A cutting-edge intelligent facility featuring fully automated high-rack storage and distribution systems and a smart cosmetics purification workshop took shape in November that year.

Tourists are given a thorough tour of the factory's operations, after which they can buy products, including those meant for export, at a discount.

Longliqi has been rewarded for this effort, becoming one of the first 22 national industry tourism innovators in 2016, when it had more than 700,000 tourist visits. Last year it had 1 million visits.

"These visits help those who come to understand our products, and they can make suggestions on how we can improve what we're doing," Xu says.

The company reckons that it would take about 130 yuan at cost to get a customer from major online shopping sites, such as Jingdong Mall, which translates to more than 100 million yuan for one million customers.

"Our calculations show that what we are investing in factory tourism is money well spent, and we reckon that our new intelligent plant has at least 30 years' life in it," Xu says.

Tourism is now a central part of Longliqi's plans, and Xu says that in future it will allocate at least 20 percent of new project investment to the tourism side of the business.

Longliqi has established ties with many tourism operators, such as Tongcheng Network Technology, an online travel agency in Jiangsu province.

"Today's tourists are going to be tomorrow's customers," says Pan Wansong, executive deputy manager of Longliqi's tourism operations.

"Seeing how products are made gives them first-hand experience of their quality, and the next natural step is for them to go out and buy them."

In addition, in a supermarket most shoppers tend to buy just one or two tubes of hand cream, but in the factory shop many buy five or six tubes, in most cases as gifts, Pan says.

"That means that what may seem like just one person buying our products can have a flow-on effect to several other people in terms of publicity."

At the moment, most of Longliqi's visitors are middle-aged or older, and the company says it aims to broaden that.

"We see the parent-child group as the biggest growth point in tourism," Pan says. "Plans we have for the future include circus performances, and water and artificial snow programs for the summer."

All those programs would be integrated with Longliqi's products or projects.

"For example, children could make a bit of face lotion on their own and give it to their parents as a gift," Pan says.

The company also has plans for an industrial tourism town in Xinzhuang, about 120 kilometers southwest of Shajiabang, focusing on staying healthy.

It plans to invest more than 2 billion yuan in the next five years to improve the tourism town, and to develop about 10 towns featuring organic agriculture, modern industry and tourism, Xu says.