A young Auckland maths student has combined her entrepreneurial spirit and sense of fashion to create an e-commerce store she hopes will one day be a market leader.
Jane Li’s online store – mode92.co.nz – went live in November 2009, and offers a range of women’s clothing and accessories.
Li is in her final year of a maths degree at the University of Auckland, and says she first started online trading with eBay.
“Before I knew it I had built up a group of customers [on eBay] who kept asking me if I had my own website so they could buy from me directly – so I thought ‘why not?’”
Li says one of her main inspirations for opening her business was Europe’s leading fashion site – asos.com.
“Most of the online stores in New Zealand or Australia sell designer brands but there wasn’t really much here where people could buy affordable fashion clothing through a user-friendly e-commerce store,” says Li.
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“Originally I based my selections on what popular celebrities were wearing but now I am taking a more personal approach to sourcing styles from suppliers that make good clothes at reasonable prices.”
Li uses Chinese business-to-business trading website alibaba.com and online retail shopping platform taobao.com to get in touch with factory suppliers in China.
She then imports the clothing directly from China to her warehouse, which also doubles as her office and home, in Penrose.
Li hopes to do “a deal” with alibaba.com that will allow her to sell her products through the Chinese website.
Alibaba.com, the world’s largest online business-to-business platform, already hosts 5 million virtual storefronts and has 40 million – mostly Chinese – registered users
Li says the website’s founder, Jack Ma, has declared small businesspeople will be able to compete with the big players through trading on alibaba.com.
The Chinese are streets ahead of New Zealand in terms of online shopping, Li says, while many New Zealanders are still suspicious of giving their credit details online.
