General

Guide to Agents, TaoBao, Weidian

What is an Agent?

Put simply, an agent is your connection to China where you will be purchasing most of your rep items. Popular websites that people use to buy reps include TaoBao and Weidian. However, for most countries, you are unable to purchase off of these websites directly. This is where the agent of your choice comes in, which for me, is WeGoBuy and is the agent we'll be using throughout my guide.

Once you find the items you want on TaoBao or Weidian, have signed up for WeGoBuy, and have added money into your WeGoBuy account, you will be able to copy+paste the TaoBao/Weidian link into WeGoBuy, where they will complete the purchase for you. The item will then be delivered by the seller to WeGoBuy's warehouse in China. WeGoBuy will send you pictures of the item once it arrives, and can provide you detailed pictures for an additional fee that show exact measurements, close up high definition pictures of certain aspects of the item (swooshes, size tags, wings logos, etc). You will also have the option to exchange or return the item, contingent on the TaoBao/Weidian's store policies.

Your items can be stored in the WeGoBuy warehouse for free for up to 6 months. During this time, you are free to buy from multiple TaoBao/Weidian stores, accumulating the rep items of your dreams. Once you feel your haul is complete, WeGoBuy will package all of your items together, and ship your haul out to you through the delivery method of your choice. We will go over delivery options, speeds, and costs below. Please do not forget to account for shipping when you are making your purchases, as the TaoBao/Weidian price does not include shipping from China to you.

How to Order Step-By-Step (with Imgur Album Guide to supplement)

Imgur album is labeled by step number according to the list numbers below. Open it in a new tab and follow along so that you don't get lost!

1. Sign up for WeGoBuy. Once you click on the link, you'll be taken to the sign up page, where you can enter your email and a password, both of which will become your log-in information for WeGoBuy. Punch in the verification code to prove to everyone that you're not a robot, agree to the Terms and Agreements, hit sign up, and you're ready to go. I recommend using Google Chrome to order reps due to its Translate feature, which will help you navigate TaoBao and Weidian. This is a frequently asked question: no, you do not need to learn how to read Chinese in order to order through an agent.
2. Exploring your Account Page: Once you're signed up and logged in, you'll see your Account Page. Let's break this page down a bit, as it's pretty useful with how much information is jam packed into it. Something to note is that WeGoBuy can be a bit redundant, with multiple ways to reach the same pages.
   1. Let's take a look at the center of the page - here you'll see the more urgent messages. Under "Action Needed," you'll see messages telling you if a payment is necessary, if an order needs to be confirmed by you to make sure the correct item is ordered or that the item that arrived to your warehouse after ordering is the correct one, or if shipping from one of the sellers is delated. The "My Enquiry" tab will show you any responses to any chats you may have opened yourself with your agent. You can also access these things by hovering over the Envelope Icon in the upper right corner.
   2. Above the central Messages area, you'll see your Account Information. Displayed for you is how much Yuan is in your account (as well as the option to "Top Up Now" which means reloading money into your account for purchases) and if any coupons are available to you. WeGoBuy periodically adds new coupons to your account whenever they do any promotions. For now, you'll be able to see your $40 worth of coupons that you get by signing up for WeGoBuy through this link.
   3. At the upper left corner, you can hover your pointer over "Shopping Agent" to pull up the WeGoBuy Search Bar. Here is where you'll be able to copy+paste TaoBao or Weidian links in order to make your purchases through WeGoBuy. Remember, in order to buy off of these websites, this is how you need to do so. We'll go over completing your purchase in detail below, once we go over the other important aspects of this home page.
   4. At the upper right corner, you can hover over your WeGoBuy username to access your Shopping Order (list of all of your WeGoBuy orders, pending or completed), your Warehouse (everything in your WeGoBuy warehouse currently), and your Parcels (any hauls that you have submitted for shipping or that have already been completed).
   5. The above areas are the areas I use most often when navigating WeGoBuy. I won't go into detail about the others to not bog down this guide. Feel free to play around on the site and explore if you'd like, but I believe the above information should be enough to get you through your time as RepFam.
3. Now let's get to what everyone is here for - Let's Make Our First Purchase! We'll do a purchase through TaoBao and a purchase through Weidian to cover our bases. We can start with a Supreme BOGO from seller Teenage Club since that's a staple for new RepFam.
   1. Let's head over to r/FashionReps to search through some QCs. Once we're at the subreddit, let's type into the search bar "Supreme Teenage Club."
   2. After hitting enter, we'll see some results. You can sort by Top posts, currently Hot posts (posts that are getting lots of attention recently), or New posts. I recommend sorting by New posts so we can make sure we're finding Where-To-Cop (W2C) links that are still active.
   3. Lucky for us, one of the first few results is a Wine BOGO from Teenage Club where the original poster linked the W2C link. Let's "copy" that TaoBao W2C link and head back over to WeGoBuy.
   4. On the WeGoBuy site, let's hover over the "Shopping Agent" in the top left corner, and once the area to paste our link into appears, let's paste that TaoBao link into there and hit "enter."
   5. We'll see that WeGoBuy now opens up the listing for the Supreme Box Logo from Teenage Club. We'll also see a pop up, which sometimes happens with certain listings. For this particular listing, the popup is a reminder that Teenage Club doesn't take returns. For other listings, you may get a reminder that the item you're purchasing may be counterfeit. Hit "risk accepted" or "okay" to get rid of the popup and we can continue with our purchase.
   6. What you should now see is the TaoBao Item Listing page - let's break it down a bit.
      1. On the left, we'll see an image of the product we're buying. Some parts of the brand name or brand logo may be blurred out or removed. No need to worry, this is due to copyright issues. The item you purchase should not have the logo blurred out once it arrives.
      2. On the right, we'll see the name of the TaoBao store. In this case, we see Teenage Club. We also see their store scores out of 5. Teenage Club is a great store as reflected by its ratings.
      3. In the middle is where most of the relevant information on this page is. At the top, we'll see the item name. Below that is the price of the item in Yuan. If there is a delivery fee, that will be right below the price of the item. Again, please remember that you will still need to pay for shipping out your haul from the WeGoBuy warehouse to you. This cost is not shown to you on this page and won't be calculated until you complete your haul and are ready to ship. Below the cost, you'll see the sizing options, color options, and quantity options. I wear Medium in Supreme BOGOs, want the wine red wine colorway, and only want one hoodie.
      4. After clicking each of my selections, we can hit "Buy Now."
   7. Clicking "Buy Now" should take us to the "Order Confirmation" page. Here, from top to bottom, we'll input our "destination country," which in my case is the USA. Below the destination country, we'll see our item name, size, and color selection on the left of the page. I'll read it over and make sure everything is accurate.
      1. Working our way to the right, we'll see a "Detailed Photo" button. WeGoBuy provides a few free, low-quality pictures of the item once it arrives to the warehouse. If you need any high-definition pictures of any aspects of the item you're buying, you'll want to pay for Detailed Photos. We're ordering a BOGO, and if I want it QC'd, it is imperative to get an HD picture of the BOGO so we can see the letter embroidery, grain of the BOGO, edges quality, and placement. I'll click on Detailed Photo, type in my request, and hit "okay." You can request more detailed photos by toggling the amount in the upper right corner of the Detailed Photo popup.
      2. Once we finish our Detailed Photo request, we'll see our final cost for purchasing the item, getting our detailed photo, and shipping to our WeGoBuy warehouse. Check the box saying you agree to the service agreement, hit submit, and now all that is left is payment before your item can ship to your WeGoBuy warehouse!
   8. I will add more details here once I make a purchase myself so that I can guide you all through step-by-step. For now, I'll say that the next page should ask you how you'd like to "Top Up" or reload your WeGoBuy account balance so that WeGoBuy can complete your purchase for you and have the item shipped to your warehouse. Click the amount of Yuan you'd like to add to your account to pay for your item. I recommend using PayPal. Clicking the PayPal option will bring up the PayPal website so that you can securely log into your PayPal account through the PayPal website to complete your payment. Once your PayPal transaction goes through, go back to your Account Page where your "Action Needed" tab in the center of the page should ask you to "pay for your purchase." Click there, follow the steps, and you should see "payment completed!" Congratulations, you have made your first rep purchase!
   9. Now, you patiently wait for the seller to ship your item to the WeGoBuy Warehouse and your agents to take your QC pictures (standard low-quality ones + any Detailed Photos you may have purchased).
4. Let's now go through the same process as above, but for Placing a Weidian Order.
   1. Same as above, let's find the item we want to purchase. For this example, let's buy some CZ Batch Jordan 1 High Obsidians. Let's head over to a subreddit to find some QCs to look at - we can try my subreddit r/RepWeidianSneakers, or other subs like r/repbudgetsneakers, r/repsneakers, or r/sneakerreps. We'll search for "CZ Obsidian" or "CZ Obsidians" to find a QC that hopefully has a W2C Link. Seaching this on r/RepWeidianSneakers should bring up my CZ Batch Obsidians QC post with a W2C linked. Let's copy that Weidian link like we did for the TaoBao process above, and head over to WeGoBuy. We can paste that link into WeGoBuy's search bar, and pull up the item listing. Up to this point, everything should be essentially the same as the process I outline above for ordering through TaoBao. If you get lost in this paragraph, just see steps 3.1-3.6 above outlining the TaoBao ordering process.
   2. If you followed all of the steps above, you should now see this WeGoBuy page displaying the CZ Batch listing on Weidian. For the most part, this listing should look the same as the TaoBao example above. However, Weidian listings do not always have specific size options. To navigate around this, we'll have to type our size into the "Order Remarks" are on the next page after we make whatever selections we can on this page.
      1. Here is where using Google Chrome pays off - we can read the colorway options thanks to the automatic Google Translate when opening the page. Looking through the options, we find "Obsidian 40.5 42 44.5" at the bottom, indicating that the Obsidian colorway is available for sizes EU 40.5, 42, 44.5. Note that other Weidian listings might just list the colorways and no sizes displayed. For those, just click the colorway you want and input your size on the next page as we'll do for this listing. Let's click the Obsidian option, and hit "Buy Now."
      2. Again, just like for the TaoBao ordering process above, we should now be on the Order Confirmation page. We can input our size here - I'll type "1 pair, size EU 42. I accept the risks of purchasing from this Weidian store." Substitute in your European size for your order.
      3. Next, we can ask for detailed pictures. For retro Jordan 1s, I usually ask for 3 Detailed Pictures minimum: 1) Picture of both outer swooshes 2) Picture of both heels of the shoes 3) Complete picture of white inner size tag. This should show you the swoosh quality, hourglass shape, and size tag, which can help with batch identification if you are unsure of batch flaws. You can also ask for close ups of both wings logos, both NIKE AIR Tags, both inner swooshes, both toe boxes, whatever you deem necessary.
      4. Again, as above, we can see our order total below, click that we agree to the terms of service, and submit our order. If we have enough money in our WeGoBuy balance, we can hit "Use WeGoBuy Balance," hit "pay," and be done. If we need to "Top Up" again, follow step 3.8 above to complete your WeGoBuy Top Up through PayPal. Then, complete your purchase on WeGoBuy by using your new balance to pay for the item.
   3. Congratulations! You've just made your first purchase through Weidian. Now we wait for the product to ship from the seller to your WeGoBuy warehouse.
5. Take a deep breath: hopefully, the ordering process is not as intimidating as it may initially seem. All we can do now is wait for our purchases to arrive! Or, in the meantime, you can place more orders. Just again, as above, be mindful of how much you're ordering, as we still haven't seen the shipping cost, which will be dependent on shipping method and weight of our total haul.

Is Using an Agent the Best Move for Me?

You'll often hear people brag about using agents and saving tons of money, but is this actually true? As with anything, there are tradeoffs to every choice. Using a middleman won't always be the best move, nor will using an agent. Let's go through some bullet points below.

In order to make paying for your agent shipping worth it, you'll have to put together a "haul," or a collection of items you're aiming to ship out. Sometimes, this suits your situation - you're already planning on buying 3 shoes, 2 shirts, and a crewneck. Perfect, using an agent sounds like a solid play. Other times though, you're only planning on buying one pair of shoes. For instances like this, I'd recommend using a middleman, as it's the most streamlined process, and you likely won't end up saving much money compared to middlemen, or at least not enough to make it worth using an agent, waiting for local shipping, getting QC, shipping out, and waiting. It's ultimately up to you, and it helps to plan out your costs before ordering anything so you know how much you'll be spending before the total hits you in the face.