Baopals helps expats shop on Alibaba’s platforms
August 21, 2017 Category Expat corner, Weekly
Expats living in China often have problems when shopping on the Alibaba platforms Taobao and Tmall, online marketplaces offering 800 million products. If they can’t read Chinese, they have to ask a local for help when ordering merchandise. But two years ago, three American expats – Charlie Erickson, Jay Thornhill and Tyler McNew – decided to create an e-commerce website called Baopals, which navigates Taobao and Tmall in English translation. Baopals provides product descriptions, price and delivery information, customer comments and a channel for ordering goods all in English. The Baopals team said it is trying to build a bridge between Taobao and customers, not only those living in China but also those living overseas. The target market may not be very large, but most expats living in China have strong buying power. According to the latest data available, there are more than 600,000 foreign residents in China, and more than 170,000 of them live in Shanghai. The website will be updated in about two months to include more social functions, such as allowing English-language users to leave their own comments and recommendations about products they see on Alibaba sites. For payments, Baopals accepts Alipay, WeChat Wallet and UnionPay. The website charges a commission fee of 5% of the price of an ordered item, plus CNY8 per item type. Baopals staffers then use their own Taobao accounts to communicate with and pay online vendors. To date, Baopals has handled more than 120,000 orders and nearly 600,000 items from 16,000 registered users. The site turned a profit for the first time earlier this year. The Baopals team now numbers 26 full-time staff, the Shanghai Daily reports.
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