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Experiences with selling branded merchandise via aliexpress?

by henjon
3 replies
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Hi Guys.

I am looking into new areas of expanding my business (mostly ecommerce theese days) but a few things a making me vary and so I am hoping for some experices on the topic of selling branded merchandise. i.e. Game Of Thrones wristbands, t shirts and stuff like that (just an example, could be anything of that sort).
We alle know that places like AliExpress are full of fanstuff like that, and for the most part I would assume that it is knock offs and therefore illegal to dropship onwards to customers worldwide.

Yet, I still see dropshippers doing business on those niches and wonder if I am missing out or if dropshippers who dip into this are living on the wrong side of the line and are risking law suits and what not if they get caught?

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this.
#aliexpress #branded #experiences #merchandise #selling
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Wagan
    You can promote the items as "inspired by" the show, movie or brand. Counterfeit items are a different scenario. Fake Nikes, Jordans, LVs - you can't sell those by dropshipping.

    With unlicensed merchandise, you're playing with fire. You can make big money (seen stores dropshipping light sabers as "official" Star Wars merch), but also risking a very expensive lawsuit.
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      There are lots of people doing things they shouldn't be doing up until the point that they get sued by the brands or shut down by payment processing companies. There are many, many cases of people losing everything they own in million dollar lawsuits.

      Payment processing companies have also been sued in these type of lawsuits for HUGE sums for allowing websites to process unlicensed or trademark infringement items. Because of that, most processing companies will not allow you to sell these type of things. Things slip through the cracks with them, though. If they later discover you have violated their TOS (which always ban this kind of merchandise), you will be permanently banned from using that processor again (as has happened far too many times to number with PayPal).

      We tell people in our course to NEVER sell a branded item that you get from AliExpress. It's a lawsuit or payment processor permanent ban waiting to happen!
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  • Profile picture of the author freddyhawkz
    I agree with what Mike Wagan and dave_hermansen mentioned. Unless you become an authorized re-seller of branded merchandise, I would recommend that you stay away from these "inspired" products. Big companies make a ton of money selling branded merchandise and they don't like you taking a small piece of that pie.

    If you really want to start a GoT inspired dropshipping store, do it on your own risk and mention that all the products are NOT original branded merchandise and you are just an affiliate seller in your legal pages. You can atleast say that you don't actually sell the product, instead just a reseller of ALiExpress. Will have to see how that holds up in court.

    When you are looking for products to dropship, it is recommended that you look for items that do not have any logo or branding.

    Regards
    Fred
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