Chinese E-Commerce: Baopals, a bridge between foreigners and millions of Chinese products

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China may be the world's number one market for online sales. But for years, many foreigners here struggled to buy things, due to language barriers on sites like Taobao and Tmall. Well, three Americans in Shanghai came to the rescue, and now online shopping for expats is just as fun and easy as it is for Chinese natives. Lin Nan reports.

Jay Thornhill is celebrating his eleventh Halloween in Shanghai this year. He recalls how it was when he first came here.

JAY THORNHILL CO-FOUNDER, BAOPALS "My first Halloween in China, I had no costume. But I was always shopping in Walmart, so my costume was a bunch of things that I bought from Walmart taped to my body, so I was like Walmart man. That's really all I could do, because I didn't have any options."

Well those days are a memory now. Thornhill and many others can look for deals on millions of items thanks to Baopals, a website he co-founded in 2016 with fellow American expats Charles Erickson and Tyler McNew.

JAY THORNHILL CO-FOUNDER, BAOPALS "China is arguably the best place in the world to shop online. But as a foreigner here, unless you are really good at Chinese and you learn how to navigate the Chinese shopping platform, you don't really get to experience it fully."

At baopals.com, users enter whatever it is they're looking for in the search field. Baopals then searches Taobao and Tmall, Chinese sites powered by e-commerce giant Alibaba. It then displays the item descriptions in English along with the pictures, and the rest of the transaction goes like it would on any other website. All this for a service fee of five percent.

CHARLES ERICKSON CO-FOUNDER, BAOPALS "We started with something really niche, just foreigners in China that are having problems. It is usually better to start focusing on something that a few people will love, that you know you will use, your friends will use."

The site is a favorite with China's expats. In less than three years it has sold over 2 million products and generated over 14 million US dollars in revenue. The team is now gearing up for the upcoming 11.11, the nation's biggest sales event.

CHARLES ERICKSON CO-FOUNDER, BAOPALS "11.11 is always a very stressful period, but also very exciting period. Last year we saw 5 thousand items within 15 minutes I believe, so right at midnight it really took off, and I was like 'Oh my goodness, can we handle this amount of traffic?' But we did. And now we are more prepared this year."

Its ambition goes beyond China's borders. The team now plans to go global, helping people in other countries buy products on Chinese sites more easily.

LIN NAN SHANGHAI "E-commerce in China has created many channels and platforms for niche markets like Baopals, making people's lives more convenient, and putting better quality, cheaper Chinese products to a larger, more visible scale. Lin Nan CGTN Shanghai."