Tag Archives: international trade ecommerce

Selling Palm Pixi,Pre, and Veer to China. (case study 2)

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Last time we talked about one crazy case about selling unwanted TRYX camera to China making some profit. The casio camera TRYX TR-100 later proves my belief that it is not just an odd case in Chinese eCommerce market. Now here comes the unwanted Palm cellphones. They are selling very well on Taobao, and many smart phones online community. The difference is that this time, Chinese buyers online are buying the Palm phones not just because they like it, but also because the phone is cheap though unwanted in US.

 

First, we all know that HP touchpad’s fire-sale story right?? If it’s a okay spark for US buyers, then it’s a huge earthquake for Chinese ecommerce market. People there are used to the expensive iPad2. But suddenly, they got the news that HP touchpad is selling for only 99 dollars. Well, most sellers like us, we thought touchpad is the great opportunity for us to make some money online. But it turns out that Palm phones, also abandoned by HP, also have their great potential to sell well in China.

When people here in the US are treating Palm phones like trash, online Chinese buyers are trying there best to get a cheap smart phone like Palm’s pixi plus. You could find CDMA Verizon Palm pixi plus selling for only 37 dollars, and unlocked Pre2 selling for only 100 dollars eBay. This time, Palm’s Veer, Pixi, and PRE2,PRE3 find their value in Chinese online market such as Taobao, and many discussiong forum. Zoopad.com is a smart phone discussion forum, and many buyers there are posting request buying a Palm phone. Here I think it’s worth mentioning the size of Chinese market. Usually within one day, your post with fairly interesting topic on a popular forum will attract more than 1500 views. I think it’s a pretty good number.

Selling palm phones are not 100% the same as selling TRYXs to Chinese young buyers online. This time, you are facing more experienced geeky buyers who know more than you do about Palm and the price trend. But still, it is a good chance to make little money, because there is no one who wants Palm in US. The profit may be only 10%, but the demand in China is great! I think if I were a wholesale company and I have a full stock of palm phones, I will contact dreamsberry.com and ask dreamsberry to take care of the selling part. Well, this is just an ads I put here for myself. But it is just like the old saying goes, products like trash here maybe gold there.

One last very interesting phenomenon is the rise of Palms phone after its initial price cut. This phenomenon happened to TRYX. The camera first got a price cut in the US market due to its poor sales performance. But after Chinese start buying huge numbers of TRYX cameras from US, the price went up from 199 to 320 now. Despite the fact that many american ecommerce sellers are still wondering where the huge demand is coming from, they know they need to raise the price because the camera has some hidden demand. The same price rise happened to HP products like touchpad and palm. There is always connections between Chinese online market and American online market when some american products became hot in China. There is also always a delay of about 3-7 days before american sellers all start to realize there are some one out there buying the products. I assume the 3-7 days period is the best time you get as many orders as you could from China, and start selling as much as you could.

Tryx and Palm phones are not typical cases showing products in US can be sold well in China, but they are the extreme cases. To this point, I also know better than before that whoever controls the social voice online controls the Chinese online market. In another words, social selling is a prominent feature in China.

Legal issues in Selling on Taobao and comments on China eCommerce

Aside

Sometimes when I saw people selling crazy on Taobao, the biggest Chinese B2C/C2C eCommerce site, I raise concern on their practice. The idea is simple that they buy products from US which are cheaper and sell them back to China online. I would estimate there are more than 1K these Chinese people in the US doing this type of dropship to China utilizing the emerging Chinese ecommerce market and Taobao. But why there is no such a giant stand out from thousands of those sellers? Why it is not a encouraging practice from the government?

There are 3 main reasons why customers on Taobao buy from these sellers sell products from America.

1. They are cheaper. here we are talking about luxury products and electronics.

2. They are not available yet in China. here the greatest example is iPhone.

3.They have the special love for foriegn goods.

But after research and research, I found that many of the small ecommerce store selling products from US is not very legal in terms of importing and exporting.

First, they always select the products they want to send to China as a gift when filling out the custom form. As far as I know, this will highly reduce the probability Chinese custom ask the buyers to pay the duty/tariff. This is because they think the seller and buyer are relatives and friends, so the custom will pay less attention to these packages. This is actually not a legal practice in China I think, the seller should declare the products. On the other hand, customers knows very well they are trying their best to avoid the tariff and get the cheaper products.

Second, the customers can’t protect their rights. The products from US usually have good quality. But sometimes customers will have problem using the product and want the product to be repaired. When this happens, they cannot ask for help from the eCommerce seller on Taobao. The manufactruers are in US and wouldn’t help.

Third, some products are not available on Chinese market for a reason. Maybe they are prohibited, and maybe they are strictedly stated not for sell in China. But there are so many sellers online, and every order is hard to trace.

Although China joins WTO, international trading is not that easy and requires some legal knowledge. eCommerce in China opens the door of international trade to ordinary ecommerce sellers on Taobao, but there are potential problems. Now the international C2C trade on Taobao is really growing big, and maybe not that big to raise a concern for the government. I will say this area of eCommerce is a gray zone.