Employees work at a production line in the Cixi Export Processing Zone in Ningbo.[Photo by Yu Yi for China Daily]

At this year's June 18 shopping festival, an e-commerce operator in Ningbo Hangzhou Bay New Zone completed orders with a total value nearly 50 million yuan ($7.07 million). The sales boom is related to the local customs authority's agility in overcoming development obstacles and innovation in solving problems.

In 2019, when the Hangzhou Bay New Zone Customs had just been approved to establish for only a few months, staff members at the integrated services division carried out studies among local e-commerce companies.

The studies unveiled a significant problem holding back the development of local e-commerce, according to the zone's customs.

According to the e-commerce companies, their customers had to place separate orders for imported goods and domestic goods, even though they can be purchased from the same online store. It greatly influenced consumers' shopping experience.

To avoid confusion between imported and domestic goods, the companies had to store, sell and deliver the two separately, which increased companies' difficulty in supply chain management and increased their management costs.

After figuring out the problem, the Hangzhou Bay New Zone Customs applied to its superior body, Ningbo Customs, for policy support to conduct pilot business models of storing imported and domestic goods intensively in one warehouse and delivering them in one package.

Under the guidance of Ningbo Customs, the zone customs authority completed their business process design in short order.

In August 2019, e-commerce companies in Ningbo Hangzhou Bay New Zone began gathering their imported and domestic products in the same warehouse.

In December 2019, delivering imported and domestic goods in one package was a reality in the new zone, which helped enterprises cut logistics costs by 15-20 percent and shorten delivery time by one to three days.

By meeting the needs of enterprises and customers, the innovative business model has been highly recognized by cross-border e-commerce enterprises and consumers, showing a rapid growth in the business volume.

From January to May, 787,400 orders of domestic e-commerce commodities were filed in the Ningbo Hangzhou Bay New Zone, with a total value of 159 million yuan.

Statistics show that in the first five months of 2020, the list of cross-border import declaration released by the Ningbo Hangzhou Bay New Zone Customs reached 8.89 million, with the value of goods worth 1.52 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 77.49 percent and 95.87 percent, respectively.

The innovative business model plays its parts in promoting the optimization and development of cross-border e-commerce business, according to an official with Ningbo Customs.