by Hui Zhang

Duravit, a leading international manufacturer of designer bathrooms with over 200 years of history, launched a flagship store on JD on Mar. 26. The brand chose to debut its SensoWash®® ®  Starck f Shower Toilet in the Chinese market on JD to mark the new store’s opening.

Thanks to booming home improvement demand in China, sales of Duravit in China increased by 20% YOY in 2020. China has become the No. 1 single market for Duravit, and the brand has seen robust sales growth.

JD’s high-quality consumers with strong consumption power are a perfect match for Duravit. Furthermore, JD’s professional home improvement and installation services are one of the reasons why Duravit chose to work with JD. JD’s nation-wide logistics network will also improve Duravit’s delivery efficiency to further meet consumers’ demands for fast delivery.

In addition to the SensoWash® Starck f Shower Toilet designed by prominent designer Philippe Starck, a French industrial architect and designer, Duravit will also bring its other best-sellers, such as integrated intelligent toilets, wall-mounted toilets, and bathroom furniture, to JD. Duravit has also integrated its WeChat mini-program with its flagship store on JD, making it possible for consumers to enjoy a seamless shopping experience.

“JD’s years of accumulation in retail, supply chain, and payments makes the online shopping experience more efficient and smooth, and can also help us to attract and target more consumers,” said Peter Bromberger, Duravit’s managing director China and vice president of Asia Pacific.

“We will work closely with JD to explore e-commerce, and provide consumers with comfortable, clean and ideal bathroom spaces.”

“JD’s efforts in providing high-end home improvement solutions align with Duravit’s focus to create a one-stop decoration solution for consumers. Both sides will work together create more exquisite bathroom improvement solutions for Chinese families,” said Chao He, general manager of JD Home and Lifestyle business.

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

by Ella Kidron

JD hosted nearly 100 primary school students and their teachers for a field trip at its hydroponic plant factory in the Tongzhou district of Beijing on Mar. 22. The event was part of a larger program which started last year in which JD offers the plant factory as a high tech educational facility for elementary and middle school students as well as families to learn hands on.

JD Plant Factory in the Tongzhou district of Beijing

During the activity, the general manager of the plant factory, Zhongsheng Wu, gave a lecture on basic crop growth knowledge, providing the group with a preliminary understanding of hydroponic planting. Following the lecture and observation, the children got to have a taste test.

As quality and food safety is of utmost importance to JD, every student and teacher donned a white lab coat, shoe covers, masks and head coverings, and stepped into the air shower for a disinfection prior to entering the factory.

Zhongsheng Wu, general manager of JD Plant Factory, teaches students about hydroponic planting

On the weekends, the factory is usually full of parents and their kids. It is a good way for kids to get outside and have much needed contact with nature. Parents are also delighted by their kids’ newfound love of vegetables. Wu said: “Parents come to us and say, ‘my  kids never eat vegetables at home no matter what, but here they are eating veggies like little rabbits!’”

Parents show their children veggies at the plant factory

They often come home with bags of the vegetables, and will also adapt to buying them online through JD.com, enhancing omni-channel conversion. Furthermore, parents will often post on their WeChat Moments (similar to a Facebook wall) too, helping raise overall awareness of the plant factory.

A boy excitedly enjoys a salad with veggies from JD Plant Factory

As the younger generation becomes increasingly tech savvy, there are concerns that fewer people will choose to go into agriculture. According to Statista, the percentage of the workforce in agriculture from 2009 to 2019 has declined from 38.1% to 25.1%. The plant factory visit can help to pique children’s early curiosity. Wu explained: “Children are the foundation of the future of agriculture. Through our programs, they learn that agriculture can be fun, interesting and high-tech.”

One of the teachers said at the end of the activity, “It was so well-organized. Students not only got to learn and understand the growth of a seed, but also have hands-on practice.” Immersion education for kids is much needed and critical to their development. “Apart from ensuring the farm to table supply chain, being able to provide this type of education gives the plant factory an even greater purpose,” said Wu.

Built by JD in partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical of Japan, the plant factory gives JD an entry point at the very beginning of the supply chain and creates high-end vegetables using advanced hydroponic technology, artificial LED light source, and Internet of Things technology in a fully-closed environment. Covering 11,040 square meters, it is the largest plant factory with the combination of sunlight and artificial light in China.

 

 

(ella@jd.com)

 

by Vivian Yang

JD Auto Services opened its first self-operated car maintenance store on Mar. 28 in Shijingshan district of Beijing, which serves as a new benchmark for the quality, services and prices of the e-commerce giant’s omni-channel car maintenance products and services.

“JD.com’s self-operation model has long been rooted in consumers’ mindset, becoming a synonym for high standards,” said Yong Tang, head of JD Auto Service at the store opening ceremony in Beijing.  “The plan to open a self-operated store is driven by our inherent business needs to dive deep into the industry and involve more partners to bring a better service experience to car owners.”

Opening ceremony of JD Auto Services’ first self-operated store

The store’s services include supply chain guaranteed automotive products, worry-free 7-day return policy, standardized services from professional technicians, hourglass-timed service delivery, dedicated customer service hotlines and more.

As part of the new store opening celebration, JD Auto Services also joined hands with the trendy car wash brand “Late Night Car Wash” (深夜洗车房) to provide rich experiences for its customers, further extending its offers to more scenarios. Customers of the new store can enjoy the car wash’s services at a favorable price. The car wash, which is only open at night time, offers car beauty services and provides a club-style social space targeting young car owners, where they can chat, drink tea and coffee, take fancy photos for their cars and even watch live shows.

Late Night Car Wash

To date, through brand authorization and franchising chains, JD Auto Services’ offline network has covered 1,200 car maintenance stores in 163 cities across the country.

Meanwhile, JD Auto will continue to open self-operated car maintenance stores in different cities, such as Tianjin, Shanghai, Suzhou, Xi’an and more. These stores will also act as the training hubs for JD Auto Services’ network in the aspects of store management, technician skills, services improvement and more.

“The automotive aftermarket has a strong emphasis on local life services,” Tang pointed out. “JD Auto Services can leverage its integrated online and offline platforms to provide customers within 3 kilometers with more professional and efficient car maintenance services, and play an active role in promoting the overall service quality of the industry.”

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

 

by Rachel Liu

Over the past two years, JD has been working with Wuchang city in Heilongjiang province to build the brand of its iconic “Wuchang rice”, aiming to help customers buy authentic Wuchang rice with peace of mind on JD. This is how JD has done it.

 

Sugarcane Theory

In 2014, JD.com’s founder Richard Liu came up with the theory of “10 segments of sugarcane”, which refers to the 10 processes in the retail value chain. The first five processes are creation, design, R&D, manufacturing and price setting. The next five are marketing, selling, inventory, logistics and service. The brands are responsible for the first five processes, while retailers the latter. Liu believes the way to create more value as a retailer is to extend its business to more processes, including inventory, logistics, marketing, and even R&D, manufacturing and more.

Under this theory, JD self-built its logistics and warehouse network in China, and became highly recognized by customers for its fast delivery and high-quality service. Liu believes that the more a company does in an industry, the better it can bring value to the industry and serve its clients. It is the same for agriculture, an industry that JD attaches great importance to.

Agriculture is fundamental for the country’s development. When it comes to supporting the agriculture, one of JD’s approaches is to help build valuable brands for agricultural products, instead of merely selling products on its platform.

Building valuable brands is a win-win for both JD and farmers. For JD, going deep to the source of the agricultural supply chain allows the company to get high-quality products firsthand, without needing to go through multiple layers of resellers. For farmers, a renowned brand can make the agricultural products more valuable and bring more income to them who may possibly suffer from their high quality products being sold at low prices for lack of resources to target the right customers. For customers, products with brands are safer and more trustworthy.

 

RMB 70B Brand Value

For Chinese customers, Wuchang rice stands for high quality and premium. In the documentary A Bite of China, Wuchang rice is said to be the best rice in China. According to China Council for Brand Development, the brand value of Wuchang rice is now around RMB 70 billion yuan, and it ranks No.1 among rice brands in China. Wuchang rice became the first batch of products selected into the China-Europe Geographical Indications (An agreement made by China and EU to protect products in a specific reason).

Wuchang locates in northeast China. The special environment and geographical conditions make Wuchang rice tastier than rice from other regions in China. The black soil there is fertile and particularly suitable for the growing of rice. The annual precipitation of the area is around 600mm, humid enough for the growth of rice. The large temperature difference between day and night helps the rice accumulate more nutrition.

The temperature in Heilongjiang determines that farmers can only grow one batch of rice each year, allowing the land to rest and recover between harvests. It takes 138 days in total to nurture Wuchang rice from seedling to harvest. Farmers also raise ducks in the rice field. Ducks eat the weeds and pests in the field, and their swimming increases the amount of oxygen and water temperature for the rice to be grown in. All these conditions created the unique Wuchang rice.

The production of Wuchang rice follows national standard GB/T 19266, which is the highest standard for rice with detailed regulations covering the color, smell, taste, and manufacturing process.

However, it’s hard for customers to find authentic Wuchang rice on the market.Because of the high brand value of Wuchang rice, some vendors want to make use of the brand to add value to their products, or mix a small amount of Wuchang rice with other kinds of rice and brand it as “Wuchang rice” to sell it at an inflated price. It is estimated that there are 10 million tons of Wuchang rice sold on the market each year, but Wuchang can only produce 1 million tons of tice in total. How to buy authentic Wuchang rice has become a big problem for customers. The market disruption has significantly damaged the brand value of Wuchang rice.

 

Protect the Brand

“When we started to work with Wuchang in 2019, our aim was to help promote its brand across China, and provide customers a place to buy authentic Wuchang rice with peace of mind,” said Lizhen Liu, vice president of JD.com and general manager of JD FMCG.

The official offline sales channel of Wuchang rice is primarily located in Heilongjiang province, while customers from all over the country have great demand for Wuchang rice. Working with big online platforms like JD can help Wuchang rice reach more customers. JD’s “zero-tolerance” policy for counterfeits meets the Wuchang government’s need to protect this brand. Besides, JD has a great amount of customers looking for premium products and are potential customers for Wuchang rice.

After forming a partnership, JD first developed the Wuchang Rice Product Management Standard with the local government; the product is applicable to all brands. Only products that meet the standard can put the “Wuchang rice” label on their packages. The governments created the Wuchang rice tracing and anti-counterfeit platform in 2015, to trace the information of the whole production process. Only the products that are authorized by the blockchain tracing system can be launched on JD.

By scanning the QR codes on products’ packaging, customers can get all information on the product from seeding, planting, harvesting and processing. JD Logistics is also planning to work with local governments to include the last-mile delivery information on the blockchain. Together with its direct-sale model and self-owned logistics system, JD can ensure that all products that customers buy from the flagship stores are authentic. Now, eight local brands that produce Wuchang rice have launched their product on JD’s flagship stores.

“We are glad that JD, the Wuchang government, local brands and companies all have the same goal: To provide authentic Wuchang rice for customers. This is the foundation for JD’s success to promote the Wuchang brand,” said Liu.

 

Comprehensive Support

As the platform that aims to provide authentic, high-quality products, soon after the Wuchang rice flagship stores launched on JD on October 2019, JD announced that it will deepen the partnership and introduce Wuchang rice to more Chinese consumers through marketing innovations and omni-channel cooperation.

“To protect the brand, we decided from the beginning that we would not sell rice lower than a certain price, and we only sell premium rice. The first month the stores were launched, sales of the products reached over RMB 200 million yuan, which gave us great confidence,” said Liu: “We soon worked with the government to launch the first Wuchang rice online shopping festival on JD.” During the past June 18 Grand Promotion, local government officials also joined livestreaming to promote Wuchang rice and attracted over 1.3 million viewers. Sales of Wuchang rice increased over 300% compared with before the live show.

To ensure that Wuchang rice can be delivered smoothly to customers’ tables, JD provides comprehensive logistics solutions for local brands covering warehousing, delivery, customer service and after sales service, cold chain and more, using technology to improve the efficiency of the fulfillment process. Even during the epidemic, JD’s logistics capability still enabled an adequate supply of Wuchang rice.

“Brands from Wuchang are very happy about their cooperation with JD and the support JD provided,” said Liu. “Now every time there are new products, brands would choose to launch on JD first.”

JD’s effort of promoting Wuchang rice brand brings benefits to all parties involved. For the local government, promoting authentic rice protects the value and price of the Wuchang rice. For farmers, the increase in brand value promoted the purchase price of rice, thus farmers’ income increased. For brands, their sales performance and e-commerce operations ability grew.

“We are using JD’s resources and abilities to help build more brands across different categories, such as the Chinese agricultural brand Shiyue Daotian (literally means October Rice Field), and milk brand Lacheer. Both have successfully improved their brand recognition by being on JD,” said Liu. JD is going deeper to the upstream of supply chain, hoping to improve the efficiency of the whole industry.

“The growing of rice industry in China is closely related to building valuable brands. JD and Wuchang government’s cooperation provided duplicable experience on building regional agricultural brands. I hope that more Chinese brands can be protected and promoted to all over the world.” said Jianwei Qi from China National Association of Grains.

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)

by Hui Zhang

Panasonic, a major Japanese multinational electronics company offering a wide range of products and services, debuted its two new bathroom product sets on JD on Mar. 24. JD is the first e-commerce platform to launch the two products in China.

Along with the two new products, a 72-hour rapid renovation and installation solution provided by Panasonic was also announced at an offline press conference held in Beijing on the same day.

The two new bathroom product sets are designed for families who value quality products with reasonable prices. In addition to toilets, washing basins, and shower apparatuses, other building materials such as waterproof chassis, wall panels and top panels, are pre-produced by factories. Once an order is placed online, all products will be delivered to consumers’ home as quickly as possible, which will further shorten the renovation time.

Taking advantage of Panasonic’s mature production and renovation capabilities, the rapid renovation and installment solution makes it possible for consumers to completely overhaul their bathrooms in only 72 hours. Experienced designers will arrive and customers’ doors for measurement and design within 24 hours, provide 3D design of the bathroom within another 24 hours, and complete the whole process of delivery, assembly and installation service within the final 24 hours. Consumers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Suzhou will be the first to enjoy the service.

“Through long-term close cooperation with JD, we deeply understand the needs of Chinese families for intelligent living and bathroom space,” said Tetsuro Honma, president of Panasonic China /Northeast Asia.

“Panasonic hopes to integrate its leading bathroom products and services, as well as Japan’s advanced experience in age-friendly renovation into an optimal overall solution to Chinese consumers.”

Since its entry into JD in 2014, Panasonic has become one of the most popular brands among JD’s consumers. According to JD’s data, sales of Panasonic ranked top among brands in the toilet category on JD during the Single’s Day Grand Promotion (from Nov. 1-11) in 2020.

“JD will make full use of its supply chain, services, and fulfillment capabilities to continuously offer proper home renovation solutions to JD’s consumers. It will only take a week at the most for JD’s consumers to obtain an ideal home renovation in the future,” said Chao He, general manager of JD Home and Lifestyle business.

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

by Hui Zhang

JD’s First Citrus Shopping Festival kicked off on Mar. 13 with sales of the citrus category increasing by 172% YOY, and the number of consumers increasing 126% YOY during the three-day event.

Behind the robust sales is JD’s continuous deep participation in the whole industrial chain process, such as sorting, packaging, and offering sales channels by establishing warehouses at the origin to ensure quality, reduce processing costs and provide job opportunities to local farmers.

 

Compared with traditional warehouses, the warehouse at origin combined with processing and sorting functions will shorten the supply chain to further reduce the loss of fresh fruits and lower down the fruit purchasing costs for JD and other merchants. For local farmers, the warehouse at origin will ensure a stable sales channel and create new job opportunities as well.

In addition, the warehouse at origin with high-quality control in the fruit category will also set a standard for the whole industry.

“JD will continue to deepen its cooperation with the government and farmers by integrating its advantages of supply chain, logistics, talent, and traffic to make it sustainable for local fruit products going to cities,” said Hong Yan, general manager of the fruit category of JD Fresh.

For brand building, JD Fresh will take advantage of local governments’ resources to create landmark agriculture brands, provide e-commerce training to local farmers and make full use of livestreaming to help increase income for local enterprises and farmers.

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)