by Doris Liu

JD.com released its support plan for merchants of 267 industrial belts across China at a press conference on Oct. 24 for the ongoing Singles’ Day Grand Promotion, among other measures to optimize the environment for businesses under the theme of “A More Solid Life” this year.

Industry belts

The plan, jointly promoted by local governments, business associations, service providers and so on, has been deemed the largest ever for industrial belts with the most comprehensive coverage of product categories to lower the entry threshold and fee standard for merchants, and offer full-chain service with multiple store models. The plan also includes ten supportive measures such as free proxy to set up a store on JD.com, fee reduction, merchant training, supply chain support, etc.

The majority of the industrial belt merchants are small-scale and are scattered across the country, sharing a common demand of moving their main business from offline to online to realize digital transformation, as well as gaining new growth among fierce and homogeneous competition, said Jiandong Jiang, head of business development for the platform ecosystem department of JD Retail.

For instance, a new model of factory store was launched by JD.com to help industrial belt merchants who have excellent products from the source, but lack e-commerce operation ability. In this new model, the merchants can act as upstream suppliers for other businesses with a commission fee as low as 0.5 percent.

Rating and traffic

To precisely tackle operation issues for merchants and stimulate local employment, JD.com has been fully unleashing its advantages accumulated from concrete infrastructure construction in supply chain over nearly two decades, building a stable and reliable relationship with merchants.

In the past five years, the number of merchants participating in JD’s Singles’ Day Grand Promotion increased by 65 percent, with product categories up 83 percent and new brands rising by 40 percent, according to data released by JD’s Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute at the press conference. In the first half of 2022, the average transaction volume of stores on JD.com grew 2.2 times compared with that of the same period in 2019, and more than 25,000 stores achieved over 100 percent sales growth year over year, the institute’s data shows.

JD aims to improve 20 percent of traffic for its merchants within the omni-channel ecosystem, while also providing 102 service products to guarantee a double lift in merchants’ service quality and sales during the Singles’ Day campaign. For example, the latest upgrade of JD’s star rating system will update the store’s rating results every day from more detailed dimensions, so that the system can not only better guide customers’ consumption, but also help high-rating stores gain exposure across more channels with more opportunities to join in JD’s marketing activities, which offer over 100 benefits for merchants. The initiative encourages stores with better service and products to grow, expand and be more easily accessible to customers.

JD Super

JD Super, JD’s omni-channel supermarket business, also ushered in dozens of measures to reduce fees for setting up a third-party store by up to 80 percent during the Singles’ Day promotion. Deposits for merchants who are setting up stores of fresh products, fruits and vegetables was reduced from RMB 20,000 yuan to RMB 5,000 yuan; while fees for food, beverage and the remaining categories were cut from RMB 50,000 yuan to RMB 10,000 yuan. Additionally, JD Super waives the first month of the annual service fee for new merchants of JD Pet, and continues to reimburse the service fee if vendors reach the sales target of RMB 30,000 yuan every month.

Based on a responsible supply chain, JD.com treats the Singles’ Day Grand Promotion not only as a shopping festival for consumers, but also as a partner-focused opportunity to support merchants in reducing costs, increasing efficiency and gaining stable growth.

The ongoing pre-sales phase of the promotion started at 8 pm on October 20. The official sales event will kick off at 8 pm on October 31, and is expected to culminate on the night of the 10th through the end of the 11th of November.

(liujun215@jd.com)