by Ella Kidron and Yuchuan Wang

On June 2^nd, JD launched the “Spark” economic support plan for small and medium enterprises, stall owners and shopkeepers. The plan is focused on three areas: ensuring supply, assisting operations and promoting employment. JD will gather approximately 50 billion quality goods, and provide each small shop with a RMB 100,000 yuan interest-free credit to make purchases. The program is expected to service millions of convenience stores and stalls, providing supply chain and service support for the employment of more than 5 million people.

Lei Xu, CEO of JD Retail said: “JD has already comprehensively accumulated rich experience in supporting the ‘stall economy’ and the ‘small shop economy’. The impact of the epidemic will accelerate the digital transformation of the real economy, and stalls and small shops are no exception. JD has both the ability and the responsibility to use digitization to support and make the economy of small stalls and shops more dynamic, helping to further invigorate the overall economy and stabilize employment.”

In terms of supply, JD New Markets, which provides support to offline shop owners in addition to other measures, will play pivotal role of its omnichannel supply capabilities and provide hundreds of millions of yuan in purchase subsidies, and work with nearly 10,000 brand manufacturers and more than 4,000 joint warehouses to provide offline retailers with quality supplies worth more than 50 billion, providing them easy access to low-cost, high-quality supplies.

As far as business support is concerned, JD New Markets will help offline retailers expand their online operations, bring in JD’s own platform traffic and help them break regional and special restrictions, helping them achieve customer flow and acquisition and income increases. At the same time, through financial, data, logistics support and diversified business expansion, provide meaningful support to a large number of small and medium offline players. In order to solve the cash flow problem of small shops, JD New Markets has also worked with JD Digits to provide each small shop with an interest-free credit of up to RMB 100,000 yuan.

In poor regions, JD will provide a number of flexible employment, work-from-home and farm-to-table opportunities including positions such as logistics order collection, warehouse management, inventory management and packaging. To help poor workers who are unable to go out to work, JD will provide work-from-home jobs, such as e-commerce tagging and part-time customer service. JD will also provide a number of start-up projects and support in the fields of catering retail, regional logistics agencies and freight transportation for poor regions. At the same time, JD will drive agricultural sales to help the poor workers increase income through e-commerce livestreaming, farm-to-table green channel programs, and setting up meetings to help match supply and demand.

JD.com has been supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, stall owners and shopkeepers through multiple initiatives. Over 3 years ago, JD began to help small brick-and-mortar stores expand their operations. In 2017, the first JD Convenience Store was opened in Renqiu city, Hebei province. Since then, JD Convenience Stores have sprung up all over the country. Last year, JD New Markets launched the “JD Collection” program – a series of fairs and caravans across villages and towns, helping shopkeepers attract huge traffic and efficiently boost sales. In addition, Jingxi, JD.com’s social e-commerce business, has launched a series of supportive plans to help offline merchants affected by COVID-19, connecting the merchants with consumers and providing them with related resources and omnichannel operations supports.

As of now, JD is not only the largest growth destination for global brands and merchants, it has also become the largest platform for the transformation and upgrading of a large number of small and medium-sized and micro businesses, stall owners and shopkeepers. JD’s data shows that, right before JD’s 618 Grand Promotion this year, the transaction volume of JD New Markets in Beijing, as well as Hubei and Anhui provinces has increased over 5 times. The number of orders placed on the JD Convenience Store Go mini program is over 10 times the previous daily average.

The “Spark” program will become a vigorous driving force in the growth of the consumption market, and will further help stall owners and shopkeepers do better business. The ongoing JD 618 will not only attract the active participation of all online brands and merchants, but will also attract vast number of offline retail entities.

(ella@jd.com; yuchuan.wang@jd.com)