About to pay for an order on Alibaba. Am I getting scammed?

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So I've been working on sourcing some products from Alibaba for a few months now. I've talked to many suppliers, received samples, weeded some out, and I'm now ready to order.

There is one supplier in particular that I am placing the largest order with. They are a 3-Year Gold Supplier with Trade Assurance and on-site check. Everything seems to check out, including their website and email addresses. I've also ordered about 15 different samples from them on various products, and received the exact samples in a timely matter. However, they only accept T/T or Western Union. They want to avoid doing the transaction through the Alibaba website (fees and such). When I voiced my concern, I received the following response:

"How about pay $1500 first, then we will send the bill of lading to you after shipment, you pay the left, we send the bill of lading to you, please kindly check, hope it will be ok for you!"

Does anyone know what they are trying to say? Normally something like this would raise a red flag for me. However, everything else seems to be fine. Does anyone know a good route for handling a situation like this?

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