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Do you know that Aliexpress and Taobao are not direct suppliers, but resellers? And despite the fact that the goods on these marketplaces are sold at low prices, they are still marked up. In fact, they were purchased on another Chinese platform which is the 1688 shopping app for wholesale.

What pros and cons does this app have? How can a private user buy goods directly from the wholesale marketplace? How to register an account and what does it require? In this blog post, let’s answer these questions.

What is 1688?

What is 1688? It’s a Chinese wholesale online shopping platform where you can find almost any categories of consuming goods, including:

Clothes, shoes, and accessories.
Children’s goods.
Furniture.
Goods for home interior and construction.
Cosmetics.
Electronics.
Foods and drinks, etc.

In the Chinese segment of the Internet, 1688.com is alibaba.cn, that is the internal version of the Alibaba marketplace website.

The distinctive feature of 1688 shopping is that almost all sellers from Aliexpress, Alibaba, and Taobao make purchases there, and after that, they put goods on marketplaces with huge markups. In some cases, even multiple.

In addition to wholesalers, this Chinese marketplace attracts other kinds of purchasers, to mention just a few:

Independent buyers making purchases for various foreign companies.
Procurement specialists for companies.
Purchasing managers for offline stores.
Private sellers for stores on Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, etc.

The marketplace is intended mainly for wholesalers, trying out 1688 shopping, but you can still find manufacturers or suppliers who sell goods by the piece. Anyway, if you are going to register a 1688 account as a wholesaler or a private buyer, it is worth considering the strengths and weaknesses of the platform.

Why It is More Profitable to Buy via the 1688 App

You buy directly from suppliers — bypassing dealers, which means:

You save on purchases.
And get the maximum margin.

However, the Chinese marketplace also has its downsides.

What Difficulties You Can Face Using 1688 Shopping

Not all products are shipped overseas, in some cases, the transportation cost can exceed the cost of goods by 3 or even 4 times, and this can negate all the benefits. This is especially true for bulky or weighty goods such as office chairs or wooden furniture. There is a list of prohibited goods as well, including chemical compounds, piercing and cutting objects, batteries, etc.
Most sellers in the 1688 app do not deal with international shipments.
You will have to pay through Chinese payment systems, for example, Alipay.

In this article, you will find the instructions on how to create an Alipay account with a Chinese virtual number.

However, it’s not much of a challenge. There are many qualified intermediaries who can help you solve all the difficulties step by step from communicating in Chinese with a seller to sending abroad. Sure, you will have to pay a commission for this.

If you don’t want to overpay for a commission, you can spend a little more time and do without an intermediary. Just create your own 1688 account, use a translator and make payments through a Chinese payment system. This, in turn, might sound a bit challenging, but it’s actually not as difficult as you may think. And many people already buy from this marketplace in this exact way, including various online and offline stores.

Why a Phone Number is a Must for 1688.com Registration

The Chinese segment of the Internet is very sensitive to the identification of each user — and detects foreigners, btw. So when creating a 1688 account, you will have to confirm your identity by providing a phone number.

The difficulty is that the platform only accepts numbers from mainland China. That’s why you at least will have to pay a foreign SIM card. But there’s an alternative, less challenging way made specifically for bypassing registration on foreign platforms. For less than $1 you can buy a disposable temporary virtual phone number for 1688.com registration using our software. You will receive a verification code right here, in your personal SMS-Man account.

There are several advantages over buying a SIM-card:

Fast. It takes up to 10 minutes to receive the code.
Highly accessible — no need for a SIM-card or a physical device such as a smartphone.
Secure. If you buy a private number, you are the only one who has access to SMS messages and all other operations. In addition, you will get a new number that was not previously used for this platform. And the platform will not be able to identify it as virtual. What’s more, all transactions are carried out in your personal account.
Highly affordable. We have already mentioned the price before.