August 2021 | latest update: 08.09.2023 | by Lili

 

What you need to know about AliExpress

 

Table of contents

• What is AliExpress
• What does AliExpress sell
• How to use AliExpress
• What are the risks with AliExpress

 

Founded in 1999, the Alibaba Group has become a household name, not only in Southeast Asia, but also in Europe and America. With a current market cap at $657.7 billion, the company is ranked ninth on the global market value list compiled by Forbes.

 

Rather than competing against other companies, the Alibaba Group has a habit of buying its rivals like Lazada and helping them to grow. While this strategy seems to have been successful so far in helping them to dominate the Asian e-commerce market, the European e-Commerce market may be a tougher nut to crack. But AliExpress is well on its way to achieve that goal.

 
What is AliExpress

Launched in 2010, AliExpress is a global retail marketplace owned by the Alibaba Group. Not unlike eBay, AliExpress works with third party sellers, many of them from China, and ships their products all over the world. The platform is currently available in more than 190 countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, Austria, Spain, Russia, Brazil, and Australia.

 

The main difference between AliExpress and Amazon is that it does not sell products directly. In fact, sellers are autonomous within the platform and can set up shops independently. Besides providing a place for listing their products, AliExpress offers its sellers various services, including dropshipping, B2B selling and cloud computing.

 

The platform has a growing number of monthly visitors (2.7 billion visitors between November 2022 and April 2023), the majority of them residing in Brazil, France, Spain, and the US. No wonder the platform aims even bigger and wants to increase its market share in Europe.

 
What does AliExpress sell

AliExpress’ display follows the popular tile format seen on social media. It offers a wide range of products, including fashion, beauty, electronics, pet supplies, accessories, shoes, baby supplies, home improvement tools, and even cars and motorcycles.

 

 

Screenshot of the homepage of AliExpress.com

 
How to use AliExpress

Shopping on AliExpress is very similar to shopping on many other online marketplaces. You have to create an account, search for products, then put them in your virtual basket and pay.

 

The most popular method of payment is by credit or debit card. Depending on your location, you can also pay via PayPal, by bank or Western Union Transfer, Alipay, or even Cash-on-Delivery (COD).

 
What are the risks with AliExpress

Unfortunately, no marketplace is immune to fraudulent activities like grey markets and counterfeiting. Although it wasn’t listed on the United States Trade Representative’s most recent List of Notorious Markets, AliExpress is not immune to fraud, fake products, and grey markets.

 

So much so that globaleyez’s online brand protection experts regularly monitor the marketplace for listings that infringe on our clients’ IP rights. We even did a case study to determine if a product we ordered on the marketplace really came from the country it was supposed to come from, was the real deal or a fake, and what customer service was like in general.

 

Although AliExpress has a policy about protecting IP rights, it’s up to the right holders to notify the platform if a listing infringes on their IP rights. This is why online brand protection is especially important when it comes to AliExpress.

 

If you don’t notify the platform of an infringement, nobody will. And that means that counterfeiters, grey marketers, and any other fraudsters can continue to steal your revenue, ruin your reputation, cause harm to your customers, and much more.

 

globaleyez’s services are designed to prevent that from happening on AliExpress, as well as on over 150 other marketplaces, single webshops, and any other corners of the internet, even the darknet. Our versatile monitoring services (domain, social media, marketplace, app, and image) ensure that infringements on your IP rights are quickly detected and removed from the internet.

 

If you’re worried about counterfeit or grey market versions of your products appearing on AliExpress or anywhere else, give us a call and let us help you.

 

Contact us and let us show you how we can help protect your brand.