JD CEO Richard Liu’s Perseverance With Integrity Earns JD’s Market Recognition

Posted on by Martin Li

by Martin Li

A recent report by Chinese publication Securities Daily (证券日报) has attributed the capital market’s increasing recognition of JD to the “unconventional perseverance” of the company’s founder and CEO Richard Liu.

The increasing market recognition is reflected by several achievements by JD this year, including the company’s successful secondary listing in Hong Kong with an aim to raise more than HK$30 billion, and the ongoing IPO application procedures of JD Digits in Shanghai and JD Health in Hong Kong as well

Liu’s consistent perseverance in integrity is one of the fundamental driving forces which brought JD where it is now – a company with market value of over US$ 100 billion.

Liu insisted on selling products at a fair and reasonable price seventeen years ago when JD was still a tiny company composed of several counters in an electronics market in Zhongguancun, Beijing.

Liu made prices transparent, sought to sell quantity rather than high prices, and stuck to providing good service. Plus, no tax evasion or counterfeits were found at his company. His method prevailed in a market where merchants would typically overcharge for products like computers by cheating customers.

Such perseverance in integrity gradually earned JD a good reputation and increasing patrons.

Some employees recalled that Liu’s commitment to integrity was unstoppable. He offered to provide invoices to customers even when they didn’t ask for them.

It is reported that someone persuaded Liu to reduce the company’s valuation between 2008 and 2009 in order to give himself more shares and kick out some investors. However, Liu refused to do that because investors used to help the company. On the contrary, Liu let investors earn more after the company was listed on the Nasdaq.

 

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

 

 

 

 

JD.com Adds Another SEVEN FRESH Supermarket in Beijing’s CBD

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com is opening a new SEVEN FRESH supermarket in Beijing’s CBD. Located on B1 at the Wonderful World shopping mall, the supermarket sells over 5,600 products including fruits, vegetables, seafood and beverages among many others in the more than 3,400 square meters’ area.

In addition to providing various quality products, SEVEN FRESH also offers onsite catering services for nearby residents and working professionals. Consumers can order meals from the SEVEN FRESH app and choose to have them delivered to the doorstep or to enjoy in store. The store can deliver in as fast as 30 minutes.

“The new SEVEN FRESH is an upgrade from the previous stores, further expanding the catering area to account for almost 50% of the sales area,” said Kun Li, the store manager. “Adopting an online and offline operations model, our customers can purchase JD-selected quality products, and also purchase more products from around the world through JD’s online e-commerce pool and enjoy fast delivery service.”

Launched in January 2018 by JD.com, SEVEN FRESH is one of the company’s key omnichannel retail initiatives. During the upcoming Singles Day promotion, SEVEN FRESH will deliver a unified high quality shopping experience through its online and offline channels.

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

JD Health to Host 2020 Partners Conference in Chengdu

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

JD Health will host its partners conference on Oct 29th in Chengdu, Sichuan province under the theme of “Photosynthesis and Symbiosis”, two biological terms that reflect the mutual nourishment of JD Health and its partners.

The event will convene over 1,000 industry partners, policymakers, medical experts and media representatives to discuss new opportunities and challenges in China’s healthcare industry, creating an opportunity for all partners in JD Health’s ecosystem to communicate and enhance understanding about the company’s business models and its unique growth prospects based on JD’s core strength of supply chain.

Lei Xu, CEO of JD Retail and Chairman of JD Health and Lijun Xin, CEO of JD Health will both deliver speeches at the meeting, followed by respective business heads who will share on four key topics: JD Health’s omnichannel development for an integrated healthcare services from both online and offline; expansion into China’s lower-tier cities; the rise of internet-based telemedicine services; and new marketing strategies and plans that upgrade support to its brand partners.

The conference will be live-streamed via this link (in Chinese Mandarin) on Thursday, Oct 29th, starting from 9:30AM Beijing time.

Find more about JD Health, please visit: https://jdcorporateblog.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-jd-health/

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JD Leads Online Fresh Produce Market In China

Posted on by Martin Li

by Martin Li

JD now leads China’s online fresh produce sales with a market share of 25.8%, followed by Pinduoduo and MissFresh, according to the online fresh produce market report by China Association of Market Information and Research.

Consumers’ choice of online fresh produce platform was mainly determined by food safety, delivery speed and online service during the first three quarters of this year.

JD has been making continued efforts to address consumers’ top concerns.  JD has rapid response test labs in its fresh produce warehouses to check for more than 80 illegal additives before products go on sale.  In addition, JD has partnered with industry associations to establish a standard system to ensure the quality of food from its origin.

China’s fresh produce market is estimated to exceed RMB 247.5 billion yuan in 2020, 48.9% growth on year. Such growth would surpass growth of the past three years, according to the report.

In the first three quarters, meat, dairy product, eggs, fruit and vegetables were among the most popular products sold in the online fresh produce market.

JD is expected to continue efforts in improving product selection, quality control, logistics and after-sales service.

 

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

 

 

JD CEO Richard Liu: JD’s Conviction is Technology-Driven Value Creation

Posted on by Ella Kidron

by Ella Kidron

In the span of just a few short months, JD has been quite active in the capital markets. On June 18th, JD completed its secondary listing on the main board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) raising more than HK$ 30 billion to invest in technology. On September 11th, the Shanghai Star Market made JD Digits’ (JDD) prospectus public, revealing that over 72% of the capital raised in the IPO would be used to invest in technology. And on September 27th, the HKEx published JD Health’s prospectus, in which JDH focused on the creation of an “Internet + Healthcare” ecosystem.

As Chinese publication Securities Daily (证券日报) writes, JD broke away from the bounds of retail early on, and has since expanded into digital technology, logistics, health and other areas. Taking all of these pieces one at a time, all of this activity may seem sudden. But as the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and the same is true of JD’s business. The driving force today, as it was in the early days of the company, has been JD Founder and CEO Richard Liu’s steadfast conviction to technology-driven value creation.

Back in 2004, less than a month after JD had moved online, its website was hacked. The hacker had written in big letters, “JD’s network manager is a big idiot.” Securities Daily writes that it is because of this joke by the hackers that technology became a major obsession for Liu. Shortly after that incident, JD quickly recruited its first programmer and started to write its own e-commerce program.

Four years later, JD’s daily average order volume had increased from over ten orders to over 5,000, and JD’s website underwent a large-scale transformation. In 2008, JD’s technology team rented a villa in the outskirts on Beijing, and did nothing but write code from morning into the wee hours of the night in order to design a backend system to support an order capacity of 100,000 orders. Yet, in November that year, as soon as JD’s new system went online, the system immediately exceeded 10,000 orders.

In 2013, having had several years of e-commerce experience well under its belt, the company name was simplified from JD Mall (京东商城) to just JD (京东). Its positioning was to rely on technology to provide supply chain service, e-commerce, finance and logistics platforms – all efforts were inseparable from technology.

Fast forward another four years to 2017, when Liu said that the company would focus on three things, “Technology! Technology! Technology!” He said, “From the beginning, JD has not only been an e-commerce enterprise. Within the last ten years, we have done industrial internet in the retail industry.” Jon Liao, chief strategy officer of JD.com, explained that the logic of JD is simple – to use its accumulated retail industry ability to reconstruct other industries’ value chains. Using Internet technology to reshape many industries can be seen as a common thread in JD’s business. All of which stems from Liu’s fundamental belief in and commitment to technology.

Lei Xu, CEO of JD Retail, has expressed that retail has always been an industry that interacts with the development of technology, especially online retail. Therefore, technology-driven retail innovation drives the business, and the whole shopping process, adding to the overall upgrading of the user experience.

At the same time, Shengqiang Chen, CEO of JD Digits, has said that that it is necessary to establish technology leadership at all costs. JDD’s R&D professionals currently account for 70% of its staff. According to the company’s prospectus, the vast majority of JD’s revenue comes from technical services.

JD Health has spoken extensively about the creation of an “Internet + Healthcare” ecosystem. At the same time, JD Logistics has developed 30 highly intelligent Asia No. 1 logistics parks, which rely heavily on advanced technology including AI, 5G, cloud, IoT and more.

In the first half of 2020, JD invested RMB 7.54 billion yuan in technology R&D, making it one of the largest investors in tech among Chinese enterprises for several consecutive quarters. The company currently has over 18,000 R&D employees. Patent applications for 2019 exceeded 3,651.

 

(ella@jd.com)

 

Super Buyers Drive Up Big-Ticket Auctions on JD during Singles Day Promotion

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

Over 200 million items have been sold on the legal auction section of JD Auction since October 21st, when the pre-sales of this year’s Singles Day grand promotion kicked off. So-called “super buyers” bid huge on big-ticket auction items, refreshing the common understanding of what an online shopping festival can offer.

On Oct 22nd, the court of Longhua district of Shenzhen city auctioned factory buildings of a local company for RMB 59 million yuan. After 195 rounds of bidding, the auction concluded at RMB 160 million yuan, which amounted to a 180% premium rate.

The next day, the Intermediate Court of Zhuhai city in Guangdong province listed 49% stock rights of a local company for auction. Because of its popularity, the bidding process was prolonged for 2 hours and eventually concluded at RMB 260 million yuan, an extra RMB 100 million yuan raised above the starting price.

Similar auction spectacles are becoming more common on JD Auction. The platform has also facilitated the auction of China’s first civil airline LJ Air at RMB 800 million yuan, and the auction of Huihe Highway in Henan province at RMB 380 million yuan.

JD Auction has now established direct connections with near 2,000 courts at different levels in China as well as 35 customs for legal auction facilitation.

The courts and customs‘ favor towards JD’s online auction platform is mainly attributed to their rising needs for more diversified channels to handle legal cases involving assets, as COVID-19 has affected the traditional offline channels this year, especially for big-ticket items such as commercial buildings and stock rights. At the same time, JD Auction created an effective and fair auction environment for all the parties involved, with upgraded services such as legal consultations. All these helped to attract more bidders to take part in online activities, making legal assets execution easier for the courts.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JD to Partner with 10K Electric Scooter Stores, Expanding Omnichannel Efforts

Posted on by Kelly Dawson

by Kelly Dawson

During this year’s Singles Day promotion period, JD is partnering with electric scooter brands including Niu and Merida to support integration with 10,000 offline stores, as part of JD’s expansion of omnichannel efforts. Now, shoppers will be able to conveniently access a variety of options for purchasing an electric scooter, both online and offline.

For customers shopping for a scooter, the previous divide between online and offline channels has often been limiting. Shopping purely online means a wider range of products, and the convenience and ease of one-click purchase—but many consumers are reluctant to take the plunge without giving the scooter a test drive. Additionally, delivery of a scooter can drive up the total cost, thanks to higher delivery fees based on weight. On the other hand, visiting a store in person offers no guarantees that their desired model will be available on site.

With JD’s new omnichannel approach, a customer can choose to see a product in person at one of 10,000 offline partner brand stores—and then order it online later if they need to give the purchase further consideration. Or if they’re already certain of the scooter they want to purchase, they can order it online first, and then be directed to an offline store in their area to pick it up at their convenience.

The omnichannel approach has become increasingly popular across industries. Already applied with success by JD Supermarket, omnichannel will enable JD Sports to break the barriers of channels and categories, to leverage all kinds of online and offline scenarios and reach customers repeatedly, to improve the effect of marketing campaigns. The program will also expand beyond first-tier cities to reach customers in small and medium-sized cities, with the same affordable prices and services.

(kellydawson@jd.com)

 

JD Provides Membership Service Platform for Financial Institutions

Posted on by Ling Cao

by Ling Cao

JD Cloud & AI launched a service platform that can help financial institutions build their own membership systems, in order to attract more new clients, as well as improve clients’ loyalty. The program aims to help these institutions do digital marketing, so as to improve efficiency and reduce cost.

Based on big data analysis and real scenarios, JD Cloud & AI created an integrated membership solution. When a customer opens a bank card with a cooperating financial institution, they can earn points by making purchases via the card or adding money to the account. The points can be exchanged for first party products from JD.

One representative from JD Cloud & AI said, “Leveraging JD’s strong supply chain capabilities, financial institutions can access JD’s comprehensive products and smart fulfillment services, which enables their clients to redeem point within the institution’s original membership platform, making it more convenient and efficient.”

The model aims to release financial institutions from the burden of building heavy supply chain and retail assets, while clients can enjoy JD’s high quality retail and logistics services. In addition, JD also provides smart product selection for institutions based on client profiles, making the marketing solutions more precise. Additionally, JD can also provide around-the-clock digital customer services, upgrading the service quality.

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)