Ge Hongjun started a shop on Taobao.com - the mainland's answer to eBay - as a class project but he now sees it as his ticket to becoming a retail magnate after graduation.
Taobao's growing popularity has captured the imagination of not only students like Ge, but also giants like Dell, Uniqlo, Procter and Gamble, and mainland firms seeking to step from the shadows after years of manufacturing for US and European labels.
The e-commerce site, the name of which means "treasure hunt" in Chinese, is a source for everything - from turkeys to televisions - with 80.9 billion yuan (HK$91.84 billion) in 2009 first-half sales. That is double the same period last year and higher than that of Amazon.com over the same period.
Taobao mania has particularly gripped Yiwu, a city of two million 300 kilometers south of Shanghai that is home to the world's largest wholesale market for small consumer goods.
Ge attends Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College, where more than a fifth of the school's 8,800 students run Taobao shops from campus, selling products sourced from the market.
The students' shops generated 25 million yuan in revenue last year.
"When I graduate I will continue with my Taobao business," Ge said. "It's easy to find a job in Yiwu, but once my business is on the right track, I can double or triple my salary compared to people who go work for companies."
He began selling cosmetics, then expanded into toys, underwear and fashion accessories.
Ge earns about 3,000 yuan a month, but his business is young compared to those who have been operating for a year and make 10,000 yuan a month.
The school offers an annual 100,000 yuan prize to the most successful student business. Ge and his fellow students speak with admiration of last year's winner, Yang Fugang, 23, who earned more than US$75,000 (HK$585,000) in his final year before graduating.
Taobao charges nothing to list items for sale and the site's revenue comes from advertising. Its revenue will likely hit US$200 million this year.
Taobao - a division of Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com, a business-to-business e-commerce company - launched in 2003 when eBay controlled 90 percent of the mainland online shopping market after buying Shanghai- based EachNet.
But within two years, Taobao pushed eBay's market share down to 30 percent and forced the US-based auction site to stop charging for listings in the mainland. In 2006, eBay's mainland site shut down.
Taobao now controls 82.8 percent of the mainland's online shopping market.
