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Alibaba Trade Manager, works like QQ or MSN messenger. It offers instant communication between buyers and sellers.
Alibaba Trade Manager Review Verdict:
Pros:
- automatically start-up alibaba trade search and offer the latest manufacturing news (goes along nicely with a cup of coffee)
- you can directly contact supplier or buyer without writing any lengthy and boring e-mails
- useful if you are not logged onto the website and have it open on my PC and a supplier contacts me
Cons:
- when you are on the Alibaba Website and you click on a suppliers “I’m online chat now” icon, it will not load into Trade Manager. It only loads into the online web based version of trade manager, which then signs you out of the Trade Manger software on your computer
- Alibaba Trade Manager for Mac is currently not available
- not a software-as-a-service as yet (although Alibaba.com has commanded 40% of the SaaS market in China with Alisoft)
- poor usability:
- it will auto logout after certain time period
- it only allows you to add limited number of users per login session (to prevent spamming among users)
- According to Egernia, too many Chinese users abused the system. In her own words:
Someone mentioned elsewhere in this forum that I had rejected him from Trade Manager so let me explain so that he and others that I have also rejected can understand my decision.
The reason is…….abuse.
To my mind TM is for discussing business related matters, not for:
a. selling product;
b. promoting your company;
c. making friends;
d. practicing English;
e. abusing and stalking other users
I have encountered all of the above during my time here at alibaba and in almost every case it was at the hands of Chinese members hence my bias in this regard. Just because I am online does not mean that I have time for idle chats and I get a bit tired of offending people when pointing out to them that I am busy!
Of course I am fully aware that there are plenty of legitimate Chinese users out there but unfortunately I have been burned too many times before to accept any more Chinese users on TM.
I get around 20 requests a day from Chinese users wanting me to add them to TM.
About a third of those put something in the subject line like “MP4, Mobile Phones etc.” or “Shipping company with experience can help” etc.
Another third put a subject line like “Hi”.
The final third are a mix of subject lines explaining a reason for actually contacting me.
Our Conclusion:
Despite user’s annoyance with its installation problem as well, it’s still worth trying this nifty tool because you can download alibaba trade manager for free.
Alternatively, you can:
- Try using Taobao messenger, another Alibaba’s software created for the C2C market, but it’s only available in Chinese
- Hire a Taobao agent like this or this (at your own risk) to help you with the transaction
- Read the Taobao buyer guide or do a ballpark estimate with this ‘how to shop Taobao in English’ translator to assess the risk and opportunities
Being a software marketer, I like to keep my eyes and ears open about customer’s feedback. After observing some major changes in the global accounting industry like ‘creative disruption’, ‘profit growth’ and ‘ambitious growth plans’, the sign of ‘the web is the new software’ slogan is becoming more real. The commercial software market has reached a point of maturity, and it will continue to face competitive pressure from open source software market and software-as-a-service (SaaS) a.k.a the ‘online software’ market.
As my end goal is to be an international trade book publisher to help businesses trade globally with success, no doubt, I would hope to see Alibaba Trade Manager available as a SaaS platform that makes trade matching more relevant online.
About Alibaba
So who’s Alibaba? It’s a B2B company that:
- raised $1.5 billion making it the second-biggest Internet IPO ever, after Google
- launched B2B sites in 6 non-English language versions
- led by a charismatic founder (who used to be an English teacher) that professes ‘We win e-Bay, buy Yahoo! and stop Google’ and ‘looking back we are now a big company, but looking ahead we are still a very small company’
- the largest online B2B company in China in 2006 based on the number of registered users and market share in China by revenue
- acquired by Yahoo! for $1B in Cash and Stock
So, what’s your experience like with Alibaba Trade Manager and Taobao? What are your success stories with these tools? Do you end up dealing with trade professionals or duds?
Disclaimer: This is not a paid review. This review is done from an import-export agent’s perspective and is subjected to the author’s opinion.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
you’re welcome!
thanks for your article point, i think so too.