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Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce powerhouse named after a fabled, poor woodsman who discovers a thieves' den full of treasures, is about to strike it rich on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company priced its initial public offering of stock at $68 per share - valuing the firm at $167.62 billion.

That is bigger than the current market value of Amazon, Cisco, and eBay.

The company priced its initial public offering of stock at $68 per share - valuing the firm at $167.62 billion, bigger than the current market value of Amazon, Cisco, and eBay.

Alibaba has been described as China's answer to eBay, but it actually handles more packages annually than eBay and Amazon combined. 

Investors hope a stake in the firm will give them exposure to China's rapid-growth internet sector.  

The stock is expected to start trading Friday under the ticker 'BABA' on the NYSE.  

The company has enjoyed a surge in U.S. popularity over the past two weeks as investors met with executives, including its colorful founder Jack Ma. 

As part of the so-called roadshow, would-be investors heard a sales pitch that centered on Alibaba's strong revenue growth and seemingly endless possibilities for expansion.

Demand has been so high that the company raised its expected offering price to $66 to $68 per share from $60 to $66 per share on Monday, setting the stage for what is expected to be the biggest ever IPO.

THE WEIRD WORLD OF ALIBABA

The website, which aims to connect companies with wholesalers, is known for selling everything - including some strange offerings. 

One company in particular, Zhongshan City Elephant Sculpture Art, is leading the way with its silicone-wax celebrity statues.

A popular piece is the life-size, obese statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

The sculpture is completely naked, apart from shotgun and sunglasses, and it could be yours for £9,900 ($16,800).

In the event you need the services of a camel, then you can purchase 500 for around £350 ($600) each.

With many of the items bulk buy, your will need to order 24,000 pieces to get your hand on what is described as 'lovely used panties'. 

A popular piece is the life-size, obese statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The sculpture is completely naked, apart from shotgun and sunglasses and it could be yours for £9,900 ($16,800)

In the event you need the services of a camel, then you can purchase 500 for around £350 ($600) each 

But if beauty products are more your thing, then Alibaba has some intriguing offers.

The female electric nose lifter, for instance, promises to give you a firmer, higher nose by zapping it with vibrations for just three minutes a day.

Not to be left out, there is also a wide array of male grooming product for sale.

Lovers of Apple products, who also happen to have an embarrassing ear wax problem, can get their hands on a Steve Jobs-banded ear cleaner tool set.

The pack contains eight items for ear cleaning and manicuring and is priced at 50p ($0.8) at a minimum order of 2,000 sets. 

The main reason investors appear breathless about the 15-year old Alibaba: It offers an investment vehicle that taps into China's burgeoning middle-class.

Alibaba's Taobao, TMall and other platforms account for some 80 percent of Chinese online commerce. 

Most of Alibaba's 279 million active buyers visit the sites at least once a month on smartphones and other mobile devices, making the company attractive to investors as computing shifts away from laptop and desktop machines.

And the growth rate is not expected to mature anytime soon. 

Online spending by Chinese shoppers is forecast to triple from its 2011 size by 2015. Beyond that, Alibaba has said it plans to expand into emerging markets and eventually, Europe and the U.S.

'There are very few companies that are this big, grow this fast, and are this profitable,' said Wedbush analyst Gil Luria.

Alibaba operates an online ecosystem that lets individuals and small businesses buy and sell. 

It doesn't directly sell anything, compete with its merchants, or hold inventory.

'The business model is really interesting. It's not just an eBay, it's not an Amazon, it's not a Paypal. It's all of that and much more,' said Reena Aggarwal a professor at Georgetown.

Like China's consumer and Internet market, Alibaba is still growing rapidly. 

The company's revenue in its latest quarter ending in June surged 46 percent from last year to $2.54 billion while its earnings climbed 60 percent to nearly $1.2 billion, after subtracting a one-time gain and certain other items.

JACK MA: THE MAN BEHIND ALIBABA

Alibaba was formed by eccentric Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, 49, whose stake in the business will be valued at $14billion.

In 15 years the firm has risen from a start-up in an apartment 100 miles outside the city of Shanghai to become a juggernaut bigger than Hewlett Packard.

Alibaba is based in Hangzhou in Eastern China, Ma's hometown. 

The company got started in 1999 when Ma and 17 friends developed a fledgling e-commerce company on the cusp of the Internet boom.

Ma, who founded the company in a one-bedroom apartment, will have a paper fortune worth some $14 billion, vaulting him into the ranks of tech billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. 

At an early age, Ma developed a desire to learn English so he rode his bike for 45 minutes each morning in order to go to a nearby hotel and converse with foreigners. 

He would guide them around the city for free in order to practice and perfect his English.

He ws one of the first in china to learn how to design web sites. 

Ma first started building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US. 

He has said that 'the day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house,' and on a very slow dial-up connection, 'we waited three and a half hours and got half a page.... We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. 

'But I was so proud. I proved (to my house guests that) the Internet existed.' 

In its last fiscal year ending March 31, Alibaba earned $3.7 billion, making it more profitable than eBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. combined. 

Amazon ended Thursday with a market value of about $150 billion while eBay's market value stood at $67 billion.

Alibaba, is based in Hangzhou in Eastern China, Ma's hometown. 

The company got started in 1999 when Ma and 17 friends developed a fledgling e-commerce company on the cusp of the Internet boom.

Today, Alibaba's main platforms are its original business-to-business service Alibaba.com, consumer-to-consumer site Taobao and TMall, a place for brands to sell to consumers.

And while there's plenty of growth left in China, Ma has recently hinted about plans to expand beyond those borders.

'We hope to become a global company, so after we go public in the U.S., we will expand strongly in Europe and America,' Ma said to a group of reporters in Kowloon on Monday.

The IPO's fundraising target handily eclipses the $16 billion Facebook raised in 2012, the most for a technology IPO. 

It also tops the all-time IPO fundraising record of $22.1 billion set by the Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. in 2010, according to the research firm Dealogic.

Alibaba is offering up to 368 million shares, about 15 percent of the roughly 2.5 billion that will be outstanding after the IPO.

Alibaba plans to sell 123 million of those shares itself.

 The rest will be offered by the company's early investors, including Yahoo Inc., which is parting with some of its 22 percent stake.

Yahoo stands to be a big winner. 

The U.S. company, which has been struggling to grow for years, is in line for a windfall of $8.28 billion by selling 121.7 million of is Alibaba shares. And founder Jack Ma is selling 12.75 million shares worth $867 million.

Although the IPO is likely to be the biggest in history, some analysts think the pricing is conservative. Wedbush's Luria gives the stock a 1-year price target of $80. And research firm PrivCo said the stock is worth $100 a share because of all of the private companies that Alibaba has taken stakes in.