A Chinese mobile phone user browses online shopping site Taobao.com, a part of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, on his smartphone during the Taobao & Tmall 11.11 Global Shopping Festival in Ji'nan, East China's Shandong province, on Nov 11, 2018. [Photo/IC]

China's e-commerce market has given birth to billionaires. Now, with the annual Singles Day global shopping festival just around the corner on Monday, more foreigners are joining the online gold rush. They want to sell products not only in China but in their own countries.

"This is always the most exciting and busy time of year for us — Nov 11 sales and the Christmas shopping season," said Jay Thornhill, head of product development at Shanghai-based Baopals, a website that translates product information on Taobao and Tmall into English for foreigners in China.

"Our team is excited about the Double Eleven spree this year and we'll have the team working 24 hours a day to make sure orders are processed smoothly," Thornhill said on Monday.

Baopals, which was launched in 2016 by United States citizens Charlie Erickson, Tyler McNew and Thornhill, has nearly 60,000 registered users, mostly foreigners, with 18,000 joining in the past year.

The site aims to make the entire online shopping experience simpler for foreigners, from finding products to receiving customer service in English.

Thornhill said that nearly 1 million items have been purchased on Baopals so far this year — merchandise valued at more than 60 million yuan ($8.5 million) — with customers evenly split between male and female. Of the customers, 25 percent are based in Shanghai, 20 percent in Beijing and 13 percent in Guangdong, the top three places where foreigners live.