The company tried its luck during last year's event when it "didn't know what it would bring", Liu said. It ended up with sales of 3 million yuan with its stock for the event completely cleared.
The company, however, was ambivalent, as online shopping has big potential but disrupts the pricing system in its brick-and-mortar stores.
Solving this conflict became part of Liu's task this year. "We have to grow online, but at the same time maintain profits in our traditional stores," she said. Her answer is to provide goods exclusively online.
About 80 percent of the products in the event this year will be of this kind, and the rest will be older inventory from past seasons, she said.
Like Hao, Liu also increased the workforce for customer service and warehousing. About 400 employees from the company's business partners will work for 24 hours sending packages of goods.
Liu and a dozen employees will stay up on Saturday and Sunday, to work as part-time customer-service workers. Sleeping bags have been prepared for their upcoming night shift.
She said she hoped Toread's online store can hit sales of 20 million yuan this year, which would be almost half of the company's online sales this year.
Last year, transactions worth 3.36 billion yuan were made on Tmall.com during the event.
First alpine rail gets midnight maintenance
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