The Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has opened a physical showroom where Chinese customers can view, sample and buy items from foreign retailers.
The showroom is 6,500 square feet in size and is located in the Tianjin Free Trade Zone. It contains over 1,000 of the most popular items sold by foreign retailers on Alibaba's Tmall Global Platform.
Items stored in Chinese Free Trade Zones are not subjected to the tariffs that normally apply to foreign companies selling products to Chinese consumers.
China is a lucrative market for foreign retailers, with a population of over 1.3 billion and a wide held perception of Western brands in particular being higher quality than products made in China.
Alibaba is one of the most popular ecommerce sites in China.Â
