Jacqueline Lam sells western fashions to Chinese shoppers, via her website MiHaiBao. What may come as a surprise to anyone who has seen the throngs of Chinese tourists jostling to get into the Louis Vuitton section at Galeries Lafayette in Paris is that she does not focus entirely on top-end brands.

The 28-year-old Chinese-born Danish citizen, who says she developed a keen sense of what Chinese shoppers want to buy abroad after years of being hassled by friends and relatives to bring “everything from toilet seats to cookies” back from Europe, is selling her customers on the idea of discovering new designers.

MiHaiBao does stock Moschino and Christian Louboutin, but its main focus is niche and relatively undiscovered brands, such as Italian knitwear group Boboutic and Sweden’s Acne Studios, whose brightly coloured, androgynous pieces sell for less than ￡1,000. MiHaiBao, a name which translates as “secret, overseas treasure” promises on its website that customers will “hit on something new”.