Selling An excellently developed B2B trade website that can lessen Alibaba's dominance.

Background:
There are very few B2B trade platforms out there that are unbiased and truly cater to the international community. There is Alibaba, the main player, which links the Chinese manufacturing industry with foreign buyers. Global Sources is the same. Thomas Net caters to American suppliers. And so on. For example an Indonesian supplier will not be promoted as much as a Chinese supplier on Alibaba’s platform, even though they both pay the same membership fees to Alibaba. And Alibaba doesn’t care to highlight this fact to it’s foreign suppliers because it would lose millions of dollars in membership sales! Sadly, foreign suppliers don’t realize this fact until a couple months into their memberships, sometimes a couple years!

Furthermore, most of these platforms do not give the best user experience, and hence traders usually face quite a struggle in understanding how to filter out the essential features from the useless. Overall, many traders eventually give up and leave these platforms. Take Alibaba for example. Alibaba.com is fraught with inefficient features, a confusing user-interface (UI) and an overall bad trade experience for most traders. They have invested a lot of money in improving on their UI by using the IPO money they received 2 years ago, but it doesn’t seem to make a huge difference.

Traders worldwide are keenly looking for an alternative platform that can cater to their global trade needs in a completely unbiased fashion as well as give them a hassle-free and secure trade experience. Currently, there is no such platform out there!

And that is where we come in.

We have developed this platform to serve as a decent alternative to the industry leaders. We believe that one day, with the right amount of resources, this can become a giant that connects 2 billion online buyers with millions of high quality suppliers around the world!

A brief description:
Trade Ally International provides an online platform that assists in trade activities between buyers and suppliers. Traders can showcase their products and buying requirements, and communicate with each other via private messaging in order to finalize their trade deals.

The unique selling proposition:
This platform connects traders from all corners of the globe in an unbiased manner and gives them a much better trade experience. Suppliers from all countries get equally promoted on the platform and hence have an equal chance of getting inquiries and orders. Buyers find the interface simple to understand and easy to navigate, and both find a greatly rewarding trade experience.

Why are you selling this site?
We actually tried to run it ourselves, make it the best B2B trade platform out there. You can see a significant presence on google if you type the company name Trade Ally International. Shows that there is a presence of this platform online. However, traffic should be low at the moment because we've stopped marketing it. It was taking too long to develop an active marketplace, so we decided to sell it.

For you, I would say that if you are a B2B trade enthusiast and are looking to get into this space, you don't need to spend your time and money on developing a new platform. Because we have spent 2.5 years understanding this industry, engaged in heavy R&D, product trials and development, and launched 2 prototypes into the market during 2015/2016 in order to get the industry feedback that was necessary to develop a Minimum Viable Product. We achieved MVP status (actually more than that) by end of April 2017. So...we can not only offer this platform, but also the following information to our potential buyer:

1) While testing our 2 Prototypes, we have been able to amass 500+ suppliers from 25+ countries on our platform as Free Members and exhibited a website traffic of over 10,000 from 120 countries over a 3 month period. A significant achievement indeed, which validated our business plan as well as helped us complete our product, making it ready for mass-marketing by April 2017. So whoever ends up buying our platform just needs to invest in online marketing and telesales in order to reactivate the members already on the site as well as bring in buyer traffic.
2) We have extremely valuable insight regarding marketing and sales strategies.
3) We have studied our competitors in great detail. We know where they are falling short and what improvements need to be made.
4) We have studied traders in great detail also. We know what they really need and how to satisfy them.
5) We have a great in-depth understanding of the product, the features, user interface and experience, these kinds of things. We can give you our invaluable insights that will take you months (perhaps years) to gather if you decide to do it on your own.
6) We know the B2B market, the trends, all that stuff.

So, if you buy our website, you are not just buying A WEBSITE, but actually you are buying a potential competitor to Alibaba, the world's leading B2B trade platform! You are buying all the information that you need to make this platform successful. However, you can also just use the site for a different purpose. For example it can potentially be converted into an ecommerce website, for which you will need to change a couple things. Because the overall structure suits this type of business, be it B2B or B2C. Up to you how you use it. Regardless, we'll give you all the information we have regarding online B2B trade if you want.

FYI, we will also provide you with complete basic documentation for the platform, which will make it easier for your developers to understand the coding part.

Please feel free to ask me any questions. I look forward to them. And of course feel free to make an offer!

How is it monetized?
Supplier Memberships ($299, 599 & 999 / year). The details can be seen on the Memberships page of the website.

Does this site come with any social media accounts?
Yes. All are available as button links in the footer of the website.

 

Have you got an authentication system which makes sure that only authentic suppliers are on the site? This is an important ingredient if you want to create a site that could compete Alibaba.

 

Because Alibaba's verification system is very poor, you could compete even more successfully if buyers could be certain that suppliers really are what they claim to be.

Walter Hay

 

It would be interesting to know how Alibaba's verification system works. Do you know how it generally works? Moreover, what do you think that Alibaba can do to improve it's verification system or what can a competitor do specifically to be able to compete with Alibaba?

 

The two lowest levels of verification are: Onsite Check and A&V Check, followed by Assessed Suppliers and Gold Suppliers. Here's how they work:

Onsite Check. This involves someone going to the supplier’s location and checking that the business actually exists. This includes viewing the business registration certificate. That is the full extent of the Onsite Check. The vendor being checked might have rented the office for a day or a week, and could easily move out the day after the inspection. A scammer's delight, because they get a badge that makes people incorrectly think that they are legit.

A & V Check. This is like the Onsite Check but for businesses located outside of Mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. It is supposedly carried out by an independent service, but that service is not even identified. The same risk factor as I mentioned above applies.

Assessed Suppliers. This is an optional extra available to China-based Alibaba Gold Supplier customers and includes verification by an inspection company such as TÜV Rheinland or Bureau Veritas. Gold Suppliers who have paid for this option have assessment reports available on their profile page. It is the only part of Alibaba’s verification system that is of any value. The presence of that badge is no guarantee that you have found a genuine manufacturer. Care is still required, including reading the entire multi page report.

Gold Supplier. This is supposedly the ultimate qualification, but it is of no real value. No checking beyond the Onsite Check is required. The only extra qualification for a Gold badge is that they pay the fee to buy it. Even Gold Suppliers that are apparently of many years standing might be new businesses that have taken over the name and Gold Supplier status from a failed business. With the high annual attrition rate on Alibaba and Globalsources, this is an ever-present possibility. Global Sources' equivalent is their star system.

Changes to Alibaba’s policy now mean that suppliers who fail to buy a Gold Supplier badge are not permitted to receive online sales inquiries. In effect this shuts them off from getting any sales unless determined buyers search and locate the supplier’s own website.

I have written 5 pages in my safe sourcing book explaining how Alibaba and Global sources work, but the information above should help people wanting to buy from suppliers on Alibaba.

In answer to your question about ways to improve the verification system, I have made suggestions to Global Sources, but they have chosen to retain their existing system, which is almost a clone of Alibaba's. Despite being a long term registered (but inactive) vendor on Alibaba, my attempts to communicate on this subject have been ignored.

The most important missing factor is an inspection of every vendor's business by SGS, TÜV Rheinland, or Bureau Veritas to clearly identify real manufacturers. That would be a massive step in the right direction, but the listings should show the result, without requiring the reading of multi page reports. Scams by manufacturers would be rare. Scams by traders are commonplace.

Walter Hay
30 years experience in sourcing and importing.