well, I have actually used Alibaba a couple of times to source items... Basically, a couple of years ago, I went on a pretty strict diet, and started riding the pushbike a lot. This resulted in my dropping quite a considerable amount of weight, however, I started very large indeed, and couldn't actually find certain items of clothing that'd fit. Alibaba had a number of sellers who did plain cycling kit (so I wasn't buying dodgy "knock off" or counterfeit kit, just plain stuff from the same production line as their less "legal" lines...) who did a Jersey and shorts combo for around £15 posted. I initially ordered 3 sets which came within a couple of weeks (they had to make them as a "special order" as I was over the standard range sizes they had in stock) and tbh they were fine... better than the equivalent priced "aldi/lidl specials" in material and finish, and... they were big enough. Happy Bunny. 3 months and 3 stones later, I needed the next size down, ordered it from the same supplier and waited. And waited. And emailed/live-chatted And Waited. And Waited, then they arrived. At the first order size, not the scaled down one. Complained, and they sent another set, 2 weeks later, they came, as ordered this time, but by this time I had shrunk and they never got worn. In the meantime, I'd gone via AliExpress to a different seller who'd sent yet another set which fit fine.
Overall, the kit was okay, the buying experience was "iffy" at best, and downright useless at worst. However the goods were cheap and didn't let me down - and for the cost of one Castelli shirt, I had 5 sets of cycling kit, in different sizes, which saw me through a year of vastly decreasing size and weight... Fortunately, I'm now down to a size where I can buy kit that fits me, and know it'll last more than 3 months, so I spend a little more and get good quality.
Would I recommend buying something from Alibaba / Aliexpress... it depends on what you're buying
- food/drink not bloody likely. Remember the
Chinese Baby Milk Scandal
- clothing - quite possibly, but with the caveat that if it's a "brand name" it WILL almost certainly be a counterfeit.
- bike components - not a chance, which would go for anything that's got a "safety" aspect. Ali has a reputation (especially in the cycling world, where my experences of it lie) as being the place where lots of the factories that actually produce OEM equipment for the bike manufacturers dump their QC reject stuff, or, they knock out a copy of the kit (frames/forks/stems/bars/seatpins etc.) using lower quality carbon fibre and resin in the actual moulds that are used by the "day shift" to produce real Pinarellos / DeRosa / Colnago's...