How to Order from PG Mall/ PG Beauty

PG Mall is the webstore for the brand PG Beauty/PG 美人網, a popular Taiwanese brand that produces handbags and accessories. You might have encountered it on YesStyle or TaoBao (or Yahoo Taiwan), but they actually do accommodate overseas buyers, so you don't need to go through a middleman.

Prices are pretty reasonable, mostly in the 200-400NT range. They seem to release new styles pretty often.

If you can read Chinese, they have instructions for overseas buyers here. If not, don't worry! That's what this guide is for.

Warning: image-heavy!
Note: click to enlarge all images.

Getting Started

Translated instructions:

Download the order form here.

I recommend using PG Mall's own site instead of the Yahoo Taiwan auctions for easier navigation. Their site works pretty well with machine translation - I tested it with the Google Translate extension for Chrome.

Shopping

When you get to PG Mall, click on one of the buttons on the top banner to get started.

From this point on, machine translation should be able to handle the navigation on the sidebar.

Once you see something you like, click to visit the product page:

Item#: 1700
Name: 休閒渡假風條紋旅行包
Price: 350 NT

The dropdown menu shows you how much stock is left for each color. If you pick a color from the menu, the stock photo will change to match the color you have selected.

Stock information:
庫存##件: ## in stock
售完不補: sold out, no restocking
售完補貨中: sold out, restocking
搶購一空: sold out (there's an implication that this was unexpectedly sold out, or sold out really quickly - I'm not really sure why this is functionally different from "sold out, no restocking")

So the example image has 17 brown in stock, 9 black in stock, and is sold out of blue and red (but is restocking both).

You'll need to be able to type or copy the characters into the order form. You can't copy characters from the dropdown menu, but if you scroll down to the near the bottom of the page, you'll see some tables. The cell(s) labeled "顏色" have all color names in Chinese characters followed by the color-code letter(s) in English. Just match up the characters in the dropdown menu with the ones in the table, and copy/paste the ones you want into the order form (more on that later).

The color name I want (for the brown bag) is 咖啡, and the color letters are BN.

If you want to know when a restocking item will be restocked, you can check the Yahoo page - just search for the item name or number and scroll to the "商品庫存查詢表" near the bottom of the page.

Green is in stock
Blue is in limited stock (less than 10)
Gold is restocking (the expected restock date will be given here)
Red is out of stock and will not be restocked

In this case, brown is in stock, blue is in limited stock (we know from the PG Mall page that the actual numbers are 17 and 9), and blue/red will be restocked on May 15.

Discounts

For regular-price items, there's a 10% discount for buying 3 or more items and a 20% discount for buying 8 or more. They also have promotions, like the "# for ###元" advertised.

However, when you are filling out your form, fill in everything as if it were full price (or the marked-down price, if something is already marked down, say, from 199元 to 99元). The total shown to you during price confirmation will be slightly lower if discounts are applicable. In my case, I bought one on-sale item (already marked down) and three regular-price, so the 10% discount will be applied to the three regular-price items.

Filling out the Order Form

Once you've chosen all your items, it's time to fill out the order form.

Step 1. Pretty straightforward. Be sure to use the same email for all your communications with PG Mall.

Step 2. The grayed-out row (18) is their example. Fill out as many rows as you need.
1. Copy the item number, color letter, and color name in Chinese characters.
2. Copy the item name.
3. Enter the price.
4. Enter the amount desired.
5. Enter the subtotal (price x amount).

Using the same example from above, we would fill in:
Item Number/ Color Letter/ Color Name: 1700BN咖啡
Item Name: 休閒渡假風條紋旅行包
Price: 350
Amount: 1
Subtotal: 350

Note that on the website the color letter is listed AFTER the color name (e.g. 咖啡BN), but when you're filling out the order form, you should put the color letter BEFORE the color name (1700BN咖啡).

Total up the cost, then pick a shipping method. Click to check shipping rates/times.

EMS - EMS rates and shipping times
空運 - Airmail rates and shipping times
水陸 - Seamail (Surface rates and shipping times)

Fill in your preferred payment method.

Ordering


Once you're ready to order, send your order form to PG customer service at 002-002-002@yahoo.com.tw with the subject line "海外訂購單" and wait for them to confirm your order.

They will email you back with something like this:

If an item says NO that means it is out of stock. If it says OK it is in stock, but if it has the comment "此色賣完不追加" that means the color will not be restocked if it goes out of stock (as it might during your purchase process, because items are not reserved until their payment has been confirmed).

Double check and make any corrections if necessary. Mine was correct, but since one of the bags was nearly out of stock, I asked to have a replacement (same price) sent if that one went out of stock. (It didn't, so I'm not sure what would have happened - maybe shipping would have needed to be recalculated if the original went out of stock after they gave me the price quote.)

They'll calculate the total price for you in USD and send you a breakdown. Here's mine:

Hi, your current order is:
4 items
Product cost in NT: 10% discount off regularly-priced items(669), plus price of sale item (99) = 701
Airmail shipping in NT: 1020
Total in NT: 1721
PayPal NT to USD exhange rate: 29.16
PayPal total (international fees are 3.9% + $0.30): $59.02 + $2.60 = $61.62
Please pay within 7 days to avoid items going out of stock. Tell customer service when you have paid and they will help you complete your order.

Payment via Paypal (sorry, I don't know how Western Union works...)

Send payment to 002-002-002@yahoo.com.tw.
In the comments box, be sure to put the email you used to contact PG Mall.

Now email them back and tell them your PayPal email (even if it's the same one you've been using to contact them) and the amount you paid. Mine just said:

付款了~

我的 PAYPAL email 也是 xx@xx.com

付款金額: $61.62 USD

They will send you one last email confirming that they've received your payment, and you're done!

They seem to ship pretty quickly (although they won't tell you when your items are shipped), so depending on the shipping method you picked, your order should arrive soon! If you picked an item that was restocking (or if it went out of stock before you paid), it might take a while before your order is shipped, but I didn't encounter that, so I don't know how good their communication is on that part.

Happy shopping!