If you end up buying one of the items on this list of the 11 coolest things to buy on Alibaba, we certainly won’t blame you, because we had to stop ourselves from buying some of them as well.
The average American is more familiar with Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) when it comes to buying things online. However, one company has that same status in China and is now trying to enter the online shopping field in the U.S: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA). Considered the backbone of online commerce in China, Alibaba raked in $19.5 billion in revenue from its e-commerce websites during its most recent fiscal year ended March 2017, an increase of 45% compared to its prior fiscal year. By comparison, Amazon recorded retail sales of $91.4 billion in 2016, signifying only 18% year-over-year growth. The sheer amount of growth in Alibaba’s sales is nothing to sneeze at, especially considering that the revenue generated by Alibaba mainly came from the emerging Chinese economy, which itself still has plenty of growth left, even if that growth is slowing.
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The sheer volume of goods sold on Alibaba’s platforms is also something to behold. The gross merchandise volume (GMV), or the total worth of all goods sold through Alibaba’s online commerce platforms, reached $547 billion in its fiscal 2017. Yep, that’s over half-a-trillion dollars of goods flying off Alibaba’s virtual shelves. By comparison, eBay recorded total GMV of just $83.8 billion in 2016. What’s more astounding is the fact that Alibaba sold $17.8 billion worth of GMV in just one day, a record that was set during the company’s latest Singles Day event (China’s counterpart to Black Friday) on November 11, 2016.
In that vein, Insider Monkey previously discussed in detail just how influential Alibaba is in the online commerce space. Check out our list of the 10 best selling products on Alibaba for details.
Just to make things clear, when we say “things to buy on Alibaba,” we don’t exactly mean it that way, unless you want 100 units of that certain item sent to you. That’s because the main Alibaba website is for manufacturers, trading companies and people who order in bulk. For buying one unit of a certain item, you’re better off buying at AliExpress.
The objects listed in this coolest things to buy on Alibaba compilation are based on recommendations found on AliHolic, the foremost website that unearths noteworthy items for sale at Alibaba and AliExpress. From the recommendations that AliHolic gave between August 2015 and December 2016, we looked into each items’ AliExpress page and ranked them based on their product ratings (the site uses a 5-star system) and number of votes. The products that made it to this list have at least 500 votes, signifying that a lot of people find them cool, though we ultimately ranked them by their ratings rather than their votes (votes were used to break ratings ties).
To see how the 11 coolest things to buy on Alibaba fared in the rankings, head to the next page to begin the countdown. Please note that the images shown throughout the article do not necessarily correspond to the actual products they appear alongside.
