While you can indeed source goods and inventory for very low prices on Alibaba, one problem many businesses face is the high shipping costs when they buy from Alibaba suppliers, eroding on their profit margins. Fortunately, there are a few ways to reduce your shipping costs when buying from Alibaba.
Use a shipping agent/freight forwarder to consolidate multiple Alibaba purchases into a single international shipment: Since there is a base charge for each shipment, combining multiple domestic shipments into one single international shipment helps to reduce your shipping costs by ensuring that you only have to pay for the base charge once. Furthermore, the larger the shipment, the lower the per kg or per CBM shipping costs. Therefore it makes sense to consolidate your Alibaba purchases before shipping together internationally
Get a Shipping Agent to repack your goods: Many Alibaba suppliers are not familiar with the logistics of international shipping and do not pack your goods in an optimal way to help minimize the volumetric or dimensional weight. They often use bigger and more packages than necessary which increases your volumetric weight. Instead of paying for shipping oversized and inefficiently packed goods, it would make more sense to get your suppliers to have all your goods sent to a shipping agent/freight forwarder like CNXtrans which can store, repack and consolidate your goods in the most optimal way to ensure that your volumetric weight is minimized before shipping together internationally. This will again help to reduce your international shipping costs from China.
Get a Shipping Agent who can ship by Sea: Shipping by sea is normally significantly cheaper than shipping by air. It also doesn’t take as long as many people think - normally sea shipments take about 1 month. If you use a shipping agent/freight forwarder like CNXtrans, sea shipments to many countries including the US, Canada, all EU countries, UK, UAE, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore etc. come inclusive of customs clearance, customs duties and delivery to door. This means that you will not need to hire a customs broker in your destination country or pay any customs duties upon arrival of goods, saving you lots of hassle. Therefore one of the best ways to save is to plan your shipment in advance and give an allowance of about 30 days for the sea shipment to arrive. This way, you can enjoy much lower shipping costs when shipping internationally from China
Get a Shipping Agent who can ship by Train (applicable only for shipments to EU countries): Like shipping by sea, shipping by train is also significantly cheaper than shipping by air. In many cases, for shipping to European countries, train shipping is the lowest cost route. If you use a shipping agent/freight forwarder like CNXtrans, train shipments to all EU countries come inclusive of customs clearance, customs duties and delivery to door. This means that you will not need to hire a customs broker in your destination country or pay any customs duties upon arrival of goods, saving you lots of hassle.
You have to remember that when shipping from China, shipping costs do not depend at all on the value of your goods - they depend only on the weight and size of your goods along with the type of goods being shipped. Do take these into consideration when deciding which goods to import from China and trying to factor in international shipping costs. Done smartly, shipping from China need not be so expensive - particularly if you consolidate, repack and ship by sea or train. The more of this you are able to get done, the more you can save on shipping costs.
Whether you need to consolidate, repack or ship from China by the most economical shipping routes such as sea or rail (train), CNXtrans can help you with all of this. Get your factories, manufacturers & suppliers from Alibaba and other platforms to have your goods to sent to the CNXtrans warehouse in China and we'll help you with consolidating, repacking and shipping internationally via the most economic routes available.
