JD.com and Intel Launch New Research Lab for Smart Retail

Posted on by Rachel Liu

JD.com and Intel have launched a joint lab that will explore the use of Internet of Things (IoT) in smart retail solutions. The Digitized Retail Joint Lab will develop next-generation vending machines, media and advertising solutions, and technologies to be used in the stores of the future, based on Intel architecture.

The new lab marks the extension of the robust existing partnership between Intel and China’s largest retailer. So far, scientists have successfully merged Intel’s RRI edge computing and OpenVINO computer vision architecture with JD’s computer vision algorithms to analyze customer traffic and in-store purchasing habits, a solution that helps store owners to provide a more personalized and convenient experience to their customers.

“This lab will combine our collective strengths to develop cutting-edge solutions to bring the precision of online shopping to offline players,” said Zhi Weng, VP of JD.com and head of JD Big Data Platform.

“We look forward to expanding our cooperation with Intel to deliver a best-in-class, personalized shopping experience wherever consumers shop.”

“As China’s most influential retailer and a leader in data-driven offline retail innovation, JD is an important partner for us to continue to develop a wide range of use cases for our latest technology developments,” said Wei Chen, VP of Intel & General Manager of Intel IOTG China. “We are happy to take our partnership to the next level.”

The new lab adds to JD.com’s vision of “Retail as a Service,” or sharing its cutting edge technology and infrastructure with other retailers and industries to revolutionize global commerce. Other efforts include a suite of technology upgrades for brick-and-mortar store owners, including smart shelving, smart price tags, checkout solutions, and more. By helping smaller retailers modernize their operations, JD hopes to enable all consumers’ access to quality products, and to buy whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it.

By leveraging JD’s big data analysis capabilities and Intel’s advanced edge computing technologies, the companies will build a more sophisticated retail ecosystem and enable the wider commercialization of new products and technologies as well as facilitate their introduction to global markets.

JD Launches Blockchain Based Pharmaceutical Tracking Solution

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

JD has launched a blockchain technology-based JD Medicine Open Tracing Solution in an effort to provide more transparency into pharmaceutical supply chains in China.

Announced at JD’s 2018 Big Data Summit in Beijing, the Medicine Open Tracing Solution is available on the JD Blockchain Open Platform and seeks to address concerns in China about the authenticity of medicines by supplying consumers with reliable and transparent tracing information. The tracing solution will cover every step of production, medical application, transportation, storage and sales of drugs. It has a friendly user interface and leverages IoT solutions to improve data collection efficiency.

The move comes after a handful of recent pharmaceutical safety incidents in China concerning substandard products, particularly when it comes to vaccines, which have been found to be expired or below safety standards in the past. As a result, Chinese consumers are increasingly concerned about the safety and origin of the medicine they consume.

In light of this, JD is teaming up with industry partners including medical software providers, industry associations, and smart hardware manufacturers to develop an entire IoT ecosystem of devices to promote medical traceability, raising standards and increasing transparency across the industry.

“This solution will provide necessary transparency and accountability to all those involved in the pharmaceutical industry, including consumers, businesses and governments,” said Jian Pei, head of JD Big Data and Smart Supply Chain.

“JD has a strong track record in supply chain transparency, and is committed to leveraging our technology capabilities to enable the accurate collection of transparent and reliable information about how medicines are sourced.”

JD launched its JD Blockchain Open Platform earlier this year to provide blockchain capabilities to a wide range of industries. Part of its Retail as a Service (RaaS) initiative, JD is leveraging its strengths in supply chain, technology, logistics and other areas to empower its partners. China Pacific Insurance Company (CPIC), the first company to use the platform, used it to deploy a traceable system for e-invoices, or “fapiao”, the official receipts required in China for business.

JD.com Opens Largest Plant Factory Featuring Japanese Hydroponic Technology in China

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com, China’s largest retailer, has partnered with Japanese chemical manufacturing giant Mitsubishi Chemical to open the largest hydroponic “plant factory” in China. The factory, part of a strategic partnership between the two companies, brings the most cutting edge technology in agriculture together with JD’s state-of-the-art retail infrastructure.

The factory spans 11,040 square meters and incorporates a hydroponic culturing system with solar light and a closed seedling production environment using artificial light. Currently it can produce spinach, cabbage, red and green lettuce, coriander, and more. The premium-quality, fresh produce will provide JD customers with new options for safe, nutritious and environmentally friendly food options, both online and offline at JD’s 7FRESH supermarkets.

All crops produced at JD’s new plant factory are tracked from the time they are planted to when they are delivered, a step toward the future of food production and retail as consumers worldwide increasingly demand transparency. In China, in particular, consumers place high importance on food safety while the overuse of fertilizer, environmental deterioration, and rapid population increase have caused soil problems.

In the new facility, temperature, humidity, light, and liquid fertilizer are automatically controlled by the factory’s management system, enabling more standardized production of high quality vegetables without the challenge of seasonal changes. For example, spinach produced in the facility contains 80% more folate, 32% more vitamin C, 25% more potassium and 37% more phosphorus than if grown in the field. Meanwhile, the technology makes pesticides and agrochemicals unnecessary, reducing the need for washing.

Meanwhile, the new factory can produce a higher output of vegetables than traditional agriculture systems; it can grow 19 batches of spinach in a year, compared to just 4 batches per year in a field or 6 per year in a greenhouse. It only requires half a liter of water to grow any of the factory’s vegetables. The factory is integrated with JD’s cold chain logistics network, so vegetables can be delivered to consumers’ tables as soon as the same day they are cropped.

“The JD Plant Factory in Tongzhou marks JD’s entry into the very beginning of the fresh food production chain, allowing us to guarantee that the fresh goods we sell have been treated with the care JD applies to everything we do,” said Xiaosong Wang, President of JD FMCG and Food businesses.

“JD’s supply chain technology, logistics network and e-commerce expertise combined with Mitsubishi Chemical’s sophisticated growing technology puts us in an ideal position to create an entirely new model for agriculture, and cultivates a fresh and healthy lifestyle in China.”

Fresh vegetables from the plant factory will be available on JD.com and at 7FRESH stores starting December. JD and Mitsubishi Chemical will cooperate to introduce more fruits and vegetables in the future.

From Competitors to Allies: Chinese Bookstores Get a Boost From JD.com

Posted on by Hui Zhang

Traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores around the world are facing challenges of declining traffic and sales amid fierce competition. Now, in China, traditional bookstores are experiencing a revival thanks to e-commerce giant JD.com.

JD.com, China’s largest retailer, has its own significant online book business. But the company is also providing solutions for book procurement, logistics and technology to 49 offline book stores, including Yitiao and AIO SPACE , part of JD’s “Retail as a Service,” or RaaS, strategy. Under the strategy, the company has provided a wide array of technology and services to companies ranging from consumer goods manufacturers to restaurants and other retailers.

Now, in China, traditional bookstores are experiencing a revival thanks to e-commerce giant JD.com.

 

Using technology developed for JD’s own e-commerce business, the company is helping to modernize supply chains and increase sales for the offline stores. Tangning Books, a bookstore in Guangzhou with two locations, for example, managed a dizzying array of more than 60 book suppliers before partnering with JD on May 15, 2017. The companies worked together to source all the books from JD.com’s inventory, with replenishment services from JD’s nationwide, in-house logistics network every week, significantly saving on labor costs and delivery delays. Sales grew 30% from May to the end of December in 2017, and profits grew 17% over the same period.

Since the partnership began, Tangning Books has reduced turnover to 220 days from over one year. Using JD’s big data analysis capabilities, the store now also has insight about customer buying behaviors, and chooses book assortments tailored to its customer base, leading to more sales.

“Without the help of JD’s technology and supply chain expertise, our business would have no competitive advantage in the traditional mode,” said Ningxin Lu, Founder of Tangning Bookstore.

“Now with the backing of e-commerce technology, we see a bright future for the offline book business.”

Another pain point for offline book stores is that they can’t stock every book customers may ask for in their limited space. Tangning Books lets customers scan QR codes for books they can’t find in store to have the books delivered within 24 hours from JD.com’s deeper inventory instead. In this way, the companies work together to create an “endless aisle” of choices for customers while JD shares profits from the sales with Tangning.

“Offline bookstores are just one example of the many industries where JD’s expertise in supply chain and inventory management, big data and technology can benefit other companies and industries, beyond JD’s own platform,” said Haifeng Yang, general manager of the Value Supply Chain Department at JD Logistics.

JD’s RaaS solutions have helped a number of companies, even beyond retail. Wang Shun Ge, a famous restaurant chain in China, has cut delivery costs to its restaurants by 50%, while getting faster shipments, since beginning to using JD for digital procurement of kitchen ingredients and logistics in 2017.

 

JD.com Recognized for Cloud Native Open Source Technology Usage with CNCF Top End User Award

Posted on by Ella Kidron

JD.com, China’s largest retailer, has been presented with the Top End User Award by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) for its unique usage of and contribution to cloud native open source projects. CNCF is the largest open source community dedicated to Kubernetes and cloud native software stacks and technologies. The award was announced at China’s first KubeCon + CloudNativeCon conference, which gathered thousands of technologists and end users in Shanghai from November 13-15 to discuss the future of open source technology development.

Providing the ultimate e-commerce experience to customers requires JD to house and process enormous amount of information that must be accessible at incredibly fast speeds. To put it in perspective, five years ago there were only about two billion images in JD’s product databases for customers. Today, there are more than one trillion, and that figure increases by 100 million images each day. This is why JD turned to CNCF’s Kubernetes project in recent years to accommodate its clusters.

JD currently runs the world’s largest Kubernetes cluster in production. The company first rolled out its containerized infrastructure a few years ago and, as the clusters grew, JD was one of the early adopters to shift to Kubernetes. The move, known as JDOS 2.0, marked the beginning of JD’s partnership with CNCF to build stronger collaborative relationships with the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors. Ultimately, CNCF provided a window for JD to both contribute to and benefit from open source development.

In April, JD became the CNCF’s first platinum end user member, and took a seat on the organization’s governance board in order to help shape the direction of future Foundation initiatives. JD’s overall commitment to open source is highly aligned with its broader Retail as a Service strategy in which the company is empowering other retailers, partners, and industries with a broad range of capabilities in order to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and provide a higher level of customer service.

JD’s Kubernetes clusters support a wide range of workloads and big data and AI-based applications. The platform has boosted collaboration and enhanced productivity by reducing silos between operations and DevOps teams. As a result, JD has contributed code to projects such as Vitess, Prometheus, Kubernetes, CNI (Container Networking Interface), and Helm as part of its collaboration with CNCF.

“One contribution that we are very proud of is Vitess, the CNCF project for scalable MySQL cluster management,” said Haifeng Liu, Chief Architect of JD.com. “We are not only the largest end user of Vitess, but also a very active and significant contributor. We’re looking forward to working together with CNCF and its members to pave the way for future development of open source technology.”

Vitess allows JD to manage resources much more flexibly and efficiently, reducing operational and maintenance costs, and JD has one of the world’s most complex Vitess deployments. The company is actively collaborating with the CNCF community to add new features such as subquery support and global transactions, setting industry benchmarks.

“JD spearheads the use of cloud native technologies at scale within the APAC market, and is responsible for one of the largest Kubernetes deployments in the world,” said Chris Aniszczyk, COO of Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “The company also makes significant contributions to CNCF projects and its involvement in the community made JD a natural fit for this award.”

JD will continue to work on contributions to cloud native technologies as well as release its own internal and homegrown open source projects to empower others in the community.

JD.com Honored For Commitment to Sustainable Future

Posted on by Rachel Liu

JD.com, China’s leading technology-driven e-commerce and retail infrastructure service provider, announced today it will join the ranks of top global companies in receiving the 2018 SEAL Business Sustainability Award.

The award is a testament to the company’s commitment to environmental causes, extensive contributions to social innovation and the far-reaching impact of its Corporate Responsibility Program.

For the past five years, JD.com’s CSR team has galvanized the company, creating and implementing programs that foster sustainable development.  Through its initiatives, every part of the JD.com footprint, from the creation of a product, to its packaging, sale and delivery, is executed with the expectation that the company’s impact on society and the environment will be positive, long lasting and sustainable.

The SEAL Awards consider sustainability, environmental achievement and leadership in granting its business sustainability award, which recognizes the most sustainable companies globally.  In receiving this award for its global impact, JD.com joins honorees including Apple, Impossible Foods, Nike, Patagonia, Samsung and Seventh Generation.

Libo Ma, JD.com’s head of corporate social responsibility, said, “JD.com is honored to receive the SEAL Award and join leaders in corporate sustainability, a cause we champion for the long term. The recognition is a testament to our multi-faceted sustainable platform and enduring commitment to environmental protection, poverty alleviation and social innovation and education. We believe a company should be measured not only by traditional business metrics, but also by how much it contributes to the people and society.  At JD, our commitment stems from our fundamental belief that we have a responsibility to continuously improve society.”

Matt Harney, Founder of the SEAL Awards, said, “JD.com’s recycling initiative received the highest possible environmental impact score from our judging panel. The program’s impact metrics – covering 47 cities throughout China, with over 1 million articles of clothing and over 400,000 toys recycled – are extraordinary. We applaud the leadership JD.com has shown in leveraging its vast customer base and logistics network to create immediate and meaningful sustainability improvements for our planet.”

As China’s largest retailer, JD.com’s sustainable platforms use the company’s technological advances such as its self-developed logistics and supply chain network that can reach 99% of China’s population. The company has applied innovative technology and expansive infrastructure to making significant contributions to social innovation, environmental protection, education, disaster relief and poverty alleviation, with the total value of contributions exceeding RMB 700 million.

The SEAL Awards is an environmental advocacy organization that honors leaders in business and the media for their work in combatting climate change. SEAL’s organizational pillars are its Business Sustainability Awards, Environmental Journalism Awards, and Environmental Research Grants program.

Offline Mobile Phone Retailer D.Phone Teams Up with E-commerce Giant JD.com

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

Singles Day, the world’s largest shopping event, is known for online promotions. But one offline player, China’s largest offline cell phone retail chain Beijing Digital Telecom Co., Ltd (D.Phone), tapped into the shopping frenzy with the help of JD.com.

More than 1,000 D.Phone stores were listed during Singles Day in JD’s innovative “JPASS” system, through which offline brands can provide online users with coupons and promotional discounts at their brick-and-mortar locations. Participation in the system helped boost offline visits and sales for hundreds of thousands of store locations for JD’s retail partners.

To use it, JD’s over 300 million customers could visit the “JD Membership Code” section of the JD app or a specially-designed WeChat Mini-Program, to locate a nearby participating D.Phone store. JD Membership Code provides an independent page for each of the offline stores including information about products and promotions and also presented customers with a QR code that could be used to complete purchases. The combination of online and offline provided more convenience for consumers while giving D.Phone the ability to leverage e-commerce marketing.

Meanwhile, JD.com app users could also use an “AR-Scan” feature to scan phones in D.Phone shops during the shopping festival for an augmented reality experience and a chance to win prizes.

Implementing JD’s boundaryless retail solution has accounted for 30% of D.Phone’s sales growth since the partnership began.

“These latest initiatives demonstrate the best of what JD.com can offer, not just to customers but for other retailers,” said Chen Lin, head of Boundary less Retail at JD.com.

“This year’s Singles Day period shows the lines between online and offline retail are blurring, as we enter the era of ‘Boundary less Retail.’ This is our vision of the future of shopping, and we are excited to be able to help offline partners improve their great services to consumers, beyond our own platform.”

The initiatives expand the growing list of benefits offered through JD’s Retail as a Service, or RaaS, strategy, in which it opens its technology and infrastructure to other retailers and industries, leveraging JD’s advantages in smart supply chain and in-store technology. Combining online and offline resources, JD can help traditional stores re-energize their customer traffic levels, which have declined in the age of e-commerce.

Shoppers Snap Up Quality and Imported Products on JD.com for Record-Breaking Singles Day Festival

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

Transaction volume on JD.com reached a record RMB 159.8 billion (approximately US$23 billion) from November 1-11, during its Singles Day Shopping Festival – the first in which the e-commerce giant worked closely with brick-and-mortar retail partners, helping them join in on the shopping extravaganza.

This year shoppers flocked to JD.com for the broad range of goods available in virtually every category.  For example, during the sales period, global brands such as Apple, Dell, Dyson, L’Oréal, SK-II, Pampers, and many others saw impressive sales performance. Products from the U.S., Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Korea proved especially popular.

“There is a noticeable shift in China toward quality over price, which we see in the growing numbers of consumers who are willing to pay more for branded and imported goods,” said Lei Xu, CMO of JD.com and CEO of JD Mall.

“By establishing trust with consumers and brands, thanks to our zero-tolerance policy toward fakes and our innovations in areas such as blockchain traceability for product safety, JD is in a unique position to meet that demand.”

During the period, JD sold more than 400 million items offered by its Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Foods business group. The amount of imported fresh food sold doubled versus the same period last year, with customers buying more than 29,500 tons of items such as meat, vegetables, fruit, and seafood, including some 12 tons of live Canadian lobsters. Premium smartphones from domestic and international brands were once again popular, with some brands seeing sales double compared with the same period last year. Customers also purchased more than 25 million products from the home and life category, which includes home furnishings, cookware, decorative products and many other related items. Consumer electronics, home appliances, and mobile phones continued to see strong customer demand.

In addition to deals on everything from fresh seafood to the latest streetwear brands on JD.com, JD’s partnerships with other retailers are further examples of the company’s Retail as a Service (RaaS) strategy to open its technology and infrastructure to other retailers and industries. More than 600,000 offline stores are using JD technology and infrastructure to attract customers to their own Singles Day promotions. JD developed an innovative new game, for example, to help brick-and-mortar players attract more traffic to stores via WeChat’s mini-program platform. In the game, users are granted points based on the number of steps they take, and by visiting offline stores they can get additional steps that can be exchanged for products and prizes. More than 200,000 stores and 200 brands took part during the sales period.

JD also opened its largest 7FRESH store to date in Langfang, Hebei Province, on Singles Day. 7FRESH is JD’s offline fresh food supermarket. The new store received more than 10,000 customers within a single hour on November 11. In addition to 7FRESH, JD’s portfolio of offline stores includes unmanned convenience stores and JD Retail Experience Shops among many other store formats.

“After more than a decade of building out technology and infrastructure for our own retail business, we will spend the next decade extending our capabilities to enable and empower both online and offline retail innovators,” said Dr. Jianwen Liao, Chief Strategy Officer, JD.com.

“We see the future of retail as one without boundaries, and we are working to bring consumers true boundaryless retail, where they can buy whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it.”

For more highlights from JD.com’s Singles Day Shopping Festival this year, see the infographic below:

JD.com’s Singles Day Shopping Festival this year, see the infographic

* Transaction volume is calculated to include total value of all orders for products and services placed in the company’s online platform, regardless of whether the goods are sold or delivered or whether the goods are returned and shipping charges paid by buyers to sellers, and excludes products or services with list prices above RMB100,000 as well as transactions conducted by buyers who make purchases exceeding RMB1,000,000 in the aggregate in a single day (similar to the company’s major industry peer GMV definition)