If you’ve ever owned and/or operated a small-to-medium business, you know how important it is to always remain competitive. From selling new and different products to reaching additional buyers, finding ways to offer goods and services that satisfy your buyers’ needs is vital to your continued success.

As CEO and founder of an Amazon marketing agency, Incrementum Digital, Liran Hirschkorn started out in ecommerce in 2014 as a brand owner and was always looking for ways to provide new, innovative products to his buyers. Oftentimes, he had to look for many different buyers to find what he needed. “Eventually, I questioned myself on why I’m buying from the middleman when I could be buying directly from the manufacturers.” This led Liran to Alibaba.com where he was amazed at how easily he could search a large database of evaluated suppliers and learn about their products, business operations, customer satisfaction and more.

Liran founded his ecommerce business and started going to tradeshows and expos to buy various products in wholesale costs and resell the items on Amazon. With more than 1.9 million active sellers retailing on Amazon, and more than a million joining the platform each year, he needed the right vendors to have a leg up compared to its competition.

Choosing The Ideal Vendors

“One of the challenges in trying to create your own products is finding suppliers and finding suppliers who are reputable, who can make products at prices that allow you to generate a margin,” said Liran. “And so, Alibaba.com was the solution that really helped me get there. It allowed me to search for a variety of suppliers, do research, get samples, and really gave me safety.”

The Alibaba.com platform includes an RFQ Portal that hosts more than 161,000 active suppliers and approximately 2.2 million proposals in the past 90 days alone. As one of the largest global marketplaces, Alibaba.com resolves trust and/or escrow issues for millions of buyers and sellers even before they arise.

Liran, in particular, finds Gold and Verified Suppliers that are amplified and pre-vetted a ‘blessing’ since there are no trust or escrow issues in working with them. “When you actually are looking at a supplier on Alibaba.com, you can get insights into that supplier, you can see their certificates, you can see their catalog, which is almost like a mini-website that the particular supplier has within Alibaba.com.”

Third-Party Probe Reveals Credibility

Another beneficial capability that Liran and his brand leverage is Alibaba.com’s Inspection Solutions to vet certain suppliers and garner exact details that they are seeking. Professional third-party service providers and Alibaba.com partners visit manufacturing facilities and check products at random to make sure they are aligned with order specifications.

“You can talk to Alibaba.com and basically let them know what are the important things that you're looking for in the product, and they come back to you with a full report that's either a pass or fail of that supplier,” shared Liran. “It basically gives you protection. Alibaba.com understands the quality standards required for our products and is able to deliver them in a timely manner. Overall, these benefits allowed us to generate between $5-7 million in sales.”

Accomplishments Beyond Revenue

But perhaps what is most enticing for Liran about working with Alibaba.com is how the website inspired his professional achievements. Perusing supplier catalogues, homepage highlights, trendy products on Alibaba.com empowered Liran to discover and create innovative products, leading to three unique design patents.

“Through a powerful combination of Alibaba.com’s database and supplier contacts, I’ve obtained three design patents to bring unique products to market,” said Liran. “This greatly enables our brand to work with suppliers and create distinctive product lines.”