May Liu earns about $2,500 a month as an office worker in Hong Kong, but she spends about 10 to 15 times that on luxury goods, buying everything from Prada handbags to products from US cosmetic brand Fresh.
While Ms Liu loves shopping, she buys mostly for others in her role as a “daigou” agent – a growing breed of people who specialise in helping mainland Chinese consumers secure products from overseas.
She started her daigou business a year ago as a way to earn more money, but the young mainland Chinese was soon bringing in up to $10,000 a month. Ms Liu now has about 2,600 clients, who use Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, and WeChat, a messaging app, to order goods.