Frequently Asked Questions

Alibaba and Vendio share a common vision to help make it easy to do business anywhere, with a particular focus on small to mid-sized merchants. Alibaba can offer amazing new and exclusive sourcing opportunities to Vendio merchants from their supplier relationships, and Vendio can offer an enhanced suite of selling services to Alibaba's customers who are leveraging their AliExpress.com wholesale sourcing platform.

Alibaba is a leading global e-commerce company that employs approximately 18,000 people, with offices in more than 60 cities across Greater China, Japan, Korea, Europe and the United States. Their family of online properties have over 50MM users in 240 countries around the world. You can learn more about Alibaba Group.

Alibaba.com provides US merchants access to a wide range of opportunities to source products from Alibaba's global supplier base by enabling merchants to find suppliers and contact them for quotations. AliExpress provides the ability to purchase directly online from a subset of these merchants, with each purchase protected by an escrow service to ensure fulfillment before your payment is released.

The terms of the deal were not announced. Alibaba's acquisition of Vendio is part of their investment to support US small businesses and their AliExpress.com wholesale sourcing platform.

Vendio will focus on expanding the comprehensive suite of services that help you identify and source great products to sell and then seamlessly help you sell them profitably on all the eCommerce sites you'd like to sell, including your own store.

Becoming part of Alibaba provides Vendio many more resources that will be used to expand and provide ever better services to our customers. Alibaba brings millions of products and supplier relationships that will be used to offer exclusive sourcing opportunities to you. Alibaba has a talented, intelligent, and very experienced eCommerce team that will lend additional guidance and ideas to help make US small businesses sell more profitably.

Merchants using the current Vendio Platform have already seen some light integration over the last few months. These merchants should expect to see deeper integration to make sourcing easier over the course of the coming year. Merchants using Vendio and Andale platforms who don't currently have the ability to search for these products should expect to see integration efforts in early Q3 this year.

Definitely. The Vendio team is excited by the prospect of having our supported merchants receive special access to a wide variety of unique products at rates better than those offered to merchants not sourcing through Vendio.

Vendio will continue to operate as a standalone business, with existing customer relationships maintained. The team will continue to identify ways to provide even more compelling products and pricing in the future.

Yes. Vendio Stores have been a hugely successful product for Vendio, and we want to continue this momentum with an even more robust product at no cost to you.

There are no immediate plans to discontinue any products as part of this new relationship. As always, we want to feed more resources into the products you want the most and allocate fewer resources to products you've selected to be less important to your business.

Vendio's focus on multi-channel selling hasn't changed. We expect to continue building out features for eBay and Amazon and adding more marketplaces and sales channels in the future. Alibaba provides an additional value added service earlier in the chain that helps you identify and source even more products through these channels.

Always. We generally don't discuss new product plans too far in advance, but we have a lot of new opportunities to make your selling lives easier. Of course, we'll be working on integrating compelling sourcing options into the Vendio Platform as well.

Additional resources will be available to make the site perform better and better over time.

Vendio is still Vendio. Lots of us still answer to the names AuctionWatch and Andale and Honesty, too.

Yes. You will continue to access your Vendio services as you do currently.

Yes. The numbers, e-mails, and your team will remain the same. You shouldn't see any changes.

Yes. We look forward to growing the teams in San Mateo and Romania to better serve your overall sourcing and selling needs.

The Vendio management team remains largely unchanged through this transition. Current COO Mike Effle will assume the role of the Vendio CEO and Rodrigo Sales, current Vendio CEO, will become a strategic advisor to the company. Mike has been with the company over 11 years, which should enable a seamless transition.

No changes to existing Vendio operations are expected as a result of this announcement. As we grow our mission to include the integrated sourcing opportunities and expansion of services generally, we expect to leverage additional resources in the US and Bucharest, and existing technology and technical advice from Alibaba's experienced team.

Yes. The Vendio support team remains the same.

AliExpress is not meant for direct consumer purchases. The reason you see a 1 piece minimum on some products is so wholesalers can provide samples to merchants for review. There is a definitely a merchant advantage because the bigger the order, the better the discount. Test it out for yourself by clicking here to get our exclusive coupon for up to $100 in free products from AliExpress.

As with any business transaction, it's important to perform due diligence before transacting with a potential partner. AliExpress helps with this process by offering a feedback system and a premium membership program to indicate trusted suppliers who've passed authentication and verification procedures. Most importantly, AliExpress offers free Escrow Buyer Protection where payment is released to the supplier only after you confirm delivery.

Before placing a large order, it's advisable to ask for a sample so that you can see the product. As with any business purchase, you should also research the supplier and make sure that all questions are answered to your satisfaction before moving forward. AliExpress also offers free Escrow Buyer Protection so that if products upon receipt are not as described, you will receive a full refund.

AliExpress offers a free Escrow Buyer Protection program where payment for orders is held in escrow until you confirm delivery. Refunds are available if you're unsatisfied with the order or if the order did not arrive.

Each item description on AliExpress includes a "Shipping & Packaging" tab where suppliers will notate the shipping company or companies they plan to use, shipping cost and estimated delivery time. You can also track your order from processing to shipment from your AliExpress account. It's also a good idea to have an open line of communication with the supplier so that you're alerted if anything were to cause a delay.

You can reach an AliExpress service member by using their contact form which includes email and live support via instant messenger. There's also an active AliExpress community called "Ask It!" where you can view Q&A on a variety of topics and post your own questions.