Meet the personal shoppers behind How Now? Taobao! who help Chinese-illiterate clients unlock massive cost savings for a small fee.
Tell us a bit about yourselves.
Christopher: Hello! We’re Christopher and Tricia, a normal Singaporean couple who discovered how amazing Taobao is when we were shopping for furniture for our homes. A lot of people think that Taobao is cheap, but there is really a great deal of innovation, design, and of course, cost savings.
Tricia: We decided to explore Taobao when it was time to furnish our house. It mostly stemmed from a place of really wanting to save money and not go broke on top of our renovations. So between paying someone to do the work (e.g. using ezbuy), we decided to put in the work to figure it out!
You mentioned in an Instagram story that your Chinese language skills aren’t the best. How did you navigate Taobao then?
Christopher: There was a lot of google translating involved. But what really propelled us to be more proficient was the Taobao community we found on Facebook. It was a place where people shared their best buys and answered questions about shipping and what to look out for. The community helped us become confident in purchasing bigger items, like furniture and appliances, where the cost savings actually were.
Tricia: A lot of my friends (and my husband) laugh at me, saying that I jiak kantang because my spoken Mandarin wasn’t fluent. But with sheer determination and effort, we just translated our way through it.
At what point did you decide to start a personal shopping service?
Tricia: Our friend actually offered to pay us to help them ship stuff over! They’ve always insisted that there would be a demand and people would pay for it. But we’ve always been hesitant because we didn’t know how much work it would require to liaise with customers, the Taobao stores, and the shipping company, as well as what to charge for our services. We realise we could help people save a few thousand dollars after experimenting with a few of our friends. And if we could “earn” from their savings by providing such a service, it’s a win-win solution.
What problems do you help customers solve?
Tricia: Most people know how to buy from Taobao, but they don’t know how to use a Third Party Forwarder (3PF). Using
a 3PF allows for bulky, heavy, and large items to be shipped
by cubic metres (cbm), which is a cheaper method than being charged by the actual or volumetric weight. With that, we specialise mostly in purchasing large furniture and appliances. We serve as a middleman to help people buy from Taobao without having to deal with the 3PF shipping.
Since we started doing this, we’ve realised that there’s a ton of reasons people have difficulty buying from Taobao, one of them being the language barrier. So we’ve expanded our “menu” to include sourcing as well. One of our clients actually sent us photos of different furniture from local shops. Then, we helped them to source similar items on Taobao and shipped them to their doorstep. If the products come with issues, like missing parts or cosmetic damages, we will help to take it up with the seller or 3PF to get compensation. But we always remind the buyers that we will not bear any risk with damaged goods unless it’s structural damage.
One of the best buys was a bench (our customer) bought for $150 from Taobao. A local shop quoted them $800 for a similar bench. This is just one of the examples where Taobao can help one save money while preserving their preferred aesthetics.
What are the most common requests among Singaporean clients?
Tricia: The usuals are dining tables, TV consoles, shoe racks, bed frames, and bedside tables. As for appliances, electric drying rack, dishwashers, and water dispensers are quite common (requests) since they can be quite pricey in Singapore.
What are your best and worst buys to date?
Tricia: Our best buy has to be our electric drying rack. We got it for $200 when the cheapest model from a local store was about $1000. It’s been over three years and it’s going strong. Another find was our bed frame. Because of our room’s constraints, we needed a storage bed which opens from the side with a very thin headrest. We magically found that on Taobao. It’s probably impossible or very expensive to buy in Singapore.
A lot of our worst purchases were made because we forgot to check the reviews or read the product description properly. One of the worst buys was a frying pan which started rusting within a few weeks. The seller said that the manual (who reads a manual for a frying pan?) specified that we needed to wipe the pan dry after using, but we had been air-drying it. We left a bad review although it’s partially our fault and didn’t buy from that store again.
How has Taobao come in handy now that you’ve become parents? (Congratulations!)
Tricia: Thank you! Taobao is extremely useful for items that are usually very costly in Singapore, like baby cots, baby shoes, standing bath tubs, and bottle sterilisers. Taobao is also a treasure trove of interesting and innovative products that are uncommon in Singapore, so we got to try them out.
Sometimes, when things are needed almost immediately, we would get them locally. Unfortunately, as parents, we realise that most of our needs are immediate and we can’t wait for four to six weeks for items like shoes or toys to arrive.
