WEBSITE MIGRATION

Your Alibaba Fees Just Hit $68K. You Still Don't Own a Single Customer Email.

If you're a leather footwear manufacturer watching commission fees compound while competitors build direct channels, you've reached the migration moment.

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WEBSITE MIGRATION AT A GLANCE
  • Next.js
  • Supabase
  • Vercel
  • Stripe
  • Saleor
  • Sanity CMS
  • 95+LIGHTHOUSE AVG
  • 12+ yrsSENIOR-LED
  • Fixed feeNO SCOPE CREEP
  • 200+PROJECTS SHIPPED
CLUTCH 5.0 VERIFIED

Overview — 01

We build high-performance direct sales websites for leather shoe and textile manufacturers who are done with Alibaba and ready to own their customer relationships.

Alibaba-to-Direct Migration

Alibaba-to-direct migration is the process of building a manufacturer-owned sales website that captures buyer inquiries, RFQ submissions, and repeat orders without routing them through a third-party marketplace. We migrate your product catalogue, configure SEO for wholesale and B2B search intent, and connect your new site to the CRM and email infrastructure you need to own the buyer relationship. The result is a direct channel where you control pricing, data, and communication.

The gap — 02

What is holding your current website back?

Common gaps we find in nearly every audit.

Every sale on Alibaba pays a commission you will never recover, and the buyer record belongs to the platform, not your business.
Risk: Continued marketplace dependency means your revenue ceiling is set by Alibaba's fee structure, and any policy change or account suspension can halt sales overnight.
Buyers who find you on Alibaba cannot find you on Google, so you are invisible to the segment of procurement managers who search outside the platform.
Risk: Without organic search presence, you pay for every lead through commission or ads, and competitors who have invested in SEO will displace you as search behaviour shifts.
You have no email list, no buyer history you control, and no way to contact your own customers if Alibaba changes its messaging rules or removes your listing.
Risk: A business with no owned customer data cannot run reorder campaigns, cannot segment by product line, and cannot survive a platform deplatforming event.

Safeguards — 03

How we build this right

Every safeguard, built in from Day 1.

Buyer Data Ownership

All contact forms, RFQ submissions, and order records are stored in your own CRM instance. No third party holds your buyer data or restricts your access to it.

Transparent Pricing Architecture

Your site displays MOQ tiers, wholesale pricing, and custom quote flows that you control entirely. No platform can override your pricing or insert competing listings alongside your products.

Performance and Uptime Standards

We build on infrastructure with documented uptime SLAs and configure Core Web Vitals to meet Google's indexing thresholds, so your direct channel is measurable and accountable.

Scope — 04

What we build

Purpose-built features for your industry.

Product Catalogue Migration

We transfer your existing Alibaba listings — descriptions, specifications, MOQ tables, and imagery — into a structured CMS you own, with URL architecture built for Google indexing from day one.

B2B RFQ and Inquiry System

Custom request-for-quote forms capture buyer requirements, delivery timelines, and order volumes and route them directly to your sales team without any marketplace intermediary.

Wholesale SEO Configuration

We research the exact search terms procurement managers and private-label buyers use outside Alibaba and build your page structure, meta data, and content around those queries.

CRM and Email Integration

Every inquiry and order creates a contact record in your CRM and triggers an automated follow-up sequence, giving you the reorder and nurture infrastructure Alibaba never provided.

Stack — 05

Built on a modern, secure stack

Next.jsSupabaseVercelStripeSaleorSanity CMSCloudinary

Process — 06

Our development process

From discovery to launch. Quality at every step.

01

Catalogue and Data Audit

1 week

We export and audit your existing Alibaba product data, identify gaps in specifications and imagery, and map your product lines to the URL and category structure your new site will use.

02

Site Build and Migration

2-3 weeks

We build your direct sales site on Next.js or Astro, migrate the full product catalogue, configure MOQ and pricing display, and connect your domain with redirects protecting any existing link equity.

03

RFQ, CRM, and Email Setup

1-2 weeks

We configure your inquiry and RFQ forms, integrate your chosen CRM, and build the automated email sequences that handle first response, follow-up, and reorder prompts.

04

SEO Baseline and Launch

1 week

We complete on-page SEO across all product and category pages, submit your sitemap, verify Search Console, and document the baseline rankings so you can measure organic growth from launch forward.

Social Animal

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Related resources — 07

Solution Furniture Manufacturer Website Development Solution Cosmetics Manufacturer Website Development Solution Chinese Manufacturer English Website Development Solution Typo3 Migration Solution Japanese Manufacturer Website Development Solution Leather Footwear Manufacturer Website Development

Questions — 08

Frequently asked questions

Most leather and textile manufacturers go from kickoff to live in 4-6 weeks. That covers data export, storefront design and build, catalog migration, payment integration, and SEO setup. Catalogs with 1,000+ SKUs or complex B2B portals sometimes push to 8 weeks -- that's normal.
You won't lose buyers if the transition is planned properly. We export all accessible customer data before cutover and set up email campaigns to bring them to your new site. Most manufacturers run both channels during the transition, then wind down Alibaba once direct traffic and organic search pick up.
A custom storefront starts at $8,000, with ongoing hosting around $50-100/month. Compare that to Alibaba's 5-8% per-transaction commission. On $500K in annual revenue, you're paying $25K-$40K in fees every year. Most manufacturers break even within 6-9 months and go on to save $50K-$200K annually.
Yes -- your website is a sales channel, not a supply chain replacement. We can integrate supplier APIs and dropshipping tools like DSers to auto-fulfill orders from your existing Alibaba suppliers. You keep the sourcing relationships and drop the marketplace dependency.
Through SEO-optimized product pages targeting buyer intent keywords like "custom leather shoe manufacturer," Google Ads at $0.50-$2 CPC, email marketing to your migrated customer list, and content that shows off your craftsmanship. Most clients see organic traffic matching their Alibaba referrals within 6-12 months.
Shopify works fine for simpler catalogs. But leather and textile manufacturers with complex variant structures, B2B tiered pricing, and custom configuration workflows tend to hit its ceiling pretty quickly. We build on Next.js with headless commerce backends like Saleor -- you get the ease of use with the flexibility to actually handle product configurators and wholesale portals the way they need to work.

More solutions — 09

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Need enterprise scale?

200+ employee company? Complex multi-tenant, auction, or multi-location requirement? We have a dedicated enterprise capability track.

View Enterprise Hub

Get started — 10

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Whether it's a migration, a new build, or an SEO challenge — the Social Animal team would love to hear from you.

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