Online Shopping Reviews

Preparing for Christmas 2012: Take Advantage of Thanksgiving Day Sales

This year, Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 22, 2012 in the United States. It is only two weeks away! As a day for expressing or showing our deepest thanks, Thanksgiving itself seems rather irrelevant to promotional activities held by various stores. However, the holiday is often used by merchants as an important event to boost their revenues or to kick off their Christmas sales.

The fact that Thanksgiving Day precedes Black Friday further enhances its commercial value. Traditionally regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days in the USA. It is all known that stores tend to release the biggest discounts of the year on that day in order to attract customers. But did you know that you may be able to get the same good deals on Thanksgiving Day, without waiting until the next day to snap up the bargains? If you didn’t, it is not late – it is no longer a secret to you now and you may make huge savings by taking advantage of all kinds of Thanksgiving Day 2012 deals.

Image courtesy of Priceangels.com

Seriously, if you are preparing gifts for this Christmas, you should really take a good look at the Thanksgiving Day specials available at different online shops. Oh, I almost forget to mention that by shopping Thanksgiving deals on the internet, you don’t need to rush into the stores in the crazy crowd to seize the Black Friday deals.

The only tricky thing is: you may need to dig out some useful information on where to get the best Thanksgiving bargains online. This is exactly the reason why I am writing this post. I noticed that lots of Chinese shopping websites have been launching their 2012 Thanksgiving Day sales for global buyers. Compared with local stores based in the USA, the UK, Canada and other American or European countries or regions, global online stores based in China generally release specials for a particular holiday much earlier as international shipping takes a while. Shipping time ranges from 3 days to 30 days based on shipping methods or product types. I’ve compiled a list of Thanksgiving promotions on-going at some popular China-based online stores for your reference (see below). Continue reading Preparing for Christmas 2012: Take Advantage of Thanksgiving Day Sales

Guide for Individual Shoppers: Where to Get Best Christmas 2012 Deals

Christmas is next month! Have you started planning your Christmas shopping list? I guess you might want to know where to get the best deals for the biggest festival of the year. In late September we’ve posted a Christmas shopping guide for merchants at our site (click here to read the post). Here I would like to share some reliable online destinations where individual consumers can buy Christmas gifts, Christmas decorations and any other Christmas supplies at super low prices. By the way, they are all based in China.

Did you know that today many consumers choose to shop straight from China for best savings? Especially for holiday shopping, made-in-China products are very popular among global buyers, including both re-sellers and end consumers. Unbeatable pricing is no doubt their biggest attraction. At the same time, the huge variety of products to choose from makes Chinese online stores the most ideal places for shopping. When it comes to quality standards, although some people are worried about the quality of products made in the country, most customers feel satisfactory about the quality after they receive the goods from online Chinese suppliers. The most common review regarding this topic is: they are good quality for the pricing.

In the past, Chinese international wholesale businesses and retail businesses are separated from each other. Generally, merchants would trade with wholesalers while end consumers do business with retailers. Actually there were very few China-based online retail stores before 2008. In recent years, as internet technology and e-commerce develop fast, cross-border transactions can be made in a much easier way and more and more Chinese wholesale and retail stores emerge. Besides, the traditional wholesale business model is now being seriously challenged by the new one: Chinese suppliers are selling products at wholesale prices for orders of small quantities, as small as 1 piece per order. That is to say, now even wholesale shopping websites are open to individual shoppers.

Based on my findings, lots of Chinese stores combine wholesale business and retail business while focusing on wholesaling or retailing. For consumers, we don’t need to identify which stores run which type of business. What we really need to know is where we can get the best prices. The first and foremost thing is to find out trustful stores which have gained good reputation on the global market and provide quality products as well as satisfactory service. Then, just stick to the pricing and you will be able to shop for what you want on a happy budget.

Below I will introduce some of the best-rated Chinese online shopping sites that fit individual customers like you, in terms of major categories they carry. Continue reading Guide for Individual Shoppers: Where to Get Best Christmas 2012 Deals

Get Coupon Code Information Before You Shop from A Store

The Secret of Making Savings from Online Shopping

Shopping Online
Image Courtesy of Google

Today online shopping is very common and simply by clicking the mouse, people can get items delivered to their door. In accordance with the development of internet shopping, coupon codes have become a widely used method for merchants to promote their products via the internet. But not every consumer knows this secret. As a result, those who have the habit to search for coupon codes before they shop from any store make savings again and again, while those who do not even know about the means lose the chance to save their costs.

How to Find a Coupon Code?

Coupon Codes for Savings
Image Courtesy of Google

Anyway, for modern people, especially for those who care about coupon codes and promotions and making savings on their purchases, it is a necessity to get the discount information before ordering the items they want. Actually, it is super easy to get such information. Continue reading Get Coupon Code Information Before You Shop from A Store

What to Benefit from Registering with DHgate.com?

DHgate.com is a well-known China-based online wholesale website. Every day, millions of global buyers and Chinese sellers are trading with each other there. Founded in 2004, DHgate now boasts over 10 million product listings from more than 100,000 dedicated Chinese suppliers. Also, DHgate’s registered buyers cover more than 230 countries worldwide, including the US, Europe, Australia, Canada, etc.

Registration with DHgate.com is fast and free. It will take you only 1 minute to finish the whole registration process. After you sign up as a DHgate member, you will be able to:

1. Be first to get alerts on promos, coupons, new arrivals, hot products and more special offers from DHgate.com and its suppliers

2. Buy any volume of any item at most competitive wholesale price — even sample items are offered at low wholesale prices on DHgate.com

3. Trade with small and medium-sized Chinese suppliers under DHgate’s payment protection system: Escrow

4. Get professional customer service

5. Enjoy even more priviledges after your purchase volume reaches a certain amount, which will upgrade you into Bronze, Silver or Gold buyer (all for free)

To sign up with DHgate.com now, go visit www.dhgate.com.

Shop Online from China but Get the Goods from Your Local Warehouses

If you want to purchase something from China but you have too many concerns to start the venture, I would encourage you to consider some overseas programs launched by reliable online Chinese shops such as Dinodirect.com (reviewed here), Focalprice.com (reviewed here) or Priceangels.com (reviewed here).

In recent years, more and more online wholesalers or retailers based in China rent overseas warehouses by cooperating with local partners who help them manage the warehousing and shipping. This is definitely a win-win solution to suppliers and buyers.

How It Works

Generally, the Chinese online shops that use such a program are international retailers or wholesalers targeting small and medium-sized merchants. They sign contracts with the warehouses positioning in the overseas land and use the most cost-effective shipping method – ocean shipping to send a ton of different items to the warehouses first. After the goods are stocked there, the stores start to list them online for sale. Once you order an item that is available at the local warehouse, their partners will manage the delivery within one business day and you will get it in a few days only.

Pros & Cons

Shopping things from Chinese suppliers’ local warehouses has much more pros than cons. The biggest disadvantage is: the variety or the quantity of products is usually very limited. When you browse the catalog of products available at the overseas warehouse of some website, you often find that it is not that easy to find exactly what you want. This is due to the fact that suppliers only select the hottest-selling products for the overseas warehouses in order to minimize risks or costs.

Continue reading Shop Online from China but Get the Goods from Your Local Warehouses

Tips on How to Save Money from Deals Offered by Chinese Sites

If you choose to use Chinese sites to shop for cheap products, you are always encouraged to check out the latest promotions in order to further reduce your cost. So the first and foremost important thing is, to get yourself empowered with the knowledge about when and where to find out the offers at the stores you are interested in. Here are some tips to help you out.

Holidays, Festivals & Events

Pay great attention to the big shopping seasons, usually internationally observed holidays or festivals, including Christmas, Halloween, New Year, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Boxing Day, Black Friday, Thanksgiving Day and more. Stores never miss out these important opportunities to boost their sales volumes as well as revenues so they tend to offer deepest discounts on the widest range of products for sell at their sites.

In addition to the widely known international holidays or shopping seasons, some tradition Chinese festivals may also be their promotional events. Seize such chances and you may find astonishing deals. For instance, many China-based trading companies launch promotions during the Chinese Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year), the most important festival of the year for the Chinese people. In the Chinese culture, the New Year means the new start and merchants like to offer specials to attract orders. They believe it is a good way to bring them luck. By doing so, they kick off their new journey to gaining success.

Continue reading Tips on How to Save Money from Deals Offered by Chinese Sites