BEIJING - VF Corporation, one of the United States' largest lifestyle apparel firms known for its The North Face and Vans brands, is joining a growing number of high-end brands to launch an online store in China.

"E-commerce and digital strategies will be one of major plans we made for VF's development in China this year," said Aidan O’Meara, president of VF Asia Pacific.

O’Meara said VF will begin its e-commerce plan with a pilot program to sell its popular Vans line of shoes on tmall.com, a retail website run by Taobao, China's largest online shopping operator.

He said VF will test the waters with this pilot before rolling out its other brands, such as Lee, Wrangler, The North Face and Kipling, next year.

Vans produces sneakers and shoes that primarily cater to the youth market. It is one of VF's best-selling brands in China, after Lee and The North Face.

Sun Yimin, a marketing expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the strategy of developing e-commerce is based on the changing habits of VF's consumers in China.

VF's online enterprise comes at a good time for the company. The growth of e-commerce is accelerating in China, which has the largest number of Internet users in the world at 457 million by the end of 2010, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. China boasts more than 140 million online shoppers.

Online sales for all companies in China grew 75.3 percent year-on-year to 461 billion yuan last year, accounting for 3.2 percent of all consumer sales, according to iResearch Consulting Group.

VF follows on the heels of other Western brands who opened online stores last year, such as Gucci, Armani, Bally, GAP, Adidas, Dell, Samsung and Uniqlo.

Sun predicted online sales for VF and other companies will be in line with sales figures at their respective brick and mortar shops.

O'Meara said VF is expecting online sales will account for 5 to 10 percent of total sales by 2015.

Currently, VF operates 1,400 shops in some 170 Chinese cities, and sales in China account for 4 percent of VF's global sales, which hit $7.7 billion last year.