RepArchive Blog

With LY now gone I’ve noticed people have started looking for new sellers on Weidian so I thought I would cover how to assess the quality of a store.

A guest post by u/-TheNardDog

From what I’ve seen, the Weidian algorithm can be manipulated by sellers. The Weidian search function is not great, it will recommend listings from stores that have a large number of sales.

Some sellers use this to their advantage, and they create ¥1 listings which they buy 1000 times with bots. They then use this listing and change it to something else.

In doing this process, they can set up a listing for an item and already have 1000+ sales, when in reality most of the buyers are bots.

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An example, here is a listing that someone shared with me

https://shop1810023772.v.Weidian.com/item.html?p=iphone&itemID=5299375938

The number of sales would suggest that this seller is popular, and his items are good and worth the price.

If you take a look at the reviews, you’ll quickly see that the seller has used bots to buy this item (size 45 Orange and white Velcro is bought many times on the same day in quick succession).

You’ll see more if you continue scrolling.

Sadly, this is very common with the sellers that get recommended by the app and it makes it difficult to identify good stores.

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If you want to assess a new store that you have found I would do the following in addition to above

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Check to see if the seller specializes in shoes or clothes

I think straight away this is the easiest way to check if a seller is reselling.

There are a few exceptions to this, one would be Zok who is known for his shoes, and has just started producing clothes.

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Check the sellers listings

Good sellers often have accurate stock counts and don’t list a lot of items (any seller with 30+ items is normally a reseller).

This is one of the best ways to see if the seller produces their items. The reason why sold-out listings are important is that sellers that produce their own items only produce a fixed amount of stock, this is because they have to order materials in advance (for summer t-shirts materials are arranged in March for example). This means once they sell out, they don’t have time to create a new batch as they will be moving on to producing new releases. If they do decide to restock, they would do so using a pre-sale listing so they can get a forecast of how much material to order.

Popular sellers also sell out extremely fast, you’ve seen the number of sold-out listings that Cola and God have. Most of their releases are outside agent working hours (8 PM China time) and they are unlikely to have leftover stock by the time your agent starts ordering the following morning. Things usually sell out in less than 10s. The only way to get around this is to be able to order yourself through Weidian but even then, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll be able to buy.

If the seller claims to make their clothes and does not have sold-out listings/has large amounts of stock in every size, then there is a high chance that the seller is mixing.

Mixing is something that occurs often with larger sellers, they might initially produce their items but after they sell their production inventory, they start sourcing other batches and continue to sell them as their own produced items. The quality of the batches they sell in place of the original batch isn’t guaranteed to be the same.

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Future products are at 9999

I’ve seen a lot of questions about items that are priced at 9999. This price is simply a placeholder, it usually indicates that it will be released in the future, and when it’s ready the price will be adjusted.

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Production pictures

This is a good way to see if a seller has spent a lot of time researching and developing their rep.

Things I like to check here are:

The weight of the material used. This can be done by comparing the weight of the rep/retail. Some sellers also cut a hole out of both retail and rep and compare that.

Sellers often post a magnified picture where they compare the material of the retail and rep at the same time. This is a good way to see if the material used has the same grain.

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Pictures that show logos/stitching

Return rate/follower count

I don’t think this is as important an indicator as a lot of people suggest. The reason is this can be easily botted.

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I’ve started putting a list together which contains sellers that match the criteria outlined above. I was recommended most of these sellers by mainland buyers and so far, they have been on point with their suggestions.

I’ve already shared some of these sellers with people on this subreddit but before sharing them with the wider group, I will speak to them and ask them if they are ok with me doing so.

The reason is that some of these sellers prefer not to sell to overseas customers, they are well aware that people use agents to buy from them.

These sellers may refuse to ship to agents' warehouses and cancel any agent orders.

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This leads me to my last point, I would like to apologize to Kungfu. In the past few weeks, I suggested that Kungfu might be a reseller which turns out not to be the case.

The main reason why I thought this was I was unable to find him on Chinese platforms.

Last week I came across a store that was recommended in one of the group chats that I’m in.

I checked out their store and it met most of the criteria that I mentioned above (sold-out products to make sure there was no chance of mixing along with good production pictures).

After that, I decided to GP a sweater. The sweater sold out within 10 minutes or so which is normally a really good indicator of quality. The seller announced a restock at a later date.

Although at the time of order, I didn’t notice that the production pictures are similar to another seller I have seen here on Reddit.

I sent the seller a link to Kungfu’s yupoo and he confirmed that they are business partners, and they develop products together but have different distribution networks.

They want to operate similarly to the way that Jas operated on here a few years ago for those who remember.

I posted the seller here but afterward, we talked, and he told me that he only wanted to sell to mainland customers and that he would cancel any future orders from overseas customers and not ship to agent warehouses. This is the reason why I deleted the post.

After speaking with Kungfu, I recommended that he set up a Weidian store for people to buy from, similar to the way that LY operated using Taobao. The benefit of this is that it’s easier for your agent to order and it’s safer for you as Weidian has higher buyer protection (the seller will not get your money until you have received your goods) along with better aftersales support (Kungfu has confirmed that he will do 7 days no reason returns and exchanges).

Here is a link to his store: https://weidian.com/?userid=1218553411

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I hope this post has been helpful, over the next few weeks I’ll start posting the sellers that I’ve GPd.

Also, if people want to try buying from sellers like God or Cola, let me know if you would like a guide on how to order from Weidian directly to your agents warehouse.

L**WE x S**dio Ghibli 'Sprited Away' tee from ZOK - https://shop1650608314.v.weidian.com/item.html?itemID=5260643509

B**berry monster tee from ZOK - https://shop1650608314.v.weidian.com/item.html?itemID=4966530011