E-COMMERCE AIDS LOCAL BRANDS IN GAINING MORE POPULARITY

Tens of thousands of vendors reach wider audience

Du Wei, co-founder of Zeblaze, a company that makes smartwatches in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, sent a new batch of these timepieces to warehouses before Spring Festival, which this year fell on Jan 22.

"We prepared 10,000 watches in advance for Chinese New Year. To my surprise, all of them sold via online marketplaces during the weeklong holiday, and our sales surged by more than 200 percent year-on-year," Du said, adding that most of the company's customers come from Europe, North America, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Booming sales were also reported by Chinese home appliance giant Midea Group for its floor-cleaning robots, with orders received since the start of this year from Spain, France and Russia through AliExpress, Alibaba Group's business-to-customer platform.