Sep 15, 2020|
JDer Lab #4 with Alex Rudnicki: Breakthroughs and “leveling up” at JD
by Kelly Dawson
JD.com’s more than 280,000 employees come from a wide range of backgrounds and areas of expertise. In the next installment of our JDer Lab series, we speak to another JDer about what it’s really like to work for China’s largest retailer.
“It could be [with] a new partner or a new business; it could be an existing partner and a new business. I love that kind of brainstorming and especially making that breakthrough where both sides are like, ‘Yes, we should totally do it,’” he said. “It’s just an awesome feeling.”
A second breakthrough often follows when management finally signs off and the project becomes more than an idea, he said.
Rudnicki has experienced his own share of breakthroughs in his time with JD.
After four years in Silicon Valley, Rudnicki came to China in 2017 for the Tsinghua-MIT MBA program. During that time he interned with JD as a project manager in international partnerships, eventually taking the leap to join the company full-time after graduation.
He spoke little Chinese at the time. In fact, when he and his wife first arrived in China he had about “five hours of Chinese class under my belt,” he told us. “I had just learned that there are these things called ‘tones’, which is about as rookie as it gets.”
Over time he’s leveled up his Chinese language abilities, now attending daily meetings and reporting to managers in Chinese. “I’m not really sure how it happened,” he said. “That will be something I’m proud of for the rest of my life.”
The openness and kindness of his JD coworkers have played a big role in making the process easier for him, he said. “I’ve been really impressed with how open people are, and especially coming in as a non-Chinese person in a non-Chinese company which doesn’t have many foreigners. It has been really eye-opening at how welcoming people are, and willing to forgive, whether it’s a language mistake or a cultural misunderstanding.”
Additionally, Rudnicki thinks JDers are some of the hardest working people he’s ever encountered.
“Coming from San Francisco and Silicon Valley where people work really hard, I think that there’s another level here,” he said. “It impresses me day in and day out to see the energy that people put into their work. I thought I was a hustler, and I constantly have to raise my own bar here.”
Mar 17, 2023|
JD.com’s Spring Dawn Initiative Boosts Revenue for Individual Shop Owners
by Yuchuan Wang
In January, JD.com unveiled the “Spring Dawn” initiative, which makes it easier for different types of merchants, including start-ups, self-employed businesses, and enterprises to launch stores on the platform. In just over two months, college students, farmers, veterans, designers, craftsmen and others have taken advantage of this feature to launch their business on JD.
Liang, a college student from Xiamen, Fujian province, is a young entrepreneur who creates self-designed teaching aids such as cell models for biology courses. Seeking to the growth of his business, Liang joined the initiative and opened a store on JD.com. Sales in early March have already increased by over 200 percent compared to the previous month.
The initiative features 12 supportive measures that are aimed at lowering costs and increasing sales for merchants. JD streamlines the store-launch process for individual owners, and it now takes as little as 10 minutes to complete. In addition, JD offers no-cost trial operations and gift packages for newly opened stores, among resources.
Simon Han, vice president of JD.com and head of JD Retail Marketplace Ecology said that JD.com is delivering on its commitment to create a fair, efficient, and easy-to-use ecosystem for merchants. JD will continue to expand marketplace business models, reduce merchants’ operational costs, increase their efficiency, provide end-to-end services to micro, small and medium-sized merchants, and help them achieve long-term stable growth.
In 2022, there was a 34 percent increase year-over-year of new merchants launching on JD.com. As of Q4 2022, the number of third-party merchants on JD.com has grown by more than 20 percent year-over-year for eight consecutive quarters.
Mar 15, 2023|
JD.com Brings the Best of Colombian Coffee to Chinese Consumers
by Vivian Yang
On March 10, JD.com joined representatives from the Colombian Embassy to China and Colombia Coffee Grower Federation (FNC) to host a coffee-tasting salon at JD’s headquarters in Beijing to promote some of the world’s finest coffee to Chinese consumers.
“One out of every ten green coffee beans imported by China comes from Colombia,” said Natalia Tobon, the Commercial Counselor of the Embassy and Director of ProColombia China in her speech We are confident that with JD’s support, this number will continue to grow.” Tobon’s remarks referred to Colombia’s coffee exports to China in 2022, which were valued at $78.4 million, representing a 66 percent increase from the previous year.
Natalia Tobon (middle), Commercial Counselor of the Embassy and Director of ProColombia China
Tao Ren, Vice President of JD.com and Head of JD FMCG marketplace, highlighted the rapid growth of Chinese consumers’ appetite for the best coffee from different countries. He also emphasized the significant market opportunity for Colombian coffee – the world’s only arabica proudly branded after a country’s name.
Tao Ren, Vice President of JD.com and Head of JD FMCG marketplace
JD.com is currently utilizing a variety of channels to introduce more Colombian coffee products to the Chinese market. These include its market platform, first-party sales, as well as through its pavilion of Latin America and the Caribbean Countries. The national pavilion program is an innovative online sales window on JD.com that is endorsed by embassies to provide diversified authentic imported products from their respective origin countries.
Jiahang Wu, FNC’s Chief Representative for Greater China, highlighted the unique features of Colombia as the world’s third-largest coffee-producing country, ranging from its weather and land advantages, hand-picking harvest and processing technics, colorful aromas and tastes, to its growers’ federation and worldwide branding efforts.
Jiahang Wu, Chief Representative for Greater China, Colombian Coffee Growers Federation
Participants at the event had the opportunity to try four varieties of Colombian coffee, including Pink Bourbon, Geisha, Castillo, and Sidra, which opened up new senses and flavors for tasters, allowing them to explore coffee in ways they never knew existed.
Mian Li, Founder of S.O.E Coffee who provided brewing service for the event, shared his observation on China’s coffee consumption trend. Li noted that the specialty coffee market is experiencing considerable growth, and emerging types of coffee, such as freeze-dried coffee, drip coffee and many other new products are well received by the young generation of consumers. Li’s company’s sales data showed that the highest consumption demand for specialty coffee comes from the second- and sixth-tier cities as it is generally believed that young consumers living in lower-tier cities have more dispensable income and a stronger passion for trendy products, which further demonstrated the widespread and high demand for great coffee among Chinese consumers.
JD.ID seeks to bring more Indonesian products to consumers
