Travelling in a metro train in Shanghai these days, you may see somebody across you reading a newspaper with an advertisement carrying Daniel Wu, a Hong Kong movie star, wearing a pink shirt.

Next to him are his lines "YES!PPG" in big bold letters, which you might remember him saying in TV commercials you saw last night or a Web page that you have seen recently.

It's part of a massive marketing campaign by PPG, a newly emerging brand of men's shirts in China, which has successfully implemented Dell Inc's direct sale concept in clothing in a country where consumers generally still prefer to buy in physical stores than from a catalogue.

The Shanghai-based company, whose name stands for Perfect Products Group, was founded in 2005 and has no manufacturing plants or physical stores. It now sells about 10,000 shirts every day, challenging the nation's No. 1 shirt maker Youngor Group Co Ltd, which sells about 13,000 a day.

"We have the same model with Dell, because both of us realize that the core of a business model is to get rid of unnecessary costs in traditional industries while delivering the best quality product to customers," said Sam Lai, chief operating officer of PPG.

Like Dell, PPG priced its shirts at the low and middle range. A 100-percent cotton shirt sells at 129 yuan (US$17.37) and a wrinkle-free shirt 199 yuan. The cheapest shirt costs only 99 yuan.

The idea of setting up such a business was born when PPG noticed that some clothes in China were selling for 200 yuan to 300 yuan each while its production cost was only 10 percent of the retail price.

At the same time, several retailers complained about posting a small margin. The reason is that there are too many intermediate layers of channels, while for the retail store operators, the more outlets they run, the bigger pressure they will have to balance with the inventory.