The fifteenth edition of the annual L'Oreal Campus Charity Sales, which started at Shanghai-based Fudan University on May 4, will have a larger footprint, more products, lower prices, bigger donations and an online dimension for the first time.

This year, the sales will travel to 15 universities in different regions of the Chinese mainland, up from 12 last year. The sale will last two days at each university.

Peking University, Zhejiang University, Xiamen University and Heilongjiang University are among the 15 destinations.

Sales revenue at each university will be donated to students from impoverished families at the university, the French cosmetics company said.

Altogether 8,200 pieces of products, including many that target the young groups, will be on sale at each university, with prices marked 40 to 70 percent off from retail levels.

Lan Zhenzhen, vice-president of L'Oreal China, said the sales volume at almost each of the 12 universities last year exceeded 300,000 yuan ($43,000).

It is expected to be higher this year as online sales are included for the first time.

A WeChat store will enable students to view all the products and place orders conveniently. Their payments would be transferred to an NGO, the China Youth Development Foundation, directly.

For this arrangement, L'Oreal has teamed up with the charity. The CYDF will donate the money to various universities.

Since 2014, half of the donations through the sales went to individual students. The other half went to foundations that fulfill students' needs.

A foundation set up by L'Oreal and the CYDF provides students from poor families with the opportunity of a short-term foreign youth exchange program. Around 150 students from more than 10 universities have benefited in the past three years.

Zhao Qing, a postgraduate student majoring in English at Tianjin-based Nankai University, is one of them. She went to the City University of Hong Kong for a week early last year.

"We observed courses of simultaneous translating and listened to lectures of foreign language studies, which was a precious chance for me," said the 25-year-old woman from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Lan said L'Oreal believes a charity sale rather than outright donations helps students to get involved in actual business environment.

"We select a core team composed of eight to 10 students in each university and they will function as a sales management team on their own. The will take on roles in the C-suite positions. For example, the COO will be in charge of the logistics plan and the human resource director will recruit dozens of volunteers who will assist the core team to carry out the project," Lan said.

"They have the right to freely design their sales plan, such as creating a product package and buy-and-get-free schemes."

Outperformers in the core team will be offered L'Oreal's internships and management traineeships, Lan said.

More than 24 million yuan were collected from the charity sales in the past 14 years. More than 4,300 students were beneficiaries.

zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn