According to data released by the China National Tourism Administration, more than 26 million foreigners come to China from all over the world each year. Thinking that many foreigners who do not speak Chinese cannot use Taobao, I can't help but feel sad for them.
Faced with this situation, Jay, Charlie and Tyler from the United States made Baopals together, a website that allows foreigners to buy things on Taobao.
Baopals connects consumers and Taobao. It is essentially a shopping guide website based on Taobao, but the team uses technical means to allow users to consume directly in Baopal without having to jump to Taobao like other shopping guide websites. At the same time, the biggest difference between him and other shopping guide websites is that all content needs to be translated into English (the product name and basic parameters are automatically translated). Baopals' current profit model is to charge users a service fee, 5% for each product, and an 8 yuan service fee for each single store order.
Before the founding of Baopals, like most foreigners who didn't understand Chinese, the three founders would ask Chinese friends to pay for the purchase when they had to shop, and then repay the money to their friends. But after recognizing this blank market and consumer pain points, Jay persuaded Charles Erickson and Tyler McNew, also from the United States, to start Baopals in March 2016.
In the early days, Baopals operated by capturing information on Taobao and Tmall platforms and then translating them into English. Baopals also provides customers with a customer service center to help them speed up transactions and logistics. For every product purchased, customers will be charged a 5% service fee.
In addition, the website will charge users a fixed fee of 2 to 8 yuan depending on the unit price of the product. Goods with a unit price of less than RMB 30 are charged 2 yuan per piece, 30-60 yuan are charged 4 yuan each, 60-90 yuan is charged 6 yuan each, and each piece higher than 90 yuan is charged 8 yuan.
Today, Baopals' team has 15 foreign employees and 25 Chinese employees. Starting from the initial small apartment, Baopals also moved the office to this old bungalow that combines Chinese and Western cultures. Prior to this, the Baopals team had worked briefly in an office building, “but we soon felt that the environment was not in harmony with our team atmosphere. We like a more home office environment.”
Baopals' cumulative sales volume in 2018 was 70 million yuan, about six times that of three years ago. In its fourth year, Baopals currently has 45,000 registered users, 600,000 cumulative orders, and 2.6 million products sold.
In other words, each registered user purchases 59 items on average. Baopals' user activity is quite high.
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