The catalogue, not the agent
What the Basetao Spreadsheet actually shows you
A wall of product cards you browse before you open Basetao at all. What is on a card, where the goods behind it sit, and which questions belong to the catalogue rather than to the agent.
Start here
The Basetao Spreadsheet is a shop window
The Basetao Spreadsheet is the set of product cards you look through when you are shopping through Basetao. You open a category, scroll cards until something is worth ordering, and take the link with you. Each card carries a picture, the item name as the seller wrote it, the platform it sits on, and one link out.
The name is a leftover. Years ago people really did swap finds in shared files, and the word stuck to whatever replaced them. What it means now is a browsing site. There is nothing to download and nothing to learn how to read.
You are not meant to go through it end to end. It is a place to look until something stops you.
Two layers, and this is where people mix them up
Almost every misdirected email in this hobby comes from treating these as one thing. They are separate operations with separate jobs.
The Basetao Spreadsheet, our side
Decides what appears on the wall and how it is grouped. Never touches your money, never sees your order, cannot change a price, cannot cancel anything. If a card is wrong or a link is dead, that is ours to fix.
Basetao, the agent
Buys, receives, photographs, stores and ships. Decides nothing about what is on the catalogue. If a parcel is late, an item arrived damaged or a fee looks wrong, that is theirs, and no message to us can move it.
What each part of a card is good for
Four elements, answering different questions. Two of them are worth more than they look, and one is worth less.
| On the card | What it settles | What it does not |
|---|---|---|
| The photograph | What the item is meant to look like, and often which seller you are dealing with. | The shade you will receive. Colour difference is outside the inspection, so nobody downstream corrects it either. |
| The item name | Everything, if you copy it. It is the wording the seller used, which is the search term that finds the item again when a link dies. | Nothing about quality. A long keyword-stuffed name is normal on these platforms and says little. |
| The platform badge | Which marketplace the seller trades on, and therefore what kind of return conversation is possible at all. | The rating or history of that seller, which you have to open the listing to see. |
| The link | The only thing Basetao strictly needs from you. Paste it into the search box in link mode and the job is done. | Whether the listing is still live. Dead links are the normal failure mode of any catalogue. |
Card structure as published in the catalogue these links open; colour exclusion from the Basetao inspection standards page. Read 2026-08-04.
How to use the Basetao Spreadsheet, start to finish
Six steps, and only two of them happen on Basetao. Most of the value of a catalogue is spent before you ever open the agent.
Open the category, not the front page
Nobody browses a catalogue of this size from the top. Go to the group you came for, and let the cards do the filtering.
Copy the item name as well as the link
The link is what Basetao needs today. The name is what saves you when the link is dead in three months, because it is the seller wording that finds the same product again.
Name the doubt before you name the item
Decide what you are actually unsure about. That one answer decides whether you can still fix it, what it costs, and whether ordering now is sensible at all.
Hand the link to Basetao in link mode
Paste it into the search box. If the listing is gone, the keyword and image modes and then the Search for me form are the fallbacks.
Write the question into the order note
This is the cheapest moment to ask for a measurement or a specific photograph, and the help centre names the field to use.
Read the arrival photographs the day they land
They arrive the same day the item does, and the seven day return window is already running when they do.
Why use the Spreadsheet rather than searching Taobao yourself
Why use the spreadsheet at all when the platforms are open to anyone? Because the part that is genuinely hard from outside China is not searching, it is knowing which of forty near identical listings is the one people actually receive without a story attached.
The original item name can help when a seller link stops working. Keep the product URL, photo and model details together so a keyword or assisted search has enough information.
What it is not: a stock list, a price guarantee, a review site, or a quality ranking. Nothing on a card has been handled by anyone. Every question that starts with "is this one good" is answered further down the road, and this whole site is about how far down.
Where the goods behind the cards actually sit
Basetao describes itself as an agent for Taobao, Tmall, JD and 1688, and the search box carries small platform marks for the sources it accepts. That matters for a find in one practical way: the platform decides what kind of seller conversation is possible before you order.
A Tmall storefront is a registered brand shop and tends to answer questions in a formal way. A 1688 wholesale listing is written for buyers ordering in quantity, so a single unit is sometimes possible and sometimes not, and the photographs are often the factory ones rather than the shop ones. Taobao is everything in between.
Questions that belong to the catalogue, not to the agent
If the answer is on this list, writing to Basetao will not help, and the other way round.
A link on a card is dead. Who fixes it?
We do. Listings expire constantly and that is normal. Send us the card and we will replace or remove it. In the meantime the item name on the card is usually enough to find the same product from another seller, which is exactly what the keyword mode of the search box is for.
Can you tell me if this specific item is good quality?
No, and anyone who does is guessing. Nothing on a catalogue card has been handled. What we can tell you is which step would settle your particular doubt, which is what Judging a find is for.
Is the price on the card what I will pay?
Treat it as the asking price at the moment we listed it. Sellers change prices, and the amount you pay Basetao also includes domestic shipping to the warehouse and later the international leg. Read the current listing before you order.
Do you hold any of this stock?
No. We hold nothing, ship nothing and cannot see your order. Basetao holds the goods, and the sellers hold everything before that.
Judging the shelf itself
What makes a useful spreadsheet, and how to check it yourself
There are a lot of these. Most are the same few thousand cards reposted, and the difference between a useful one and a dead one is not how it looks. Four checks, all of which you can run in about two minutes.
Open five cards and count the dead ones. Listings come down constantly, so a dead link is normal and a shelf full of them means nobody has swept it in months. This is the single most informative test and almost nobody runs it.
Look for a date, then look for what the date refers to. Updated today is meaningless if what changed was the footer. A maintained catalogue tells you what was added and what was removed.
Check whether it is reading you a policy or quoting one. A page that states a storage window is making a claim. A page that states the window, names the page it came from and dates the reading is giving you something you can check after it goes stale.
Find out who maintains it. Not a brand name in a footer. A named party and a working address that an email actually reaches.
Hold this site to the same four. We keep the catalogue these pages link into, every figure here carries the official page it came from and the date we read it, and the editor address in the footer is answered by a person. The dead-link test you should run yourself, on us as well as on anyone else.
Next step.
- Finding the item covers what to do when the link on a card no longer works.
- Finds by category is the catalogue itself, grouped by which doubt each group raises.
Why choose this Spreadsheet, and how to compare alternatives
Use the category links to discover products and the check planner to decide what evidence you need. Compare any other Spreadsheet by whether its original seller links work, its options match the listing, its dates are visible and its advice separates product discovery from agent service.
Keep your own short list of URL, seller, variant, measurement and total budget. A large item count or a “QC passed” label does not establish that a listing is current or that it will suit you.