by Ling Cao

Many people think Beijing is not a fertile land to develop convenience stores, while by cooperation with JD, Jianxing Fang, who is affectionately nicknamed “Lao Fang”, has opened two in just one year, breaking the unfavorable obstacles, such as the winter is too long in Beijing and people are intended to stay at home, and Beijing has too many gated communities which are not easy for convenience stores to penetrate. Fang’s successful story showed great potential for people to open more convenience stores in Beijing.

Lao Fang

Trying very hard to overcome all those difficulties, Lao Fang started in 2000, when he and his little brother came from Fujian province to Beijing, to search for business opportunities. They worked at offline cellphone stores for three years, until SARS caused many of the stores to close. Lao Fang seized the opportunity to open up his own cellphone stores after the pandemic, but the disease also changed the whole consumption landscape, and more and more customers prefer to shop online.

Night scene of Xidan

“Under the condition of providing the same level of service, our price couldn’t be lower than online stores.” Lao Fang said. During that time, he considered whether it was possible to combine online and offline business. At the same time, JD is considering how to leverage its online capabilities  to help offline convenience stores transform their business model to a smart and innovative one. Lao Fang spoke with the convenience store team under JD New Markets, the B2B2C platform supplying mom-and-pop stores under JD.com, and finally decided to enter the convenience store business. He has opened two convenient stores in Xidan district, a popular business area to the west of Tiananmen with similar fame of Wangfujing.

“JD is famous for providing high quality and authentic products to customers. The company also provides strong support in sales channel, logistics, and big data. What they provide is not only a store operation plan, but a business plan based on customer profile.” Lao Fang shared why he chose to partner with JD. Although he doesn’t have convenience store operations experience, he believes that JD can provide the most professional support and service to him.

Lao Fang’s first JD convenience store

JD’s convenient store team was involved in the entire set up process for Lao Fang’s two stores, from location evaluation based on big data, decoration and layout, product selection and new technologies such as smart store management, as well as an automated checkout system. The second store differs from the first one in that the store has included Lao Fang’s former cellphone business, as well as a milk tea making area.

Colorful products in Lao Fang’s store

Local residents can bring their watches or small appliances to the store for maintenance. Lao Fang even helped an elderly repair the sewerage system at their home.

“We can only provide improved service by focusing on customers’ real demand. JD convenience store works as a way to connect online and offline business.” Lao Fang added.

The store also has seen good sales performance. The first store is only dozens of square meters, while the maximum daily sales reached nearly RMB 40,000 yuan.

“JD is doing long-term business. The company’s business philosophy and core values are similar to my view of “customer first.” Fang said, “While Xidan is one of Beijing’s ID cards, I hope my two stores can be served as ID card of Xidan.”

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)

by Rachel Liu

JD and consulting firm Sigmaintell jointly launched the 2020 China Display Industry White Paper last week, which analyzed key trends in the display industry in China from a consumer, product and supply chain perspective. The report highlights that with JD’s C2M model and big data capability, display manufacturers can achieve better sales through going the customization route.

Data shows that in the past 12 months, the number of online customers of displays has continued to increase, as more customers are staying at home. In line with this, as the home has increased its functions as an office and an entertainment zone under COVID, displays that are customized for remote work or online gaming have seen a fast increase.

There are also rapid increases in niche markets, indicating customers’ demand for customized products. For example, professionals in big cities like to buy big screen displays for work, and college students and young consumers in small towns prefer gaming screens. As consumer demand is becoming more precise, brands and manufacturers are shifting their approach from developing standardized, hot-selling products, to supporting consumers’ inclination to go for a more customized display. JD’s C2M platform can collect and analysis demand, and provide suggestions to brands to inform their production processes. The platform can shorten the new product research time by 75%.

For the C2M products that JD jointly designs with brands, the retail giant will also provide marketing and pricing suggestions based on its big data analysis. It can not only help brands achieve the best sales performance, but also increase customer satisfaction.

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

Before Chinese schools reopen for the fall semester in September, JD Books launched its Supper Day on August 31^st, offering timely shopping benefits for the students. They showed no less enthusiasm for book buying than they did during JD’s 618 Grand Promotion in June. On this Super Book Day, books sold on JD increased by 192% and sales were up by 147% year on year.

JD Books also released Top 10 lists in twelve categories based on the company’s big data regarding paperback books, e-books, audio content, authors, publishing houses, book merchants, self-operated book stores, and more.

“New Concept English” (新概念英语) topped the list of paperback books, heralding another wave of passion for English learning among young people in China. Chinese author Lu Yao’s masterpiece “Ordinary World” (three volumes) (平凡的世界) ranked 2^nd, followed by the “Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China” (中华人民共和国民法典) which was passed by the National People’s Congress this May. As China’s first-ever Civil Code that will come into effect on January 1, 2021, it is a must-read for many people.

On the list of e-books, readers showed more interest in the investment and management books category. The top three most popular e-books were Xiaomi‘s first official company biography “From 10 to Infinity” (一往无前) which was newly released in August, famous science fiction “The Three-Body Problem” (三体), and “Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger”.

JD is taking a leading position in integrating online and offline services in the book industry. The outbreak of coronavirus is accelerating this process, as has been confirmed in a reading report JD released this April. In early June, JD was also chosen to be the exclusive livestream sales channel for Maye Musk’s new book in Chinese.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)