2010-09-17 12:51

BEIJING - Liu Yan used to be an investment banker on Wall Street, but the 32-year-old is now more passionate about selling snacks via the Internet.

Liu's website, which started with an initial investment of 8,000 yuan ($1,188) in 2008, has now become quite a popular destination for virtual snack hunters among white-collar workers in Beijing.

In fact, Ximi.com's revenue touched 6 million yuan in the first half of this year, and is expected to hit 8 million yuan by the end of this year, a 100 percent growth compared to last year, Liu says.

"The growth rate shocked me," said Liu. "I am planning to extend my business to other cities such as Shanghai, and widen the variety of snacks on offer."

Liu's motivation to establish Ximi.com arose out of his girlfriend's frequent complaints. At that time, his girlfriend's workplace was located in Beijing Financial Street, which has few supermarkets nearby.

"She complained about the inconvenience of shopping for snacks there, so I thought that opening an online website that delivered snacks to office workers would be a good idea."

To begin with, Liu had just one employee delivering snacks from a tiny office located in Beijing Financial Street, but the orders kept piling up, forcing him to shift to a bigger office, rent four warehouses and hire 30 employees within just a year and a half.

"We focused on the office snacks delivery market because it was still virgin territory in the e-commerce space," said Liu.

Liu believes orders for food sold online will experience explosive growth in the next few years. Liu's website now has 400,000 registered users and offers 200 different kinds of snacks online.

Liu also hopes to extend the categories of snacks on offer to around 1,000 in the following months.

"I think food sales via the Internet have great potential in China," said Hover Xiao, a senior analyst from research firm IDC China. Corporate consumers might realize the need to order food online, which will in turn make other big e-commerce firms enter the market, Xiao says. "That will add pressure on websites like Ximi.com."

Over 60 percent of snacks offered by Ximi.com are purchased directly from other producers. Liu repacks the snacks and prints his logo on them. "It is a very good word-of-mouth promotional method and we gain a lot of loyal customers this way," Liu said.

Since competition in the online cosmetics and clothing business is intense, Liu believes entrepreneurs will become keen to explore new territory in the Chinese online shopping marketplace.