QINGDAO -- A district in east China's coastal city of Qingdao has grown into a regional trading and export hub of cloths, after embracing e-commerce and live-streaming and simplifying customs clearance procedures to boost both domestic and foreign trade.
The port district of Jimo has long been a center for the textile industry for centuries, but things have changed rapidly since social and economic transformation took hold in the district in the late 1990s.

With e-commerce booming in China, the authorities of Jimo district have seize the favorable development opportunities brought by reform and opening up to leverage the popularity and influence of its textile industry.

Efforts in this endeavor include the building of a live stream e-commerce center which spans 300,000 square meters, as well as cultivation of influencers to advertise and sell cloths online. The authorities have also supported the e-commerce operators in participating in trade fairs to expand influence.

In the first three quarters of this year, online retail sales in the Jimo District surged 26.3 percent year-on-year to over 9.3 billion yuan (about 1.3 billion U.S. dollars), of which the sales of clothing topped 3.05 billion yuan (about 425 million U.S. dollars).
Besides the efforts to boost domestic clothing sales, the authorities of Jimo have been hammering away at driving up exports.
Thanks to the operation of national pilot programs for market procurement trade featuring simplification of customs clearance procedures with Jimo designated as the sole pilot site in Qingdao, many small merchants and owners of small and micro- enterprises are encouraged to venture into the foreign markets.

With the busy New Year and Spring Festival holiday seasons around the corner, December marks the peak sales season of winter clothes.
With the market procurement trade scheme, small exporters can use the flexible less than container load (LCL) shipment to book only part of a container.

Since the launch of the pilot program of market procurement trade in 2020, the textile and clothing exports in Jimo have amounted to 7.83 billion yuan (over 1 billion U.S. dollars) and reached 123 other countries and regions around the world.