Other supplies and 200,000 RMB worth of masks in an hour

JD Big Data: Consumers Seek Home Fitness and Enjoy Coffee under COVID-19

Posted on Apr 13, 2020Aug 17, 2022 by Ella Kidron

by Ella Kidron

The JD Big Data Research Institute reveals that even as more people are going outside following a period of lockdown and strict home quarantine across the country, the demand for home gym equipment, especially high-end, professional-grade equipment, in China continues to rise.

From April 1^st-6^th, transaction volume of large exercise machines, such as rowers, elliptical and treadmills increased more than 133%, 91% and 96% YOY respectively. At the same time, data from the China Tourism Academy reveals that China’s scenic spots have rebounded strongly, receiving over 43 million visitors during the three-day Tomb Sweeping holiday period from April 4^th to 6^th.

Increased consciousness about health and hygiene has been a trend throughout the COVID-19 period. As most gyms across the country have not yet reopened, consumers have opted to invest in home gym equipment. In addition to smaller and more portable equipment such as pullers, dumbbells, yoga gear and jump ropes, consumers are gradually tending towards buying more professional, large-scale fitness equipment with unit prices of several thousand yuan, and even as high as nearly 10,000 yuan.

The trend is not exclusive to China alone. With the increasing severity of COVID-19 around the world, high-end home fitness solutions are becoming increasingly popular as people look to stay in shape during quarantine. Gyms and fitness studios have quickly adapted to offering classes online via numerous livestream platforms, from Instagram Live to their own apps. Hardware + software combinations such as home-use “smart” exercise bikes that offer classes via an app saw a sharp increase in sales at the end of March.

Spending more time at home also appears to have given rise to an at-home coffee connoisseur culture. JD’s data reveals transaction volume of that coffee sets during the Tomb Sweeping holiday period increased 130% compared to the holiday period last year, while number of items sold increased over 80% YOY. The transaction volume of coffee grinders and milk frothers nearly tripled as compared with the same period last year, while transaction volume of coffee pots and cups increased by 110% YOY.

(ella@jd.com)

Lixil Launches Flagship Store on JD.com

Posted on Apr 13, 2020Sep 7, 2022 by Rachel Liu

by Rachel Liu and Tracy Yang

Lixil Group, the water and housing products giant, launched a flagship store on JD.com on April 9^th, announcing the collaboration through an online signing ceremony.

This is the group’s first online store that integrates four of its leading brands, namely GROHE, American Standard, INAX and Lixil Kitchen. The store selected a total of around 150 popular products and sets from across the brands covering shower, ceramic bathroom products, bathroom cabinets, and others to provide one-stop kitchen and bathroom decoration solutions for Chinese consumers.

During COVID-19, Chinese consumer demand for high-quality home products has increased in-step with spending more time at home. JD data indicates that demand for health, wellness and smart home products are on the rise. GROHE, INAX, and Lixil Kitchen have all chosen the flagship store for the online debut of their new products for the China market. On opening day, American Standard provided the most competitive prices for customers who are members of JD PLUS, JD’s premium membership program. Lixil’s professional designers will also provide free design solutions for JD customers.

The cooperation with Lixil Group significantly enhances JD’s offering for mid to high-end smart kitchen and bathroom products. The partnership is also beneficial to JD’s home decoration supply chain, providing one-stop solutions for its customers. Lixil group will provide an overall solution that can better meet the complex needs of high-end customers.

In the future, JD and Lixil Group will deepen cooperation in digitization, omni-channel solutions, empowering offline stores and C2M (Consumer-to-Manufacturer) products.

The market outlook for home decoration is strong. China’s home decoration market is expected to reach RMB 3.2 trillion by 2023, and Chinese consumer demand for high-end home decoration products is on the rise.

（liuchang61@jd.com; tracy.yang@jd.com）

JD Data: Explosive Increase of Large Items Delivered in Wuhan after Lockdown Lifts

Posted on Apr 13, 2020Sep 21, 2022 by Martin Li

by Martin Li

JD data indicates an explosive increase in the number of large items delivered by JD Logistics in Wuhan, Hubei province, after the lockdown lifted. Figures show an increase of over 900 percent in the first week of April, compared with the same period in March.

The most popular bulky items delivered were furniture, home appliances and fitness equipment. Air conditioners, refrigerators and gas water-heaters experienced the most significant increase in demand.

JD data indicates that before the lifting of Wuhan’s lockdown on April 8th, local residents bought products including refrigerators, treadmills, microwaves and television sets. After the lifting of the lockdown, local demand for goods like air conditioners and gas water-heaters rose quickly. These items require installation in addition to home delivery and are more challenging than smaller-ticket goods.

Additionally, large items like office tables, file cabinets and water dispensers have been experiencing a growth in demand as more enterprises resume operations in Wuhan.

A critically important e-commerce logistics center in Wuhan, JD’s large merchandise operation center in Dongxihu District, has seen an increase in the number of vehicles which transport goods into the city from around the country.

The logistics center was still operating during the lockdown, helping many renowned brands transport goods to Hubei, ensuring supply to local residents.

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

JD Central in Thailand Sees Three-fold Growth in Sales Campaign

Posted on Apr 13, 2020Nov 4, 2022 by Martin Li

by Martin Li

JD Central, JD’s e-commerce joint venture in Thailand, witnessed over 200 percent sales growth during its first sales campaign in Q1, compared with the same period of last year.

Named the March Madness Super Sale, the campaign lasted from March 6^th to 22^nd. There was a 175-percent increase in user number and a 300-percent ordering growth,compared with the same period of last year.

FMCG brands like Protex and Dettol soap and disinfectant, and Thailand home-necessities brand Foremost products were among the most ordered goods, while Xiaomi, Huawei and Samsung brought in the most sales.

Online shoppers spent as long as 30 minutes browsing on JD Central’s e-commerce platform. One top spender made 180 orders and while another one spent over US$9,100 on a single order.

Cleaning and sanitizing products were the most popular across all categories, which the company said is a reflection of overall market demand and consumers’ high awareness of hygiene during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“In order to maintain the trust of our consumers, JD Central is determined to always screen for good-quality and 100% genuine products to serve our customers and to control the price according to the market standard, even in the case of products in high demand,” said Rvisra Chirathivat, Chief Marketing Officer of the company.

Rvisra Chirathivat, CMO of JD Central.

“The data shows that, during the social distancing period, consumers, entrepreneurs, sellers and all of our partners have adjusted well to the situation. JD Central has also supported them by making sure that they were able to increase revenue constantly while opening the door to any offline retailers with good-quality products to sell on JD Central’s platform,” she said.

Rvisra added that “You order, we deliver,” is at the heart of JD Central’s service during the period.

“The company is ready to support social distancing while keeping our hygienic measures at the highest level to stop the spread of COVID-19. Our team of JD couriers strictly follows the rules and measures to ensure the safety of all customers,” Rvisra said.

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

JD Introduces Convenience Store + Bakery Offering

Posted on Apr 13, 2020Nov 14, 2022 by Yuchuan Wang

by Yuchuan Wang

On April 10^th, the first JD Convenience Store offering an in-store bakery opened in Beijing. Products such as doughnuts and bread are baked onsite at the store. The JD Convenience Store brand plans to introduce additional combined store formats in the future to meet the diversified needs of consumers.

Unlike common convenience stores which mainly provide prepacked products and cooked meals, the newly opened JD Convenience Store with a bakery is a solution to respond to the needs of the neighborhood. The store is in an office building, and its meal solutions for breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner are extended with the addition of the bakery. In order to ensure quality and freshness, the store uses only high-quality ingredients and has a strict process to select and train its bakers, who are required to develop new offerings regularly to meet consumers’ changing tastes. The store offers cake customization, which is also expected to attract more consumers.

“JD helped me position and design the store. The team also worked with me to design a product selection that would meet the demands of white collar professionals. I believe the introduction of an in-store bakery will help attract more customers” said Ms. Zhou, the store owner.

“Leveraging JD’s strengths in merchandise, service and technology, we have enabled JD Convenience Store solution to integrate multiple store formats,” said Enlong Ba, general manager of retail business at JD New Markets. “In the future, our partners can freely select appropriate store functions according to neighborhood consumption demands combined with investment and profit considerations, and build diversified convenience store formats.”

JD Convenience Store is the offline innovative store brand under JD New Markets. It provides a one-stop solution to shop owners covering branding, design and management, supporting store location and product selection, operations and value added services, and more.

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

JD Hosts Cloud Native Computing Foundation Webinar on ChubaoFS

Posted on Apr 13, 2020Sep 25, 2022 by Ella Kidron

by Ella Kidron

On April 9^th, JD.com hosted a webinar for leading open source software foundation, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to discuss its cloud-native storage platform – ChubaoFS, which was accepted as a “Sandbox” project of CNCF in January. “Sandbox” is the entry point for early stage projects aimed at increasing public visibility of work that can add value to the CNCF’s mission.

The contribution of ChubaoFS to the CNCF aligns closely with JD’s overall mission to widely disseminate its technology for broader use as the company continues to push into open source.

JD’s decision to launch its own storage platform was driven by the fact that the solutions available in the market were not able to meet its needs without heavy investments. JD runs one of the largest Kubernetes clusters to date (Kubernetes is a hallmark project of the CNCF which helps prevent downtime in a complicated production environment, among other benefits). ChubaoFS is designed to accommodate various production scenarios on Kubernetes clusters with performance and scalability in mind.

JD is a long-time partner of the CNCF, and a previous recipient of the Foundation’s Top End User Award. The company adopts a number of CNCF projects such as Kubernetes, Vitess, Prometheus, Helm, and Harbor on its extremely large scale container platforms to handle a massive volume of complex transactional data.

Shuoran Liu, one of the main contributors and architects of the ChubaoFS project, explained during the webinar, “We came up with new ideas and innovative thinking to deal with these challenges, and then thought about how to implement them in a real production environment,” he said.

Challenges for cloud native storage, as explained by Shuoran Liu

First launched in 2017, ChubaoFS is a high-performance, highly scalable and durable storage platform for cloud native applications. It has been used to support more than 2000 applications and services on JD’s Kubernetes container platform. With key features including scalable metadata management, optimized data storage, strong replication consistency, as well as POSIX-compliant and S3-compatible interfaces, ChubaoFS prides itself on being easy to use, deploy and maintain, and is application-centric across a wide range of business scenarios.

Typical ChubaoFS cluster deployment

The full webinar can be replayed here: https://www.cncf.io/webinars/new-thoughts-on-distributed-file-system-in-the-cloud-native-era/

ChubaoFS is available on Github: github.com/chubaofs

(ella@jd.com)

Photo Gallery: This Week at JD (April 6-10)

Posted on Apr 10, 2020Aug 11, 2022 by Yuchuan Wang

Residents across Beijing now are able to receive delivery service at Lianjia (链家）locations through JD Logistics. The partnership enables customers who place orders on JD.com to choose a Lianjia offline store as a pickup location.

On April 9th, JD Logistics provided a smart and integrated supply chain solution to ensure orders for Xiaomi’s 10-year anniversary sales promotion. In addition to JD’s couriers, JD’s autonomous delivery robot will also deliver Xiaomi products in Wuhan.

A JD courier delivering parcels in Wuhan earlier this week. On April 8^th, Wuhan ended the 76 days of lockdown.

On April 8^th, a BBC report on Wuhan lifting its lockdown highlighted the personal experience and perspective of Jia Shengzhi, head courier at JD’s Huangpu delivery station in Wuhan, who had continued to deliver during the lockdown. BBC says “delivery drivers became a vital lifeline” during the city’s lockdown. Read the full BBC report: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52197054

Haishan Zhao, the Lieutenant Governor of Hubei province, visited JD’s Asia No.1 logistics park in Wuhan. During the epidemic, the park supported people’s daily needs and helped local fresh produce go nationwide. Zhao said that JD.com took the initiative to play a leading role in fighting the coronavirus and ensuring the supply of daily necessities, and fully fulfilled its social responsibility.