When Jay Thornhill graduated from the University of Southern California in 2007, he had a plan. He'd spend one year in three different continents teaching English before returning to California to start his career. More than 10 years later, he’s still living in China.
In 2016, he started a company in Shanghai with two other Americans living in his building. The company, Baopals, is an e-commerce platform that allows foreigners in China to buy products in English from Chinese e-commerce sites Taobao and Tmall.
The site works by pulling data from the two Alibaba-backed platforms and translating the information into English. Baopals also offers a customer service center to help the transactions and logistics go smoothly. It adds a service fee starting at 5 percent for each product.
Thornhill and his co-founders, Charlie Erickson and Tyler McNew, felt shopping online was a problem for foreigners in China. Before they started the site, they'd often ask Chinese friends to buy products for them and then pay them.
They now have an office space with 40 employees, 15 of whom are foreigners and 25 are Chinese citizens. The company said it has sold more than two million products through its site and has sold more than $14 million since starting.
Alibaba is supportive of his company, Thornhill said, even inviting the start-up to its headquarters in Hangzhou for a tour.
