Hao Hongfeng, founder of jiuxian.com. Photo: Courtesy of jiuxian.com.

In 2009, when 36-year-old Hao Hongfeng, an alcohol wholesaler from Shanxi Province, attended his MBA class at Tsinghua University, he first became familiar with the concept of e-commerce from his teachers.

Hao founded an alcohol wholesale business in 2001, and he regards himself as someone with good resources and a good understanding of this field. He immediately grasped the potential of online sales. Hao believed that there weren't enough liquor stores to serve the potential number of customers, and thought that online sales could solve the problem.

Later in 2009, Hao founded jiuxian.com, an online business-to-consumer alcohol retailing platform. Within four years, his online business would turn out to be the largest online alcohol supplier in China.

Hao entered the e-commerce field at the right time. Factories were selling 470 billion yuan ($76 billion) worth of alcohol directly to the market. But retail stores sales were double, at nearly 1 trillion yuan.

This left a huge opportunity for alcohol e-commerce. "Currently, Chinese alcohol e-commerce takes up less than one percent of this field," he said. "If e-commerce takes just a five percent share of the whole alcohol industry, the corresponding sales rate would be around 50 billion yuan." To Hao, the potential market onliine is huge.

The price on his website is normally half the cost of stores, and the site sells more than 5,000 types of alcohol, including brands such as Moutai, Erguotou, Remy Martin and Chivas. "We are a comprehensive alcohol supplier," he said.

After 2010, jiuxian.com started breaking even, but profits have been rather low. Jiuxian.com has suffered many logistical and technical problems. After its launch, many users complained that the website has been slow. Although Hao told his staff to make sure the website could respond within 3.5 seconds, it took some users around ten seconds or even longer.

Looking back on this troubled period still bothers Hao. "We received lots of complaints from customers. The amount of orders spiked so quickly we were overwhelmed," Hao said. Only by hiring more staff and the working night shifts was the company able to get the orders delivered.

When the amount of orders reaches a new level, customer experience goes down, Hao said. "The growth of sales requires an upgrade of our team as a whole."

This year, there are about one hundred technicians working for the company. At the same time, more storage centers are being built in major transportation junction cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province to expand the range of delivery.

Despite earlier problems, Hao said he is confident about selling alcohol online.

"We expect our turnover to hit 10 billion yuan by 2015," he said.