This guide is made for new members of r/CoutureReps. It contains everything that you need to know about the basics of the rep game. No cap, all useful information that will set you off right away!
The whole process can best be summed up with 3 terms: Finding, Buying, International Shipping.
This flowchart describes the whole process: from ordering your items to receiving them at home.
To answer the most common question right away, in simplified terms:
- You buy from a Chinese marketplace, because they are cheaper.
- Since these are not open to you, you have to use an agent (we will get to that).
- The agent buys the item for you and you get to inspect it.
- Then you can ship it internationally.
- There’s a risk to run into customs, but 99% of the cases can be solved, if you know what you’re doing
So you want to get started finding, buying and eventually shipping your items? Go ahead and check out this separate guide we made. It contains a lot of information and pictures regarding these topics;
There have been lots of developments on that front, so it’s always worth checking out to find new methods.
To buy items through Taobao, it is advised to use an agent. The reasons to use an agent have only become stronger, with new paperwork that’s better filled out by experienced companies, like the agents. An agent is a freight forwarder in the middle, who buys and stores the item in their warehouse, where they let you decide if you want to keep them, based on quality inspection provided by the agent. If you are not satisfied, you can return the item and get your money back. It is as simple as that, agents eliminate many of the risks. If you choose to order without an agent, your purchases are at the mercy of the sellers – you might receive damaged or even incorrect goods, and you won’t find out until they reach your doorstep and you paid.
All these agents are worthy of your business. Top to bottom they go from budget (good price, not so good service) to premium (not so good price, but great service). Wegobuy is in the middle and what we recommend, especially for noobs.
If you care about cold hard numbers, use a shipping calculator/agent comparison.
You might find that other agents are cheaper, such as BaseTao, YTaoPal, CSSBuy, but we can’t provide you with an extra bonus as a new member. And you don’t support CoutureReps, but that’s alright.
You might be all about the items, but the core of the process is shipping. It’s where educated customers are separated from uneducated customers, and where you can save or lose most money.
Navigating the sites itself should be rather self explanatory. In order to keep this guide concise, I won’t tell you about every button you have to click for every agent. There are plenty of YouTube videos for that. Unsurprisingly, I would recommend the RepArchive Guides Playlist.
There are two things, that are not self explanatory, that are important.
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use rehearsal packaging. Your item is pre-packaged and weight, eliminating the guessing game, resulting in much cheaper upfront costs for you, up to 50% cheaper. Always use this. This is the best guide I can offer you at the moment, but we will provide a more detailed guide soon.
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Choose the right shipping service. Cheap isn’t always the best, and won’t help you if your parcels never get there. Yes, there are definitely shipping combinations (country/shipping service) that you should avoid at all costs. We’ll be honest with you, wiki pages like this one are far too static to keep a list like that up to date. Do your own research. I don’t want this guide to turn into a list of RepArchive links, but once again they have the simplest and best solution: a survey that collects the latest answers from a wide audience, made available via a chat bot. So you can just ask it what’s the best shipping to my country, and then you know more: Ask the Chatbot.
