So Charlie came up with the idea to set up a website that can translate product descriptions and customer reviews on Taobao and Tmall into English.

Jay Thornhill (left), Tyler McNew (middle) and Charlie Erickson (right), who launched Baopals to help foreign customers buy items from Taobao or Tmall, walk on a street in Shanghai on Aug 9. [Photo/VCG]

Customers can log on to Baopals to place an order and make payments via Alipay, WeChat Wallet and China UnionPay. The founders say they are working on integrating support for payments by credit cards and PayPal too.

As the website is in its early stages of development, it needs to secure funding to support its operation. Thus, it charges a service fee of 5 percent of the item price and an extra 8 yuan ($1.2) per item category.

Since it was founded, Baopals has handled more than 100,000 orders. About 20,000 registered users have bought 600,000 products via the website.

According to statistics collected and compiled by Jay, women's wear, household products and electronic products are the most popular items on Baopals.

The top keyword searches include bike, Xiaomi (a Chinese smartphone brand), iPhone, Game of Thrones, boots and PS4 (Sony's home video game console).