Cheryl Entry #6

Let me start things off by saying that I don't know whether the problem lies with my Chinese or whether Taobao is that complicated. I have told my teammates multiple times that I'm aware of how taobao works because my parents purchase from them often, but only now did I realize that it is actually much more complex than it seems.

I was supposed to find a supplier that had paper bags that were of an appropriate size for our terrariums. We didn't want one that would have enough space such that the terrariums would slide around the paper bag since it might make the terrarium topple and ruin the whole design of it. So I began my first round of fitting.

We wanted four different sizes- something that fits one terrarium, two terrariums, three to four terrariums, and five to six terrariums. According to the rightmost picture above, I realized that the same bag could fit five terrariums without any of them shifting around. This was possible because the width of the bag was smaller than the diameter of the two terrariums and the bag was stretched, making it tight and securing the terrariums in place.

I started searching and looking at different shops offering paper bags but none of them were even close to the sizes that I've measured out above. That was when I came across a shop selling customized paper bag sizes at $1 per pack of ten. After looking through the customer feedback (they had over 10,000) and reading through the details I decided to go along with it and added the item to the cart. Only when Shun Kai was about to send out the order did I contact the supplier, just to double confirm if it cost $1 for the four different sizes I had in mind.

Then she told me that there was a printing fee of $30+ SGD for printing ONE customized size. Even if I had bought 80 pieces of paper bags of ONE size, that would have effectively raised the unit price of the paper bag from $0.10 to $0.48, which is nearly five times the price!!

This incident really taught me to double check and reconfirm before purchasing anything. Otherwise we would have ended up incurring unnecessary losses. I was really so lucky I remembered to asked her about it.