Chengdu busy reaching out to customers on the Web

Milanoo initially focused on selling wedding gowns to developed markets, but it now offers a wide range of affordable garments, including children's wear, costumes and business-casual attire.

Nine languages, including German, Japanese, Italian and Portuguese, are available on its online trading platform, and its average daily visitor number averages about 100,000, the company said. As most of the website's customers are from France, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria and the United States, the company plans to open more showrooms in those countries over the next three years.

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"Making a big overseas move is a logical next step for us," said Xu Yuan, vice-president of Milanoo. "Many European and US garment brands are having problems, as many of their expansion plans both at home and in international markets have been limited by the slow economic recovery, as well as by changing shopping habits in those markets.

"This is an opportunity for e-commerce companies like ours to grab more market share," Xu said. The company's sales revenue rose 80 percent in 2013 from a year earlier. The company's headquarters in Chengdu is responsible for making the decisions to develop and diversify business categories, as well as providing technical support, while other functions, including the product supply chain, express distribution network, and online customer and payment services, are distributed around the world.

"An increasing number of e-commerce companies in Chengdu started providing English websites targeting US and European customers when they decided to go global," said Liu Shiqing, a researcher at Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences in Chengdu.

Liu said some of the e-commerce companies' efforts to expand came after domestic market conditions became tougher. Many players have been competing head-to-head, with cutthroat price wars, which lure users but have cut into profit margins, in the past two years.

"Under such circumstances, taking the business on a global level will help Chengdu's e-commerce players gain higher profits and seek more share from international markets."