Using e-Commerce and Social Media Sites as Stepping Stones to Export Success
Right now there is a prime opportunity for all of us to change the rules of the game through e-commerce and shift the balance in favor of entrepreneurs like you. The Internet levels the playing field and gives everyone—be they big or small—a chance.
—Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba1
Artist Gina Ayers Signore has been interested in art her whole life. She remembers drawing and painting when she was five years old. Today, she sells her artwork on her own Web site, Dahlia House Art Studio (www.dahliahousestudios.com), as well as on Etsy, Zazzle, and Art.com. Is it a bad idea for Gina to sell her artwork on another company’s e-commerce platform that takes a small slice of her profits? Not at all.
Selling Goods, Services, and Unique Creations Online
Whether you are like Gina and sell art or you sell hamburger buns or steam engines, using a proven e-commerce platform is beneficial, provided its visitors are in line with your ideal target market, it is easy to use, it has a global reach, and it can help you sell more goods worldwide at a profit. It also allows you to test the salability of your product on someone else’s proven successful infrastructure before making a substantial investment to set up an e-commerce site from scratch. Not all buy-sell platforms will work to your advantage, but with a little effort, you can try out the top ones with minimal risk by creating multiple store fronts simultaneously.
Caution Not all the popular e-commerce channels have the international part down pat. Some marketplaces charge a monthly fee; some don’t. Some claim they ship worldwide, yet at the same time, they state restrictions may apply based on if the company has a physical international presence in your location. When it gets confusing is at the point where a shopping-cart feature does not properly reflect customs duties for internationally bound packages. Don’t be intimidated or overwhelmed. Just as you are learning the export ropes, so are these e-commerce platforms learning them on the international front. Read the fine print on each site, and when in doubt, contact the company for additional assistance.
In getting started, you might want to set up a PayPal account to receive payments if you don’t already have one (http://www.paypal.com). Your customers, on the other hand, can pay you without creating a PayPal account. Most online stores process payments through credit cards, verified bank accounts, and PayPal.2 (Refer to Chapter 20 for more on methods of payment.)
Let’s take a look at the most common e-commerce marketplaces that can serve as a stepping stone to exporting and allow you to get your products in front of the largest number of potential customers worldwide. I include Facebook, even though it is not an e-commerce site per se but rather what’s now called an “f-commerce platform” (the site has a storefront on its pages and apps). I include it because of its connectivity power and global reach.
Note Test the digital-storefront waters for a short period of time—say six months to a year—and then decide whether the work you put into it is commensurate with the additional business you receive. If you find you are selling products like hotcakes on one site and in one specific overseas market, that is a sign there is customer demand for your products! At that point, it’s probably time to make a decision to set up your own e-commerce system so that you can pocket all the profits vs. just a portion. Like any new venture, you must market the heck out of each e-marketplace through your own social channels. How else will you be discovered?
Online Storefronts: Cash in at World Marketplaces
The following online storefronts—all US based except for Alibaba.com—are considered the most popular. Most are used primarily for selling products, not services (except for Amazon, where you can sell intellectual work in the form of a white papers, books, or e-books).
Don’t get discouraged by the lack of e-service representation. If you are exporting services, revisit Chapter 4, because many of the freelancer and independent-contractor Web sites that I talked about—such as Guru, Elance, and oDesk—can be useful not just for finding freelancers and independent contractors but also for marketing and exporting your own services. Review all applicable fees because they will vary on each project and on the type of membership you choose. Another option to bring attention to your services is to run paid ads on Facebook3 or on Google (using AdWords,4 for example) based on keywords related to your business (refer to Chapters 6 and 10).
Tip Begin with the end in mind. At the same time that you are eagerly opening a store, find out how to close a store or cancel your subscription. Find out if there are any penalties or additional fees associated with the termination of your account. Can you do a redirect to a new site location (such as your own Web site or blog) when people attempt to reach you at your old location?
Amazon
When it opened in 1995, Amazon (http://www.amazon.com) was the world’s biggest online bookseller, and that alone. Since then, Amazon has transformed itself into “the Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”5
Amazon has gone from being a simple Web site, to an e-commerce and publishing partner, to a sophisticated development platform. Some of the properties it owns include Audible (http://www.audible.com/mt/anon-home; offers downloadable audio books); AfterSchool.com (http://www.afterschool.com/; sells kids’ sports equipment, footwear, dance, and crafts); Woot (http://www.woot.com/; features new deals every day); CASA.com (http://www.casa.com/; selling kitchen and storage items and everything for the home); Zappos (http://www.zappos.com/; sells shoes and clothing); and CreateSpace (http://www.createspace.com; indie print publishing made easy), to name just a few.
Amazon helps sellers reach customers in eight countries spanning across Europe, North America, and Asia. In addition to the United States, Amazon has Web sites for doing business in Brazil (http://www.amazon.com.br); Canada (http://www.amazon.ca); China (http://www.amazon.cn); France (http://www.amazon.fr); Germany (http://www.amazon.de); Italy (http://www.amazon.it); Japan (http://www.amazon.co.jp); Spain (http://www.amazon.es); and the United Kingdom (http://www.amazon.co.uk). And the company continues to add countries to help sellers expand internationally.6 When you set up your account, each overseas marketplace requires a different account, except for the EU!
Tip In deciding whether to go with one of Amazon’s local sites, determine if your products are in demand in that overseas markets. Do you have the staff to support these areas—particularly that speaks the native language of the country you wish to conduct business in? Is this country selection in line with your export business plan developed earlier?
People from all over the world can shop at Amazon using a credit card or a verified bank account for payment. That means that if you sell on Amazon, your product can be purchased with ease. Amazon makes it user friendly for the buyer, by placing prices in the home currency of each site.
Setting up Your Own Amazon Marketplace
When you set up your own marketplace on Amazon, you have the potential to get in front of a huge potential volume of traffic—tens of millions of customers. Selling on Amazon requires you do to do a simple five-step process:
- List your items
- Get orders
- Ship
- Get paid
- Process refunds and returns
Amazon offers a training guide, “Getting Started Guide: How to Get Set Up Selling on Amazon,”7 where you can check off tasks as you complete them.
Caution Amazon does not offer a language translation service. That is your responsibility. If you only have an English-speaking staff and want to sell to China through Amazon’s China site (http://www.amazon.cn), for instance, you’d better get a Chinese-speaking person on staff to handle that part of your business, including writing the listings to sell your products!
Amazon.com ships orders worldwide with Amazon Global. Items can be shipped to a long list of countries, but bear in mind that this does not necessarily mean Amazon has fulfillment capabilities in each of these countries. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) picks, packs, and ships inventory on your behalf.
Amazon only has fulfillment centers located in: China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They, however, ship to the all of following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela.8
To see if the items you are interested in selling on Amazon are included for global shipping, do a search for “items eligible for international shipping” at the Amazon site. Product lines, shipping rates, and fees vary depending on the delivery address, so be mindful of that when you conduct your search.
For certain eligible countries, Amazon Global offers customers estimations on customs duties and clearance, taxes, and import fees applicable during checkout. These expenses vary greatly from country to country and region to region. Amazon Marketplace sellers should check the site’s policies to ensure their product is covered, determine what fees will be levied on their shipment, and find out who will be responsible for these additional expenses. (Typically, it is up to the recipient of the product to pay these costs.)
Tip Consult your tax accountant and attorney on Amazon Global to find out the tax consequences, if any, to your business of using their services. It also can’t hurt to also consult with your entire export dream team to get its wise counsel.
Amazon Marketplace: The Full Monty
You can sell to the world in two ways on the Amazon Marketplace—professionally (as a business) or individually.9 If you are looking to sell only a few products (fewer than forty items a month) or a one-off item as a test, sign up for an individual account because there is no monthly fee. You pay only when the item sells. The marketplace approach helps you avoid the time and costs of developing a stand-alone Web site on your own.
When you sell on Amazon, you also have the ability to use one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers (serving the eight countries mentioned earlier) and shipping capabilities, which give you the tools you need to grow your business but without ever letting you know who is buying your product (yes, you read that right). You very rarely know who your customers are and thus lose the opportunity to tailor your offerings to their evolving needs. By putting your products in someone else’s hands, you are a step removed from the actual sales transaction. Hence, it will be hard to redirect your efforts accordingly should you decide to take back control and sell directly. The fulfillment part is also tricky. For example, if you have inventory that is located in a different country than one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers, you will need to export your products from the source country and import them into the destination country. You should consult with Amazon on the best way to do this, as the company has strict procedures for how shipments must be received. These include the size of pallets you use and the type of carrier you use. There are monthly costs and other selling fees associated when you sign up.10
Before you do anything, check to see whether your product is permitted for sale on Amazon within its selling categories. Then, calculate all costs—the wholesale price of your product, shipping costs, handling fees, taxes, duties, payment service fees, and Amazon’s fees and other related selling costs—to determine if you will make a profit on each item you sell overseas. After you look at your profit, ask yourself: is it worth it? To save money, you can opt out of the shipping option and do it on your own through a private carrier. This ensures that you have greater control over all aspects of the transaction, including knowing who your customers are. You also know who to contact if something isn’t working. It’s your choice.
Amazon Webstore: E-Commerce Store and Shopping Cart Solution
The Amazon Webstore (http://services.amazon.com/content/webstore-by-amazon.htm?ld=SCWBAStriplogin) is a one-stop e-commerce shop that enables you to build and operate a profitable online store within Amazon to sell to the world. You can leverage Amazon’s infrastructure to build your online store on a solid and secure platform (it may require help from a designer to make it look visually attractive), utilize Amazon’s fulfillment, and tap into its expertise on an as-needed basis. Monthly subscription and per-transaction fees apply and vary greatly. Be sure to read the fine print.
Caution The biggest obvious downside to partnering with Amazon is that you will essentially compete against it on everything related to your product. If you sell jewelry and Amazon does too (which it does), you compete against the company for customer attention and acquisition. And, if Amazon raises your rates or decides to offer a product similar to yours at a lower price, guess whose ads will be next to yours? Go into this with your eyes wide open!
Founded in 1995, eBay (http://www.ebay.com) is the world’s leading e-commerce company and helps individuals and small businesses sell their products worldwide. The company’s global portfolio of businesses including PayPal enables hundreds of millions of diverse and passionate people to buy, sell, and pay online. According to eBay, “In 2011, the total value of goods sold on eBay was $68.6 billion—more than $2,100 every second.”11
You can buy or sell individual or multiple items on eBay. If you are selling multiple items on an ongoing basis, you’ll probably want to start your own storefront, where buyers can learn about you and the products you sell. When you list an item on eBay (known as a business-to-consumer—B2C—sale), you’re charged a listing (or insertion) fee. Insertion fees are charged per listing, per category regardless of the quantity of items. If the item sells, you’re charged a “Final value fee.” Final value fees are calculated based on the total amount of the sale. The total amount of the sale is the final price of the item, shipping charges, and any other amounts you may charge the buyer. Sales tax is not included.
Every item gets its own unique listing. You may need to pay extra for an upgrade or supplemental service, such as international site visibility, which attracts buyers from other countries by showing your item in search results on other eBay Web sites. These supplemental features, including global shipping charges, will be included on your seller invoice as fees.
The site currently ships to about twenty-six countries, requiring you to ship your items domestically to one of eBay’s US shipping centers. Some items are restricted (e.g., antiques, vintage collectibles, and real estate) due to export limitations and restrictions identified by designated global shipping providers. Other items have general restrictions, like child pornography, tobacco, and perishable items, for example. To give yourself the best chance of success selling through eBay, review its best practices (http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/sellingresources/bestpractices.html) on how to attract more international buyers to your listings. One best-practice tip from eBay is to ship an item only after the buyer has paid. See Chapter 20 for methods of payment. Be sure to also thoroughly read eBay’s “Global Shipping Program: Seller Terms & Conditions.”12
Note The devil is in the details. In your listing, the buyer sees an estimate of the international shipping charges and the import charge. At checkout, she is presented with the final charges, which include the cost of the item, the international shipping charges, and the import charge. The international shipping charges include any US-shipping costs as well as program fees, third-party international shipping charges, fuel surcharges, and processing and handling fees. The import charge includes applicable customs duties, taxes, and third-party brokerage.
When you sell more than fifty listings a month on eBay, it’s time to consider opening an eBay store—an e-commerce solution that helps you leverage the eBay marketplace and tap the millions of buyers worldwide who shop on eBay. You can classify your account as a business or an individual, should you want to test the waters discreetly on a solo basis. The site allows you to enter your current selling activity into what is called the Fee Illustrator to determine which eBay store subscription best fits your needs. If you meet the requirements to open a store, eBay makes it easy to get started. Any items you currently sell individually on eBay automatically become a part of your eBay store.
With your store comes exclusive marketing and merchandising tools from eBay plus customization features to build a strong brand. By staging all of your products in one central location, an eBay store creates a one-stop shop where buyers can learn more about you and your products. The site also provides demarcation by way of placing a red store tag next to your user ID to indicate you have an eBay store.
When you open an eBay store, you pay a monthly store subscription fee, which becomes effective immediately. Your next seller invoice will include a prorated fee for the number of days between your subscription date and the end of that month as well as subscription fees for the following month. Fees range anywhere from $15.95 to $299.95 per month based on your needs and the benefits of each subscription. Store fees can change by way of company directives and other related fees may apply, such as PayPal and seller tool fees.13 Always read the fine print on eBay when it comes to your costs. And it can’t hurt to e-mail or call customer support to confirm your understanding.
The benefit to using eBay is the opportunity to brand your store, receive payment through PayPal, and sell internationally, where eBay has a far-greater reach than other sites in general.
Etsy
Conceived in early 2005, Etsy (http://www.etsy.com) is a vibrant handmade marketplace with more than 18 million items listed, supporting a community of more than 25 million members and spanning nearly two hundred countries. Etsy receives more than 1.5 billion monthly page views, has 1.8 million Twitter followers, and has earned 1 million Facebook likes. It’s also global. The company says one-third of its transactions involve buyers or sellers who live outside the United States. Users on Etsy sell everything from handmade goods to vintage items and art supplies, with many professional artists using the site to make a living.
With Etsy, you can enhance and grow your brand by acquiring new customers, using built-in promotional tools, and becoming a part of a vibrant online community to help form relationships and gain mentors. There are no membership fees with Etsy. It costs twenty cents to list an item until it sells. Once you sell your item, Etsy collects a 3.5 percent fee on the sale price.
When you create an account, you can sign up using Facebook or your full name. Before you list a product for sale, Etsy highlights the fees you will be charged in order to inform you of what your net profit will be. As a shop owner, you are sent a bill at the end of every month containing the fees you owe. You have until the middle of the following month to pay it. Buyers can purchase products with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover Card, or PayPal.
Although more than a third of Etsy’s buy-sell transactions take place outside of the United States, there are still technical challenges or legal requirements that prohibit the global launch of all of Etsy’s features. A full translation of your shop’s features and your listings is one such example. Etsy is rolling out a direct checkout method, which will offer you the ability to make deposits and payments in additional currencies and add additional payment methods on top of credit cards, such as real-time bank transfers, eWallets, and local debit cards—solving the problem of how to efficiently get paid after you sell your wares online.
Like a lot of e-commerce platforms, perfecting the global end of transactions for Etsy continues to be a challenge and work in progress. If your desire is to easily cross boundaries on someone else’s e-commerce platform, it is better to find out in advance if it is feasible before you invest your time and energy using Etsy.
CafePress
Dubbed the world’s customization engine, CafePress (http://www.CafePress.com) began in 1999 as a nifty little idea—to apply printing and technology innovation to make it easier for people to express themselves on T-shirts. This expression has led to people quickly becoming e-commerce entrepreneurs with no risk and no overhead. As of this writing, there were more than 2 million CafePress shops, which have created around 300 million unique products. The company boasts that more than 135,000 new designs are added each week. “Plus, there’s an ever-growing reseller market. Together, over 6 million products are being printed and shipped each year. And over 11 million people visit [CafePress] sites each month to find products that express their personality.”14
Some of the brands CafePress currently manages are: CafePress.com, Canvas On Demand, Great Big Canvas, Imagekind, InvitationBox.com, and Canvas On Demand Pro.
In 2011, CafePress announced the launch of its international expansion strategy, seeking to bring the online marketplace to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.15 The company says, “These international communities can now view prices in their local currency, benefit from new and speedier shipping options, and view designs and products relevant to their respective locales.” The one thing I didn’t notice in CafePress’s fourth-quarter fiscal-year 2012 results is any breakout of international sales figures. Nevertheless, the company claims that international users will have the ability to easily switch from one country to another through a convenient drop-down navigation bar, which will apparently allow sellers and users to reach the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia with their wares.
CafePress makes it easy enough to open a shop on the Web site—it’s free. There are no up-front fees, but, as is the case with all the online marketplaces, the site takes a piece of your selling price as profit. You create the idea for the product or choose one of the company’s, choose what type of product you are selling, pick your retail price, and CafePress prints your product on demand when customers order it. CafePress also handles the fulfillment on the transaction.
Note If you have funds to invest and are serious about becoming an international e-commerce entrepreneur, get your personalized products printed by a third party, carry inventory, and start selling them in your own online store. That way, you pocket all the profits. If you don’t want to fuss with the production side of the business and don’t have a dime to throw into your creative endeavor, stick with CafePress!
Zazzle
Zazzle (http://www.zazzle.com), established in 1999, is considered the world’s leading quality custom-products platform. You can upload images and create your own merchandise (see my store, the Global Small Business Depot, at http://www.zazzle.com/laureldelaney) or buy merchandise created by others. It does not cost you anything to open a Zazzle store, and you can customize your store to meet your design standards. Pricing is determined by you and includes an option to select your royalty rate, ranging from 10 percent to 99 percent. For Zazzle to pay you the royalty you select, it must increase the product price by a commensurate amount. On royalties of 20 percent or greater, a 5 percent transaction fee applies. Be careful not to raise the royalty so high that you price a product right out of the ballpark. For example, you wouldn’t want to try to get a 99 percent royalty by selling a T-shirt at $50! Keep the customer in mind: what are they willing to spend on a product like yours? A good royalty range is generally 12 percent.
Zazzle International (http://www.zazzle.com/international) spans four continents and includes seventeen countries, allowing users to shop in their native language and pay in their local currency.
Zazzle ships worldwide and takes anywhere from two to seven days when you use express shipping or four to twenty-one days for standard shipping. If you choose United States Postal Service for your international shipments, do not expect to receive any tracking method. It’s only when you use Zazzle’s primary couriers (UPS or FedEx) that you can track the status of your shipments. The site indicates that international packages can be delayed for reasons ranging from customs inspections to the standard delivery times of local mail services.
As with Amazon, there are some big distinctions on what Zazzle ships worldwide free and clear of taxes and customs fees and what it doesn’t. For example, in the case of orders placed through the site’s international portals, “the local tax and customs fees are covered by Zazzle. Separate customs charges will not apply unless the order is shipped outside of the region covered by the portal’s distinct agreement with the local customs office.”16
You will be paid by check on the products you sell. If you prefer, Zazzle will transfer your earnings to a PayPal account. You can also use your earnings to buy other items but that defeats the purpose of building of revenue stream, which generates sustainable profits over the long term.
Check all tools that are available on the site to help sell your products—including the Facebook Merchant Store, a blog panel, and the Zazzle-zBar branding tool that reduces the size of the standard site header on your page to provide you with more space to highlight your own store branding. All of these work to enhance your brand. Leave no stone unturned in finding out Zazzle’s true global reach.
Launched in 2004, Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) is the world’s largest social network with more than one billion users. It connects people with friends and others who work, study, or live around them. People use the site to keep up with friends and to promote their businesses globally.
With Facebook, individuals can build a page and businesses can create ads that will help promote any page you select, and reach your current as well as potential customers worldwide. The goal for the pages is twofold—to get more page likes and to promote page posts. If you have an idea of the ideal customer you want to target, you can choose the audience for your ad.
For example, if you sell kitchen aprons and want to sell to people age eighteen to thirty-five who reside in Germany and are in the broad category of cooking, you can select the demographics that you want to reach. Facebook makes it clear that you will never exceed your budget, meaning there are no hidden fees and you’ll never pay more than what you set for your daily budget on a specific campaign to reach those people who are most likely to purchase your products. The site also provides tools to monitor and measure results.
According to a survey conducted by Payvment in March 2012, “Facebook is the sole sales channel for 37 percent of sellers—63 percent of those also have their own website. Merchants also use other channels with 29 percent selling on eBay, 21 percent selling on Etsy and 15 percent using Amazon.”17
Note The shopping-cart platform Payvment recently sold its technology and patents to Intuit.18
Shopping carts, a piece of e-commerce software that allows visitors to an Internet site to select items for purchase, adapted for social commerce—Bigcommerce (http://www.bigcommerce.com/); EasySocialShop (http://www.easysocialshop.com/); ShopTab (http://www.shoptab.net/); and Ecwid (http://www.ecwid.com)SPI_AMP#x2014;provide the infrastructure for Facebook stores. Businesses can then create a storefront with a shopping cart and promotions offering discounts and coupons.
Many entrepreneurs and small business owners use Facebook to supplement sales at their local retail shop, while others use it to augment sales from their Web sites or e-commerce stores, including eBay, Amazon, and Etsy.
China-Based Alibaba.com
Founded in 1999, Alibaba.com (http://www.alibaba.com) is a group of twenty-five business units that allows anyone located anywhere in the world to buy or sell online. Alibaba has come to dominate Internet retailing in China, with the goal of becoming the biggest e-commerce market in the world. According to Jim Erickson, a writer for the site, “After increasing by 55% [in 2012] to $194 billion, China’s total online retail spending [in 2013] could blow by that of the U.S., making the mainland the world’s largest online shopping market, some researchers are predicting.”19
McKinsey & Co. says that, since 2003, China’s e-shopping market has been expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 120 percent, the fastest pace of any country in the world. Although e-shopping currently accounts for less than 6 percent of total retail spending in China, Jack Ma, founder of the Alibaba Group, predicts that by 2018, one-third of the country’s retail sales will be online. Rumor has it that Alibaba plans to go public—soon.
Below are a few of the more prominent businesses within the Alibaba Group (unless noted as being an affiliate of the company):
- Alibaba.com: (http://www.alibaba.com) An international e-commerce platform for small businesses
- Alibaba.com China: (http://www.1688.com/) A domestic e-commerce platform for Chinese small businesses
- AliExpress: (http://www.aliexpress.com) A global e-commerce marketplace for consumers
- Taobao.com: (http://www.taobao.com) China’s C-to-C online shopping destination, which allows members of the public to sell to each other
- TMALL.com: (http://www.tmall.com) China’s B-to-C shopping destination for brand name goods, letting companies sell directly to the public
- Juhuasuan: (http://ju.taobao.com) Shopping platform in China
- eTao.com: (http://www.etao.com) Shopping search engine in China
- Aliyun.com: (http://www.aliyun.com) Developer of platforms for cloud computing and data management
- Alipay.com: (http://www.alipay.com) China’s leading third-party online payment platform. Alipay is an affiliate of the Alibaba Group, not a business within it.
Alibaba.com is a leading global e-commerce B-to-B platform for small businesses that desire to source material from manufacturers, suppliers, exporters, and importers. Categories to buy-sell range from electrical equipment to shoes and accessories to toys and hobby items. “As of December 31, 2012, the platform had around 36.7 million registered users from more than 240 countries and regions and showcased more than 2.8 million supplier storefronts.”
Alibaba makes all the basic services it offers free to both buyers and sellers. It earns money through online advertisements and extra value-added services it offers clients, such as website design. Many sellers pay for beautifully designed storefronts and online advertisements to help them stand out from the crowd.
International brands like Tabasco, Mars, Nike, and 3M are all on Tmall. Some use Tmall as the exclusive channel for online purchases in China; others are experimenting with having both their own site and a Tmall storefront.
In order to get the most out of Alibaba, register your company at the site. That readies you to use their TradeManager software program (http://trademanager.alibaba.com/), considered the best tool of the entire site for staying in close touch with key people, including Alibaba support personnel. If you are looking for manufacturers, suppliers, importers, exporters, business partners, market information, upcoming trade shows, and the like, Alibaba will serve you well in those areas. If you wish to sell product to consumers in China, definitely consider setting up a Tmall storefront. No matter what you decide to do, do your homework on potential suppliers or customers.
Through its Chinese language Web site Taobao, Alibaba offers, a C-to-C online shopping experience similar to that of eBay and Amazon for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs operating in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Listings are free as of the time of this writing.
If you want to sell products through any of Alibaba’s Chinese sites, it is best to find a Chinese partner to interpret and assist you because you will have to deal with supply-chain issues, import duties, regulations, packaging adjustments, shipping considerations, returns, refunds, and marketing your products to stand out from the crowd, all conducted in Chinese.
Tip If you like what you see through Alibaba.com, pay a visit to Tencent (http://www.tencent.com/en-us/index.shtml), which has set up a stand-alone e-commerce platform called Paipai (http://www.paipai.com/) to compete directly with Taobao. The company recently bought 51buy.com (known as Yixun in China: http://www.yixun.com/), to compete with Tmall. Also, strictly for manufacturers and suppliers, look into Global Sources (http://www.globalsources.com).
Summary
Each e- or f-commerce marketplace has its own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and infrastructure—those come into play based on what you are selling, the intensity of competition in your category, the marketplace restrictions, shipping fees, fulfillment capabilities, payment mechanisms, and the extent of your global reach. Exporting can be as straightforward as testing your products in new online marketplaces where you can enjoy significant revenue returns or delving further into expansion by developing an e-commerce site within your own Web site. The opportunity for export success is everywhere.
Now that you’ve sampled what’s involved in selling your products through an intermediary online marketplace channel, it’s time to advance and create your own e-commerce platform to sell to the world and pocket all the profits. Let’s move on to Chapter 8—where we’ll look at the e-commerce craze!
1 Excerpt from the “Official Alibaba.com Success Guide: Jack Ma’s Foreword Part 2,” Alibaba Team, AliBlog, accessed October 21, 2013, http://aliblog.alibaba.com/2009/12/02/excerpt-from-the-official-alibaba-com-success-guide-jack-mas-foreword-part-2/.
2 You can find a description of PayPal’s fees on its site: “Fees: Simple, Transparent Pricing,” accessed October 21, 2013, https://www.paypal.com/sg/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees.
3 See “Advertising on Facebook,” accessed October 21, 2013, https://www.facebook.com/about/ads/.
4 For an overview of using AdWords, go to “How to Get Your Ad Ready to Run on Google,” accessed October 21, 2013, http://www.google.com/ads/faq/.
5 Amazon.com: About Amazon, accessed October 23, 2013, http://www.amazon.com/Careers-Homepage/b?ie=UTF8&node=239364011.
6 Amazon sites from around the world can be found at: “Amazon International Around the World,” accessed October 21, 2013, http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=487250.
7 “Selling on Amazon; Getting Started Guide: How to Get Set Up Selling on Amazon,” Amazon Services, last modified July 1, 2008, http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/AmznServices/en_US/files/Getting_Started_Guide1._V181643274_.pdf.
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