‘10 days to sell just 1 box’: businesses on Hong Kong side of border struggle as mainland Chinese shoppers, parallel traders return in low numbers post-Covid
- Empty shops, measly sales leave business owners hoping talks on visa scheme will bring back day trippers
- Parallel traders and bulk buyers more cautious now, saying customs checks have become super strict
It is noon and there are only three customers in HoKo Beauty, a cosmetics shop in Sheung Shui, a town just one train stop into the Hong Kong side of the border with mainland China.
Over about 30 minutes, each spent less than HK$100 (US$18).
Owner Yau Man, 40, sighed as she recalled better days before the Covid-19 pandemic, when her shop was packed with mainland Chinese visitors and bulk-buying agents, and the daily turnover could hit HK$100,000 on a good day.
Yau said sales were down by almost two-thirds and she had to rely on her online business to get by.
Pointing to the empty space in the shop, she said: “There used to be stacks of boxes filled with face masks and we’d sell five or six boxes a day. Now it takes 10 days to sell just one box, even after lowering the prices.”
Other businesses in the area told the same downbeat story. Before the pandemic, Sheung Shui was a magnet for parallel traders who bought goods tax-free to resell at a profit across the border.
