A shopping website for licensed products of the Beijing Olympic Games has started operation.

Yuan Bin, director of marketing development of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) said, ‘The website was aimed at that domestic consumers can buy Olympic souvenirs anywhere anytime.’

That is precisely how it is put on the official site and, frankly, it is almost impossible to decipher.

Go over to the website and click on English and the site silply does not work very well. Plainly this is a case of premature announcement.

The site is exclusively authorized by BOCOG to sell licensed products of the Beijing Olympics and no doubt will do very well. That is if it is intended for consumption within China and only within China. As it stands it is impossible for an outsider without Chinese language skills to work out what anything costs or how to get it.

In theory eleven categories are listed on the website but it will need work before it makes sense to any end user who does not have advanced Chinese skills.

For visitors to China either before or for the Olympics there are 820 authorized shops across China selling licensed products of the Olympic games. So visitors are well catered for.

The rest of the world?

This is just a guess but the site does not look set up at the moment with overseas trade in mind. No doubt that will change.
Source: Beijing 2008