Hey guccis! I hope you are all enjoying your holidays! ♥ I'm enjoying my time home with my mommy and sister (*▽*) I recently ordered a bunch of clothes (from my father) for my Christmas present, from Taobao! It was my first time ordering off of Taobao, so I wanted to make sure I would get a lot. A lot of people have already asked if I could post about ordering off of Taobao, because it's a chinese webstore. I've seen a tonne of people order off of taobao before, but I thought it was too troublesome so I never tried... Instead of taobao, I would shop at Aliexpress, and Buychina, both of these stores have much similar products (so they're a good alternative). I really wanted give taobao a try, so I waited until Christmas to make an order! \(^o^)
(About Taobao.com) "Taobao Marketplace - China's most popular C2C online shopping destination Launched in May 2003, Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com) is the most popular consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online marketplace in China catering to buyers who value product selection and price competitiveness. With around 760 million product listings as of March 2013, Taobao Marketplace is one of the world’s top 20 most visited websites according to Alexa. For the year ended March 31, 2013, the combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com exceeded RMB1 trillion. Taobao Marketplace is a business within Alibaba Group."
Okay, so before I made an order, I read A LOT about other peoples orders, other bloggers taobao help, and different agents. To make an order from taobao, you have to have a taobao agent. The agents do cost a little bit of money, but it depends what one you use. Over the summer when I tried to order from it before, I used an agent that I had to send an email to directly, and they would send back the products in stock, and I found everything too confusing so I didn't even make a purchase in the end. Plus, they costed a fortune and then they wouldn't let me make an order under $200. After all of the research and stuff, I literally just googled "Taobao Agents" and I'm pretty sure that the agent I used was one of the top results. The agent I used was TaobaoNow. But I'm going to go through how to buy from taobao in a few steps~
Step One :
First things first, you wanna find a good agent! Personally, I've only had experience with one, but it was really great! I used the agent TaobaoNow I actually don't think I need to find another agent. Okay, so once you're onto their website, create an account!
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Step Two:
Now that you have an account all you have to do is click "My Shopping Cart" , and start looking on Taobao for items you want!
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The taobao website is all in chinese, so unless you're fluent in chinese than it would be easiest to look at it using a Chrome web browser ! \(^o^)/
So now you begin your search~ I'll link some good taobao sellers and stores;
Clothing:
Cosplay/ Lolita:
Once you've found items that you want, you just copy the item url, and paste it into your shopping cart! Where it says "remarks", you just let them know what size you would like, and which colour.
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You can also check the prices of your cart on the bottom! Once you're done making a shopping cart you just submit your order and they should email you within an hour!
Step Three:
Now you just have to wait for the agents to contact you! They usually should check your order within a day, they check if everything is in stock, and if the colours and sizes are available. Then they will email you a paypal cheque for you to pay! YOU ARE ONLY PAYING FOR YOUR ORDER THEN. NOT THE SHIPPING & AGENT COST (so make sure to have extra money) Once you pay for your order, they will take a few days to get it into their offices to check if the items are what you wanted, then they will send another paypal email for you to pay for shipping and their services! (In total, my order cost around $375, I ordered 16 items including shoes, and for EMS shipping to Canada it was around $94.)
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You can check your orders anytime and even cancel them if you wish!
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Also, they have a little button system thing, and once one step is completed, they'll light up!
The people are really nice, and they'll let you know right away if something is wrong or out of stock! I hoped this helped figure out how to order from taobao for some people! If you have any other questions just ask! ♥♥
Now for my little haul~
I ordered these items on November 28th, and they arrived today, December 29th. It took a whole month and day to arrive, but they were shipped to Canada, which also had a mega post backup and all of the mail got halted for a few days/weeks. I was hoping to get these for Christmas day, but it's okay because I was still super excited when they arrived! It was like another christmas~
My order all came packaged together in a giant box~! Everything was in individual bags so it was a lot of fun opening it all ヘ(^0^)ヘ
I really love everything I purchased! It's all so cute and I can't wait to take outfit posts~ ;w; I didn't get a chance too yet, but I'll post them in the future! (plus the lighting is really bad at my moms house ><)
ahah me and my mom flicked placed everything on the bed to take photos
Aaaand I'll link you all to the items (sorry about the really bad photos I was in a rush to look at it all) !! ヾ(@°▽°@)ノ
OK!! I think i'm finally done! I hope I included everything! I spent three hours writing this... I think it's the longest thing I have ever written... but I hope it helps you guys! I also hope you enjoy my messy handwriting on my iphone and line camera app!(≧∇≦) Thank you so much for reading !!
If anyone has any questions/concerns or requests please leave a comment, email me at lapissss@msn.com, message my Facebook page or leave an ask on my tumblr ♥
Thank you !
