Alibaba Gold Level

[giancarlolimon]

I'm just finishing up gold level and onsite verification with Alibaba, and I'm finding it very easy and useful for moving my own products (I own a stainless steel, and non-ferrous metals manufacturing company). Has anyone put much though into the benefits of gold level status/ verification on Alibaba as a U.S. supplier?

The key is having a registered DBA/llc/c-corp/s-corp, and either a phone bill with your company name on it (not sure how real this needs to be, but testing is underway). Then, they call you. That's it! If you can't present them with a phone bill, you must send in a notarized statement affirming your inability to provide the phone bill and perform phone verification.

Even as an unverified U.S. seller on Alibaba, I have received multiple inquiries from other U.S. retailers seeking the items to which I have access, at profitable prices. Seems worthy of exploration.

Thoughts?

[unkown5454]

China needs metals like crazy. Congrats on even getting to this point. Wish I was as lucky.

[giancarlolimon]

No, I use SS, and copper to build equipment for pharma, brewing, etc. But, I sell it globally. Being gold level on Alibaba comes with tons of perks like being able to respond to 5 requests for quotes (rfqs) daily. For example, we build a specific type of tank. I went on Alibaba and found 26 RFQs for the same tank we manufacture. GOLD MINE!

People say U.S. manufacturing is dead, but you really just have to build a highly specialized product that either can't be mass produced, or simply lacks the incentive to do so, i.e. the product is too R&D or support intensive, or highly customized. Our prices are slightly higher than our Chineses competitors, but we offer a much better warranty, delivery and installation, support during U.S. business hours, etc., which makes all the difference.