Episode 26: Interview with Jay Thornhill from Baopals - giving access to online shopping in China for foreigners
Jay Thornhill is a real example of a success story of a foreigner making it in China as he is one of the 3 co-founders of Baopals, a website for English speaking consumers in China to access Taobao, Tmall and JD.
What started as an entrepreneurial adventure between three friends living in the same building, Jay, together with Charlie Erickson and Tyler McNew managed to build a profitable company within a year with no funding and no experience in ecommerce and it’s still growing more than 4 years later. Baopals has often appeared in international news as an example of a successful company with foreign owners, and I read somewhere that over 250 million RMB of merchandise value has been sold through the platform. Baopals even has their own Wiki page!
You can find Baopals on WeChat) and you can contact Jay by email: jay@baopals.com.