At its annual conference held on Sunday, January 12, JD Retail, the retail powerhouse of JD.com, announced its business target for accelerated quality growth in terms of transaction volume, revenue, user base and profit in 2020. This year, JD Retail will focus on strategy, business breakthroughs, organizational restructuring, culture cultivation and talent management to achieve its targets.

“Having earned the trust of Chinese consumers as their first choice in many categories – home appliances, digital products, fast-moving consumer goods, fresh food, healthcare, baby and maternal products, and more – JD Retail had a successful 2019,” said Lei Xu, CEO of JD Retail. “Never straying from our trust-based, customer-centric mission, JD Retail will continue to carry out the value proposition of trust to work with brands and merchants to achieve quality growth in 2020.”

In addition, JD Retail will continue to focus on various business initiatives in 2020, such as omnichannel integration projects, further penetrating into lower-tier markets and building up a healthy and powerful retail ecosystem.

• The core of omnichannel management lies in supply chain management, digitalized operation and capabilities in integrated marketing. JD Retail launched several key online and offline integration initiatives in 2019, such as opening new brick and mortar outlets like JD E-Space, a 50,000 square meter mega-experience store in Chongqing, and its 7FRESH Life and SEVEN FUN concepts under the 7FRESH brand. JD’s supply chain innovation program launched last year enables consumers to make an order online, and then JD’s system will use AI algorithms to identify the most effective way to deliver the product. The program can reduce the cost of operations by over 50%,and consumers can get the products within 2 hours – within just 15 minutes at the fastest.

• JD Retail took several measures to better meet the demand from consumers in the lower-tier markets and made great achievements. JD’s reaccelerated net revenue growth in the third quarter of 2019 was driven by its lower tier market penetration strategies. In particular, the growth rate for electronics and home appliances categories in lower-tier cities was more than double that of tier 1 and tier 2 cities. Over 70% of new customers in Q3 came from lower-tier cities, which is a new record.

• With supply chain capabilities as the core, JD Retail will further empower brands and merchants in big data, marketing and operations. With insights about Chinese consumer behavior, this year JD Retail put increased emphasis on its Consumer to Manufacturing (C2M) program, in which JD’s specialized data analytics tool can help brands understand how to maximize performance, modify their brand offering in China to better suit local tastes, and boost customer satisfaction. JD’s C2M initiative started with projects in the IT products category a few years ago, and has achieved amazing success. Today, over 70% of IT products sold on JD are C2M products – solidifying the influence JD has in China’s IT industry, online and offline. JD’s C2M program has been extended to broader categories, such as home appliances, fast moving consumer goods and more.

Let’s look back at JD Retail’s other highlights in 2019.

JD.com, China’s largest retailer, sponsored Chinese-born menswear designer Feng Chen Wang’s London Fashion Week to launch her FW20 collection. The designer’s crossover collection with Pepsi has also debuted online exclusively on JD.com.

“Integrating traditional Chinese elements into my designs is very important to me,” said Feng Chen Wang. “JD has been very supportive of young designers like me and I am really appreciative of this close collaboration.”

This is not the first time for JD to cooperate with Feng Chen Wang. JD.com supported the designer to release her Spring/Summer Collection 2020 show at London Fashion Week last year. The partnership is aligned with JD’s larger mission to help Chinese domestic designers expand their footprint globally, and to bring a wider selection of fashion to discerning Chinese consumers.

“In recent years, the global fashion industry has been paying more and more attention to Chinese fashion. We’re thrilled to see many excellent Chinese designers make their mark on the international stage,” said Kevin Jiang, president of International Business at JD Fashion and Lifestyle. “We are happy to serve as a bridge to support Chinese designers abroad and to provide consumers in China with access to more international designers.

Consumers continue to flock to JD.com in search of distinctive products that they know will be authentic and of high quality. Among the services JD offers to fashion brands, JD Luxury Express, its white glove delivery service, adds a highly-personalized, intimate and innovative offline element to the e-commerce experience.

The Forbidden City, also known as The Palace Museum in Beijing, has collaborated with JD.com, China’s largest retailer, to bring its “Chinese Festival” cultural program online for the first time, to welcome 2020 and the coming Year of the Rat.

As part of the promotion, an exquisite brocade box will be launched exclusively on JD.com as a giveaway on January 2. Consumers who make purchases during the promotion will have the chance to take home one of these special boxes.

Upon opening the box, a poem written by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty will appear, offering New Year wishes. The Chinese traditional lunch box inside is decorated with Qing dynasty peony patterns and nine auspicious beasts from the 600-year-old Forbidden City, symbolizing property and fortune. The nine auspicious beasts, Dragon, Phoenix, Deer, Crane, Elephant, Tortoise, Qilin, Lion and Xiezhi, also appear on a silk handkerchief, nine different red envelopes, and a drinking glass, all of which are in the brocade box.

A new scarf gift box will also be launched exclusively on the Palace Museum’s flagship store on JD. In addition, 16 domestic and international brands include Dove, Philips and Baidu will join the promotion and provide their own customized New Year gift boxes for sale to Chinese consumers.

To mark the collaboration, JD and the Forbidden City also released the following video in which the nine auspicious beasts offer their New Year wishes.

“As cultural products are increasingly popular among the younger generation, developing practical products that use traditional cultural elements has been a draw for museums and brands,” said Jing Li, Director of JD Brand Marketing. “The collaboration between JD and the Forbidden City gives traditional culture a modern energy, and helps brands to interact with younger customers and create new growth opportunities.”

In 2019, JD launched the “Bring Art to Life” campaign with partners of Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, as well as London’s National Gallery and the V&A Museum to produce an array of well-designed consumer products with brands incorporating elements of classic artworks from the museums’ collections.

On December 28, three days away from New Year’s Day 2020, the first batch of bighead carp of the season was fished out of the famous Chagan Lake in Jilin Province in Northeast China. As the first e-commerce company to partner with the Chagan Lake Fishery for six years, every year, JD.com sells 1/3 of the fishery’s bighead carp both through its online JD Fresh channel and offline 7FRESH supermarket chains, leveraging its cold chain network, and more recently blockchain to ensure this delicacy reaches dinner tables across China.

Known to locals as “White Holy Lake”, Chagan Lake is home to a rich fishing tradition that stretches back thousands of years. The 307-square-kilometer Chagan Lake is the only place in China to preserve the ancient practice of Mongolian fishing. As far back as the Liao and Jin dynasties (916-1234), emperors would lead a party of queens and concubines, and ministers to the lake from nearby capitals to go and catch the lake’s carp, and hold a fish banquet there.

Today, the tradition is preserved through the annual Chagan Lake Winter Fishing Festival, held every year in late December. In temperatures as low as -30°C, fishermen drill holes in the ice, harness their horses to enormous nets, and slowly pull up their catch, a process that can take eight to nine hours. In 2014, the tradition captured the interest of Chinese viewers when it was featured in “A Bite of China,” a popular documentary series by CCTV introducing Chinese food and related culture from all over China.

Despite the surge in interest in Chagan Lake’s carp that resulted from the program’s broadcast, most Chinese had very limited ways to acquire the delicacy before JD stepped in. At the time, the only existing supply chain option was for the fish to be transported from the lake to the nearby town of Songyuan, then to the city of Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, about 600 km away, and only then to smaller regional centers. With so many intermediate links, the cost of distribution was high, and it was strenuous to get fresh fish outside of the northeastern provinces.

Shortly after the “A Bite of China” episode aired, JD signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Chagan Lake Fisheries, becoming the first e-commerce platform to partner with the fishery. JD has streamlined the distribution process by deploying its own cold chain logistics directly to the lake shore, where temperature-controlled transportation vehicles are loaded up with freshly caught carp, which are now delivered to tables in more than 300 cities across China in as fast as in 24 hours after the fish is caught.

As the fame of the fish has risen over the years, a large amount of fake Chagan Lake fish has been popping up on in the market. To give consumers confidence, JD will for the first time apply blockchain technology to guarantee the authenticity of Chagan Lake carp this year. By scanning the unique blockchain ID of each fish, customers are able to find out production and transportation details such as the origin, qualification and even the fisherman’s name.

“JD’s partnership with Chagan Lake Fisheries demonstrates the raw potential of our self-built nationwide logistics network: fulfilling the wishes of Chinese consumers by giving them access to options that were previously unavailable to them,” said Jie Wang, key projects lead, fresh food sourcing, JD.com. “The partnership also lends a helping to hand to Chagan Lake local residents, increasing fish sales, raising their brand profile and promoting the continuation of their ancient Chagan Lake winter traditions.”

Yan Laisuo, director of Chagan Lake Fisheries, said that the fishery insisted on exclusive cooperation with JD because of its superior logistics and e-commerce capabilities: “We appreciate how JD’s strictly controlled cold-chain logistics network preserves the integrity of our delicious Chagan Lake bighead carp as it is distributed to consumers throughout all corners of the country,” he said. “This ensures that the traditions of Chagan Lake stay intact and that more people can appreciate this bountiful natural resource and be inspired to visit us one day.”