Alibaba’s bargains from a little helper
Thieve.co is the latest in a number of start-ups dedicated to helping shoppers find cool things they can buy. But the fledgling firm is restricting itself to the millions of products on AliExpress.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba - or more precisely its factory-to-consumer offshoot AliExpress - has an underground legion of fans in New Zealand.
Thieve’s co-founder Tim Scullin, says he and his mates started out reviewing and posting about the bargains they’d found on the website.
‘‘We started last year with a bunch of us posting the coolest things we’d found, but thousands of people registered, so we thought we should take it seriously.’’
Make that 16,500 registered users. Scullin says there are some well-known sites that feature the ’’best of’’ platforms like Amazon but there was nothing like that in New Zealand for AliExpress, even though it is the third biggest e-commerce site behind Trade Me and Amazon.
After writing to the Chinese mega-company, they received permission to be an affiliate, meaning they receive a small cut from the purchase of items they advertise.
‘‘The price is the same for the user but we take an 8 per cent commission on anything that you buy.’’
Despite AliExpress’ popularity, Scullin says it can be quite hard to navigate.
‘‘Actually finding what you want is quite hard.’’
With more than 100 million products listed, users can be overwhelmed by the many types of one product and even then, by several photos of the exact same item, with only price to go by.
Scullin’s team searches up reviews, tries to find the best quality version of various goods and checks they are still available. A pool of about 200 or so bloggers also comment.
Thieve.co’s biggest day last year was also AliExpress’ biggest day, Singles Day, when Chinese e-commerce sites bombard shoppers with special prices.
‘‘When you’re buying direct from a factory in another country, that doesn’t have a brand or any product, it’s hard to make decisions,’’ Scullin says.