How to Use Alibaba Lens: 5 Creative Ways to Source Smarter

“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” This memorable quote by Theodore Levitt, former Harvard marketing scholar, zooms in on the power of creativity and boldness in innovation. The same spirit of turning ideas into action lives in Alibaba Lens.

In fact, Alibaba Lens already stands out as a truly subversive free AI image search tool now, with one-click instant price comparison access across 200 million products, smart supplier customization filters, and AI-powered image and text multimodal search all packed into one tool, without the need of browser tab switching.

But there are still many other creative ways to use it more powerfully. Read on to discover the top 5 creative uses of Alibaba Lens to tap into its full potential, and unlock more value.

Table of Contents
5 creative ways to use Alibaba Lens for smarter sourcing
    Simplify sourcing across currencies
    Bridge language gaps in sourcing
    Capture key details in sourcing
    Track down small parts with ease
    Alibaba Lens as your smart sourcing sidekick
Reimagine image search with AI in Alibaba Lens

5 creative ways to use Alibaba Lens for smarter sourcing

Simplify sourcing across currencies

If money is a type of global language, different currencies are its accent, and naturally, we all have one. When sourcing globally for goods, frequent currency conversion often creates unnecessary hassles and confusion for B2B buyers, especially those selling internationally in multiple major currencies based on their customer base.

Fashion ecommerce sellers, for example, often seek inspiration from the European fashion market– long recognized as a global trendsetter with 3 of the Big Four fashion capitals located there. However, sellers often run into conversion issues when checking designs and prices on European sites, which are usually in Euros. While conversion isn’t difficult, doing it repeatedly across many sites and items can become time-consuming and tedious.

In this respect, Alibaba Lens provides a convenient solution to save these fashion sellers from all the delays and frictions. They can simply download Alibaba Lens from the Chrome Web Store, pin the extension on the browser, click on its orange logo icon, and proceed to screenshot any fashion design with the prices in Euros. The default US dollar currency image search results of Alibaba Lens will update into Euro currency right after the users click on the additional filter to “view matches priced lower than the selected items”, as demonstrated in the images below:

Alibaba Lens basically handles all 20+ types of local currencies that are supported on Alibaba.com, so users checking out any competitor retail prices for wholesale costs can quickly find out most types of rates, including the Indian Rupee as shown in the screenshot below:

Bridge language gaps in sourcing

Language barriers are still very much alive today especially when it comes to video or reel content which often lacks accurate or complete subtitles. This often makes sourcing products or finding inspiration from certain countries difficult, if not impossible.

In the B2B wholesale world, ecommerce sellers focused on skincare products serve as a clear example that illustrates such language gap issues. For instance, those who are zeroed in on K-beauty products in view of their global popularity and leading industry status may sometimes find it hard to learn more about products introduced by popular Korean influencers, especially those featured in YouTube videos or TikTok reels.

In this case, Alibaba Lens can easily come to the rescue through a few simple clicks by screenshotting the video frame and shows up the relevant products with wholesale prices and supplier details instantly, as shown in the images here:

What’s more, as demonstrated in the picture above, users can also further filter the results to display all suppliers who support product customization as well as OEM/ ODM requests.

Capture key details in sourcing

As an AI image search Chrome extension, Alibaba Lens is obviously most helpful for working with images. However, it is also capable of uncovering behind-the-scenes or often-overlooked yet essential details, as long as users click on them to unlock their potential. For instance, discovering specific prepped ingredients among all the top, widely sought-after online recipes can be a relatively challenging task since some of them can be seemingly unique or hard to find through the image itself.

In fact, from bakeries, specialty grocery sellers, and importers to online retailers and food bloggers turning recipes into products, or even food manufacturers and packaged goods producers, sourcing various exotic yet well-received ingredients for popular online recipes can be a tough job, especially when they’re region-specific. In such cases, Alibaba Lens can again work its wonders to immediately source out the wholesale prices of the ingredients, as shown in the screenshot below directly from an online recipe for a popular Thai dish:

Even better, the truth is, users can actually put every picture on the recipe into full use through Alibaba Lens, including checking out for utensils, nicely plated that are used to serve the food, as displayed in the image below:

More importantly, the above screenshot accentuates the multimodal capability of Alibaba Lens which smartly merges image and text search for more tailored results, even for blurry images of the kitchen tools hidden in plain sight.

Track down small parts with ease

While the mention of the idiom: A picture is worth a thousand words sounds like a cliché when discussing image search functions, it does speak some undeniable truth for Alibaba Lens, since it is capable of identifying small components.

On that note, auto parts sellers who often need to deal with thousands of individual parts can indeed maximize the functionality of Alibaba Lens by simply looking out for any images that highlight trending car parts to start sourcing for best-selling items or most wanted models. All these can be done in a blink of an eye, without the hassle of typing complex, lengthy, and often wildly varied part names used across regions.

As demonstrated in the screenshot above, sellers of car parts can simply click on any car part image with Alibaba Lens turned on and immediately find all related wholesale offers, regardless of whether the item is sometimes referred to as universal joint or U-joint, since the Alibaba Lens AI-powered image search works primarily based on visual similarity.

Meanwhile, users can also optimize the search by adding additional keywords to refine results for specific countries or customization needs, as shown in the following example:

Alibaba Lens as your smart sourcing sidekick

Truth be told, the term “sidekick” here is indeed pun intended, as it is a wordplay with the operational nature of Alibaba Lens, which pops up a side panel in a separate browser window, while also automatically positioning itself side-by-side with the original window, creating a seamless, at-a-glance split-view experience for the convenience of users.

As it turns out, this alternate role of Alibaba Lens is totally valid since after deleting the searched image, it can work as a powerful text-only search “sidekick,” a mini Alibaba.com side panel that users can take full advantage of, as depicted in the image below:

The above image shows how the same skincare product seller, after screenshotting a product from a Korean influencer’s YouTube video, proceeded to visit the selected product page and then deleted the searched image in the Alibaba Lens side panel to type in the text keyword “Korean Vitamin C serum” instead.

Since “Vitamin C serum” is another hot K-beauty item, it’s understandable that skincare product sellers may want to see if the supplier who makes the cleanser also offers vitamin C serums, and possibly bundles both in their store. Furthermore, after checking out the serums, the seller may also proceed to run another text search in the same side panel to explore packaging options like airless pump bottles, as shown in the screenshot here:

Overall, by keeping the side panel active, B2B buyers, especially those juggling roles like “product development,” “listing creation,” and “supplier sourcing” at the same time can get the most out of the split-view to keep all their drafts, diagrams, or spreadsheets conveniently open while simultaneously sourcing on Alibaba, ensuring multitasking efficiency without the need to alt-tab or open new windows.

Reimagine image search with AI in Alibaba Lens

Alibaba Lens is a free AI-powered Chrome extension that lets users search and compare product prices instantly through one-click screenshots, with added customization by filtering suppliers that support custom orders or combining search with text.

Its multimodal AI blends screenshots with text input to handle complex searches among millions of Alibaba products, making it easier to reimagine products, explore new options, and streamline sourcing all in one tool. Just as Alibaba Lens turns images into instant product leads, users can indeed leverage the full potential of Alibaba Lens by thinking through different scenarios and innovative ways of using it.

For more information about how to start using Alibaba Lens and the customization capabilities of Alibaba Lens, stay tuned on Alibaba.com Reads and visit regularly for all other wholesale business ideas, sourcing tips, and logistics insights—The next breakthrough could be one click away.