10 p.m. on the next working day.

Continue reading Overseas Warehouses of Chinese Sites: About Focalprice UK Warehouse