by Yuchuan Wang

During the epidemic, JD has been continuously delivering daily necessities for consumers and aid supplies to the epidemic epicenter in Wuhan, Hubei province, all based on the company’s investment in next-generation infrastructure, including its in-house logistics network, smart supply chain and technology innovation over the last decade.

Guarantee national supply

As the world is under the stress of COVID-19, the importance of building strong supply chain capabilities is being emphasized repeatedly in helping economic recovery. According to Sarah Watt, senior director at Gartner Supply Chain, “Supply has been impacted in three primary ways: limited access to employees due to quarantines, factory closures or manufacturing slowdowns and limited access to logistics to move goods.”

Thanks JD’s early investment in smart supply chain, which dates back to 2007, the company has been able to be extremely agile in supplying goods during the epidemic period. JD collaborated with suppliers to efficiently allocate goods, worked with manufacturers to resume production based on big data analysis and maintained continuously delivery across the country, even in Wuhan.

From January 20^th to February 28^th, JD supplied 220 million products to its nationwide consumers including 290,000 tons of rice and flour, eggs and vegetables. JD Logistics transported 50 million medical supplies, and JD Health collaborated with over 13,000 offline pharmacies to provide 30-minute delivery service.

JD’s supply chain also helped 3,900 tons of agricultural products that risked becoming unsellable due to the coronavirus outbreak to be delivered to consumers nationwide. For example, in Hefeng county, Enshi city in Hubei province, JD helped 350 local farmers make 50 tons of citrus for sale online, with over 1,500 orders per day.

Help brick-and-mortar stores resume business online

Through various omnichannel solutions, JD is helping tens of thousands of offline stores resume business online.

With the help of JD, over 700 Five Star Appliance’s stores are transforming into community warehouses to supply online orders from social platforms such as WeChat groups. It also helps JD sell online inventory, which is fulfilled by JD Logistics.

Based on Location-Based-Services (LBS), JD’s online sales events are enabling offline stores to interact with and deliver to its surrounding consumers. In addition, JD Live helps offline stores conduct live streams to attract consumers.

Ensure enterprises resume operations

TIEM is a manufacturer for gaming products in China. Affected by COVID-19, the company faced factory shutdown. JD quickly provided support in warehousing, logistics and supply chain financing for TIEM, helping the company fulfill its backlogged inventory and reach even more consumers.

At the same time, the company has helped support work resumption needs such as office supplies, protective equipment and services. JD’s enterprise procurement business JD Business has served over 1.3 million enterprise clients since the outbreak.

JD’s strong supply chain ability helped Chengdu Railway source and supply 60,000 protective supplies in as few as 48 hours.

JD also helped Deyin, an MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) products supplier from Qingdao, Shandong province, sell nearly RMB 1 million in products in half a month, helping the company increase revenue even when operations were temporarily shut down.

To get a sense of JD’s smart supply chain capabilities, take a look at the graphic below:

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)