alibaba.com (everything chinesium)

daturbosix

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sickmint79

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there are tons of people making millions a year selling stuff on amazon and a chunk or simply buying stuff alibaba. i learned how this works with people trying to break in to the market while in thailand. i came up with 2 product niches which were good and i thought i could make some money on.

product 1 every ali product was already on amazon, they were just shitty though. i found a better place to get them from (europe) but running the numbers, it looked like everyone would make money but me.

product 2, every ali product is also on amazon, shitty again. i found a US supplier for a good one though, completely uncommunicative though. i thought about making it, but i'd need to put a lot of up front cost up (plastic mold) so i haven't moved forward.

best scenario is you brand something on ali or combine ali a and ali b products to then have your own amazon listing someone can't just come in and list under. there's people making big dollars doing this stuff on amazon.
 

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That was very common for years. Until they got smart and found out how to list the stuff on Ebay themselves. Suddenly many companies had their secrets revealed and had egg on their face or lost their customers to people buying them directly from overseas.

Shipping in from China, Taiwan, and other countries is very cheap. And usually quite quick too. But again, you get what you pay for in many regards. But sometimes the quilty is good enough when you look at other, more costly, alternatives.
 

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[MENTION=341]sickmint79[/MENTION] It is sad as nowadays it is make a product and profit as much as you can as quick as you can. Because once they see you selling quantity they will copy it and sell it cheaper. All you can do is hope you sell enough to cover tooling costs before that happens so you can lower your piece price and still compete at the lower price. It is tough out there.
 

daturbosix

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ive been ebaying things for years, but usually just stuff i score at garage sales and estate sales or shit like that.

seriously considering buying a run of somethinng common for like $1 each or something off Ali to then set up a ebay sale with the buy-it-now with the quantity, would also have to pay for the shipping when sold too.. so maybe something smal enough to fit in a $8 flat rate envelope
 

sickmint79

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[MENTION=341]sickmint79[/MENTION] It is sad as nowadays it is make a product and profit as much as you can as quick as you can. Because once they see you selling quantity they will copy it and sell it cheaper. All you can do is hope you sell enough to cover tooling costs before that happens so you can lower your piece price and still compete at the lower price. It is tough out there.

you definitely do not want to be a commodity in a space. and for sure you may be buying something off alibaba yourself that someone else paid for the tooling for. some of the stuff is simply shit as well, although pure shit doesn't do very well on amazon, can sell big on facebook ads though.

ive been ebaying things for years, but usually just stuff i score at garage sales and estate sales or shit like that.

seriously considering buying a run of somethinng common for like $1 each or something off Ali to then set up a ebay sale with the buy-it-now with the quantity, would also have to pay for the shipping when sold too.. so maybe something smal enough to fit in a $8 flat rate envelope

i'm trying to sell stuff now on craigslist/offerup/letgo and eventually ebay - the amount of idiot people and scammers to deal with on the former are ridiculous. what is with all these people who expect me to negotiate with myself too? it still seems a perfectly valid model to just get into a niche and buy stuff on these sites and be a serious buyer about it and flip them on ebay for profit. yesterday i dealt with 1. two scammers, 2. someone asking me to negotiate with myself, 3. someone who set up a meeting, moved the time back, and then flaked and ghosted me when i actually went to meet

i'm not excited to box/ship heavy stuff, but at least people on ebay are fucking serious about making shit happen
 

importcrew

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I was more nervous about the process of actually ordering something I guess. I don't have too high of quality expectations

It's not bad ordering. I've ordered several times off the site and never had any issues. No random charges, or stolen information. Plus, this company is publicly traded on the stock market. It'd be in their best interest to make sure all credit card transaction (and any transaction for that matter) be good and secure.
 

sickmint79

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It's not bad ordering. I've ordered several times off the site and never had any issues. No random charges, or stolen information. Plus, this company is publicly traded on the stock market. It'd be in their best interest to make sure all credit card transaction (and any transaction for that matter) be good and secure.

there's an amazon-ish part and there's the wholesale part, i don't know how much inventory alibaba themselves keep but certainly the latter you are being straight filled from chinese manufacturers, and it's entirely within the realm of possibility that you get an item that shouldn't have passed QA and is full of radioactive chinesium.
 

importcrew

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there's an amazon-ish part and there's the wholesale part, i don't know how much inventory alibaba themselves keep but certainly the latter you are being straight filled from chinese manufacturers, and it's entirely within the realm of possibility that you get an item that shouldn't have passed QA and is full of radioactive chinesium.

I definitely don't doubt that. That's why I mentioned, you get what you pay for. In the aspect of actual transaction (the exchange of money from your point to theirs), there's really not much to worry about as its secured transactions. The few stuff I bought weren't bad though and they were chinesium as everybody is calling it. I did order a few gun parts off there to try out and they weren't bad. The screws that came with the part needed a little locktite but the quality wasn't bad and the price was good.
 

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Pick anything popular and it has knock offs. Be it car parts, toys, watches, shoes, perfume, golf clubs, etc.

I read a report a few years ago and they were talking about the percent of merchandise assumed to be sold in the US that was knock offs. It was a scarily large number. And still on the rise. Counterfeit seizures were up like 10% in 2017 to 2018. China and Hong Kong were the biggest two countries of origin of these seized shipments.
 

sickmint79

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I definitely don't doubt that. That's why I mentioned, you get what you pay for. In the aspect of actual transaction (the exchange of money from your point to theirs), there's really not much to worry about as its secured transactions. The few stuff I bought weren't bad though and they were chinesium as everybody is calling it. I did order a few gun parts off there to try out and they weren't bad. The screws that came with the part needed a little locktite but the quality wasn't bad and the price was good.

some of the import guys i know would be find and make multiple orders... 100s of items in each...

but ohp, 3rd order comes, it's all fucked. you don't know until amazon is rejecting it, or customers are complaining about it. so i think there's a whole industry in china of simply having trusted quality inspectors on the ground, to make sure you don't get boned.
 

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It's not bad ordering. I've ordered several times off the site and never had any issues. No random charges, or stolen information. Plus, this company is publicly traded on the stock market. It'd be in their best interest to make sure all credit card transaction (and any transaction for that matter) be good and secure.

The gun parts market is something I really wonder/chuckle about. I mean think about this:Chinesieum parts count towards 922R. An AR-15 for instance has 15ish parts that would fall under 922R. A KCI mag and an imported trigger group would put you over half way to 10 import parts. And that's on a gun that a huge proportion of it is almost assured to be made in the US much less something like an AK that is bound to be pieced together if it's not bought from an MFG like Arsenal.

I wouldn't be surprised if some mainstream MFG winds up having their guns over in parts count if you pull out the pmag or whatever they come with and stick an imported mag in.
 

importcrew

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The gun parts market is something I really wonder/chuckle about. I mean think about this:Chinesieum parts count towards 922R. An AR-15 for instance has 15ish parts that would fall under 922R. A KCI mag and an imported trigger group would put you over half way to 10 import parts. And that's on a gun that a huge proportion of it is almost assured to be made in the US much less something like an AK that is bound to be pieced together if it's not bought from an MFG like Arsenal.

I wouldn't be surprised if some mainstream MFG winds up having their guns over in parts count if you pull out the pmag or whatever they come with and stick an imported mag in.

Extended mag release. Not much to it. Just a few pieces to make that part and nothing to do with the operation of the rifle. :dunno:
 

Mr_Roboto

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Extended mag release. Not much to it. Just a few pieces to make that part and nothing to do with the operation of the rifle. :dunno:

You could argue the same thing about stocks and handguards too really but they also fall under 922R. I mean an M4 stock is ~5oz of plastic and ~20% of that is the steel swing loop in the rear of it.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Tactics-7-10-12-13-5-15-Inches-Float-Keymod-Handguard-Picatinny-Rail-Square-Mouth-for/32978163501.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.34.34243a21TJixID&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_10_10065_10130_10068_10890_10547_319_10546_317_10548_10545_10696_453_10084_454_10083_10618_10307_537_536_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_6,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=278ee3a0-40f7-4e4e-8604-3d994590e771-4&algo_pvid=278ee3a0-40f7-4e4e-8604-3d994590e771

Some company is definitely selling these as US made somewhere I would bet.
 
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