Yamibuy's Alex Zhou on building a US$100 million business on homesickness

When Alex Zhou, chief executive of US-based e-commerce site Yamibuy, first moved in 2009 to study at a university in the Midwestern state of Kansas, he never imagined obtaining items like soy sauce or Chinese-style instant noodles would entail a two-hour drive on the Interstate-70 highway to Kansas City.

He certainly wasn’t alone. Seeing friends who would drive hours every weekend to find specific Asian products, Zhou was inspired to start his own e-commerce site to sell hard-to-find Asian products upon his graduation in 2013. Five years later, Yamibuy has more than 800,000 users and sees “double-digit growth” every year.

On this episode of Inside China Tech, Zhou shares his story about building a US$100 million business initially on homesickness, and then discovering a growing market beyond Asian communities.

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