The Dream Factory of China

　　Shenzhen's first shopping and display store for bonded goods, which opened last Friday, could help alleviate the problem arising from rampant parallel trading that has become a subject of contention in Hong Kong.

　　The 400-square-meter store, located in the pilot zone for Shenzhen-Hong Kong cooperation in Qianhai, sells a wide range of imported goods at prices competitive to those in Hong Kong.

　　The store adopts the O2O (online-to-offline) mode of "experience in store and purchase online". After seeing the goods in the store, customers can make online orders through the popular messaging platform WeChat. The commodities, which are stored in the duty-free bonded zones in Shenzhen, can be delivered to buyers within three days.

　　Yu Haiyue, operating director for e-commerce at Tempus Group, said the opening of such a store in Qianhai is based on two reasons. "First, we want to take advantage of the zone's preferential policies to conduct various kinds of e-commerce businesses. Second, we hope the store's mode can be expanded to include new convenience stores across Shenzhen so that people can buy overseas products near their homes," he said.

　　The store's launch is welcomed by many Shenzhen residents who travel frequently to Hong Kong to buy imported goods at duty-free prices, or from parallel traders in special markets.

　　"Now, I don't have to go to those markets anymore," said 30-year-old Xiong Mei, who works at a management consultant firm in Shenzhen. "I can find what I desire at the Qianhai store," she said.

　　Xiong used make a trip to Hong Kong almost every month to stock up on imported goods, including baby milk powder, for her relatives and friends. "Now, I no longer need to make such a long journey and risk being mistaken as a parallel trader," she said.

　　Xiong said she was thrilled to find that prices of some imported products in the store are even cheaper than those in Hong Kong and delivery has been reliable.

　　Yu noted that many brands of imported baby milk powder at the store are selling at prices 20 to 40 percent cheaper than in Hong Kong. Wine imported from France, Australia or Germany retails at between 88 yuan ($14.2) and more than 7,000 yuan - roughly 30 percent lower than prices in other Shenzhen stores.

　　Yang Zhenyu, an IT engineering who works at SF Express - one of the biggest courier companies on the mainland - said his mother used to travel to Hong Kong frequently to shop for daily necessities.

　　"The Qianhai store near where I live has made life a lot easier for her," Yang said. "The only trouble is to teach her how to use a mobile phone to order online and make payments," he said.