CJ, AliExpress or BigBuy: which supplier fits your store
3 min readPublished Team Zentorix
The supplier decides your delivery time, your margin and how much of your day goes into forwarding orders. Here is what the three common routes really do, and where each one hurts.
AliExpress: cheap to start, expensive in time
The largest selection and the lowest entry barrier. You find almost every product, and you pay for it with your own working time: order forwarding, varying processing times and sellers who disappear when a product sells well.
- Best for testing whether a product sells at all
- Prices change daily, so recalculate before every campaign
- Plan for manual steps once orders come in
CJ Dropshipping: the middle path
A supplier built for dropshipping rather than for retail. Processing is more predictable, warehouses in several countries shorten transit, and prices sit above AliExpress and below EU suppliers.
In Zentorix this is the route where an order in your shop becomes an order at the supplier without you touching it. That is the reason we built the integration first.
BigBuy: EU stock, EU speed
Goods sit in Europe, which means delivery in days instead of weeks, easier returns and no customs surprises for your customer. You pay a clearly higher purchase price, so the products have to carry it.
Rule of thumb: the closer a product is to something people could buy locally, the more a European warehouse pays for itself.
The test that replaces every comparison
Order your product yourself, from the supplier you plan to use. Measure the days from order to doorstep, look at the packaging your customer will see, and read the invoice that comes with it. Ten minutes of ordering beats a week of reading supplier ratings.
Frequently asked questions
Which supplier does Zentorix order from automatically?
Orders from your shop are passed to CJ Dropshipping automatically today. For AliExpress the automatic ordering is still in testing, so those orders currently need a manual step.
Is a European supplier always better?
It is better for delivery time and returns, and worse for the purchase price. For products that compete with local shops it usually wins; for cheap impulse products the higher price often eats the whole margin.
How do I recognize a bad supplier?
Slow answers before you have ordered anything, no clear statement on processing time, and photos that appear identically in dozens of listings. Order a sample and measure how long the first parcel really takes.