Ali Express - Good or bad?

Greetings! 

Looking around the mods social media there seems to be a lot of people asking the same questions:

- “Where do I buy mod parts”; and 

- (largely in response to an earlier response to them that Ali Express is the place) “Is Ali Express any good?” 

I think the answer lays in the sayings of old people (like me!) - “buy cheap, buy twice” being something I heard a lot growing up. Which roughly translates to cheap items are cheap because their quality is poor and they will break much sooner than more expensive items (often immediately). Given that pretty much everything on Ali Express is cheap, it is difficult to determine quality through price alone and the photography of the items, descriptions and third party reviews are (largely) equally unhelpful. So some curation is required, and that can be achieved in three ways (in my view):

1. You go for it yourself, buy a load of stock parts from different sellers on Ali and be prepared to discard a few albeit happy in the knowledge that you’ll have found some great stuff and thereby identified a list of preferred sellers. 

2. You pay extra and buy from a modding specialist website in Europe (like Namoki) or whichever continent you are on - because you can bet your hat that they have done 1. above and identified and done deals with a select cohort of Chinese factories that they know provide quality goods - and have probably added specifications and additional personalisations to their orders as the weight of their businesses have grown. 

3. You take my word for it that I have done 1. above, and trust my list of preferred suppliers on Ali that I have set out below. Now, I should state that I have built less than 20 mods so far and I am not saturated in knowledge on this subject yet, but I have spent a couple of thousand ££s on parts so far (and have stock for about another 20 watches in hand), so I have seen a wide spectrum of quality and shit-canned a few parts of it. So the suppliers (Ali Shops) set out below are few but they really are the very best of those that I have bought from to date. 

I will report back from time to time by way of additions to the list as my experience gets traction. 

I should also address the idea often mooted that all of the Ali Shops are supplied from / are the same factory (and other such variations of the point). I dare say there is a lot of truth in there being multiple Shops fronting the same factories - however, I am also convinced that the differences in quality (particularly in hands and cases) underline the fact that there are many different factories supplying the myriad Shops on Ali, so curation of goods as outlined above really is very important. 

Accordingly, if you are determined to build yourself one or two watches for fun and leave it at that, then I’d seriously think about sourcing per 2 above and taking the hit on extra cost - it will be worth it (remember “buy cheap…”). If you are going to do a bit more than that, well, route 1 is the way forward, but I hope route 3 might give you a bit of a leg-up on your own curation journey. 

Bon chance my friends! 

All parts 

SEIKOMOD Store

Cases & Bezels

MJ Watch Store 

MF Watch Glass Store (may well be the same factory as MJ Watch Glass)

Goutent Official Store 

Dials 

Shine Watch Store

Goutent Official Store 

Main Focus Watchmods Store

Straps 

Tearoker Office Store (rubber)

Liangmeilai Watchband Accessories Store (carbon-rubber)

Langley Official Store (milanese)

BANDSMAN Official Store (all types)

NATOBELT Official Store (Nato)

MZDTIMK Official Store (luminous Nato straps)

Glass 

MF Watch Glass Store 

Hands 

BLIGER Watch Parts Store 

BURRYJAZZ Watch Store 

High Quality Watch Parts Store 

Movements 

Keep Watching Official Store