Hi, I am a blogger with millions of fans, and I teach people how to negotiate with Chinese suppliers. I am happy to share my experience with supplyia and love it when someone asks intelligent questions.
First of all, if you are running a business in scale, especially for 2021, open doors on a bigger market, you need to relieve yourself from the day to day sourcing work, your focus should be on branding and business development.
For the sourcing agent, it is really hard to find a good one, and it takes me a long time to weigh the pros and cons of recommending someone.
Regarding Supplyia, I will try to share my experience:
1. Their commission. Based on my experience, they mark up 5%-10% depending on the type of products and the buying quantity.
2. The kickback. Ok, let me start with how I knew this company in the first place. I first knew Jay’s wife, she is a Ph.D. in the optical major at U of R, and got recruited to a top optical glass company in New York. Then I got to know her husband Jay and Jay’s partner Yixiao, who run a sourcing company with jay together in China. Based on what I know about them on a personal level, I can guarantee that they don’t run their business based on kickbacks.
I am not sure if I should share this, Jay and his family are strong-faithed Christians (kinda odd for Chinese, but it is true). We talk a lot of faith, spirituality kind of stuff when we chat.
3. Trade Assurance. For the majority of people who watch my youtube videos, new to sourcing, I will always recommend them to use the trade assurance. But if you use a sourcing agent, there is no way around it.
Honestly speaking, Alibaba is for small businesses to get their feet wet. 80% of the world business has nothing to do with Alibaba. All transactions are business to business transfers. If you find suppliers through Canton Fair, most of them are not on Alibaba either.
I think you are safe with Supplyia, if things go wrong, they will fix it. Their customer base is in Japan. Very picky customers. They do 100% inspection for the customers. That is how they built their business.
P.S. For our students group, I specifically asked Supplyia to sign the NNN upfront first. This is not in their practice, but they agreed to do that for everyone in the group so we can feel assured about the design protection.
My thought:
I don’t think we can ever find a Perfect sourcing agent, we just need to find a capable and Trusted sourcing agent. To me, the owners’ personal characters matter the most.
Good luck , you are the best! I wish nothing but break throughs in 2021. It is a big year, we all root for your success!
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