by Yiming Yan

The Beijing Winter Olympics have stimulated Chinese people’s enthusiasm for ice and snow sports, which has also triggered a surge in associated consumption.

According to JD.com, searches for Olympic mascot “Bing Dwen Dwen” on the JD App have at times accounted for 90% of site traffic, with over 10 million searches done during the Spring Festival Grand Promotion.

The mascot’s appeal is a microcosm of the recent “ice-and-snow fever.” Since January 9, Guangxi, Anhui, Yunnan, Hubei, and Hunan have been among the provinces and autonomous regions with the fastest-growing winter sports consumption, according to the JD Research Institute for Consumption and Industrial Development. To put that in context, ice and snow equipment turnover climbed by 107 percent YOY, while garment turnover increased by 99 percent, and winter sports safety gear increased by 41 percent.

Search results of Eileen Gu on JD.com

In addition, the data revealed the following regional and population features of winter sports consumption: Sports consumption has long been not limited to the north, with southern regions’ consumption such as Zhejiang and Sichuan ranking among the top five. During the Spring Festival Grand Promotion, the five provinces and autonomous region with the fastest YOY growth were all in the south: Guangxi, Anhui, Yunnan, Hubei, and Hunan all had growth rates exceeding 400 percent.

When it came to consumer categorization, the primary drivers of consumption growth were women and children. More than 70 percent of snowboarding customers are under the age of 35. In 2021, female consumers spent 248 percent more on ice and snow activities, while men spent 181 percent more compared with last year.

Eileen Gu (“Gu Ailing” in Chinese), JD.com’s retail endorser and a world-class skier, won the gold medal in the women’s big jump in the freestyle skiing at the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 8.

Following Gu’s win, the total sales of her promoted items in JD.com on the day increased by 8.4 times compared to the opening day of the Winter Olympics on February 4, and the sales of Gu Ailing’s identical Anta clothes soared by more than 20 times.

 

(yanyiming1@jd.com)

by Xiaoqian Han

In celebration of Valentine’s Day and the launch of flagship store in December 2021, Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) offered a variety of Valentine’s Day limited-edition products to JD’s consumers for a Super Brand Day on February 9, 2022.

Inspired by the Valentine’s Day, YSL has released a range of love-themed limited editions on that day, including perfume and lipstick gift boxes with four red velvet lipsticks gift pack on YSL’s self-operated flagship store designed exclusively for JD.com users.

With the help of JD’s e-commerce and logistics advantages, all the products on the YSL flagship store could be delivered to consumers within 24 hours by JD Logistics.

Apart from YSL, JD Beauty has already introduced a number of high-end beauty brands in the past year, including Guerlain, Givenchy, Estee Lauder, and Kiehl’s. Many worldwide businesses have regarded the JD as a new platform for product sales and brand marketing through JD.com’s Super Brand Day and 618 Grand Promotion sales.

As a French premium brand, YSL is renowned for offering a broad line of premium cosmetics, and skin care products.

 

(hanxiaoqian3@jd.com)

by Yiming Yan and Xiaoqian Han

As this year’s Spring Festival ushered in both the Year of the Tiger and the Beijing Winter Olympics, JD.com’s consumption data revealed exciting growth: The platform’s turnover increased by more than 50 percent year-on-year from New Year’s Eve (which fell on January 31) to the 5th day of the first lunar month (YOY). In addition, sales increased by 87 percent, 86 percent, 64 percent, and 61 percent in 4 provinces, namely Henan, Jiangxi, Hunan, and Anhui, respectively.

In terms of New Year’s greetings, the commencement of the Year of the Tiger boosted sales of Tiger-themed merchandise. The entire value of the jewelry category climbed by more than 50 percent YOY as of February 5, compared to ox-element products in the same period last year, which is the Year of the Ox; as gold ring sales increased by 28.5 percent YOY.

Toys with tiger features are also highly popular: The sales revenue of tiger-themed designer toys and musical instruments, such as building blocks, remote control toys, and other toys and musical instruments, has increased by more than tenfold, while sales of baby carriages and cribs have increased by 35.8 percent.

Furthermore, the Beijing Winter Olympics also promotes new consumption trends, stimulating national enthusiasm in ice and snow sports. The overall turnover of ski sports products such as ski pants and snowboards climbed by 322 percent YOY.

Compared with ski sports, ice sports products such as figure ice skates and speed skates sharpeners, increased by 553 percent and 420 percent respectively. Moreover, JD.com saw a 90 percent increase in search volume for the mascot Bing Dwen Dwen; sales of ANTA down jackets increased by 203 percent; and turnover of Descente down jackets increased by 196 percent YOY.

Due to the pandemic, many people turned to online shopping for Chinese New Year goods for family members, as they were unable to travel to visit their relatives. More than 5 million SKUs were shipped off-site during the Spring Festival, with the provinces and municipalities that received the most off-site packages being Henan, Jiangsu, and Hebei, while the most were ordered from Guangdong, Shanghai, and Beijing.

JD.com launched the Spring Festival delivery service for the tenth consecutive year, allowing consumers in more than 300 cities to receive packages as usual even on New Year’s Eve. As an incentive, JD Logistics has allocated over RMB 400 million yuan as allowance on front-line courier employees who stayed on duty over the Spring Festival holidays.

 

(yanyiming1@jd.com / hanxiaoqian3@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

A total of 1.5 billion RMB ($240 million USD) worth of virtual red envelopes and physical gifts were handed out amid 69.1 billion times of interactions in JD’s App during this year’s Spring Festival Gala television program, marking the highest amount of giveaways in the nationally popular show’s interactive campaign history. JD.com is the exclusive interactive partner of this year’s gala held by China Media Group.

Viewers participated in the interactive campaign in JD’s App during the Spring Festival Gala 2022

JD Cloud, the cloud computing service under JD Technology, successfully handled the tremendous traffic peak to ensure a smooth red-envelope-grabbing experience during the show. Users’ simultaneous traffic rush to the system is believed to be the largest level ever seen in the world for one single event that was solely managed by JD’s own computing resources.

Seven rounds of phone-shaking activities were integrated into the four-hour live show that went on air from 8 p.m. Beijing time on January 31^st, when internet users competed for a variety of prizes on JD- besides virtual red envelopes for cash, thanks to JD’s supply chain capacity and close collaboration with brands, the company also gave out a flurry of gifts like cell phones, TV sets, nutrition products and even free car-leasing at the same time.

The interactive campaign on JD’s App will last until February 15^th, the Lantern Festival, making it the longest campaign of its kind.

Consumption

In the four hours from 8 to 12 p.m. of the gala, more than 80,000 families won new year’s gifts from the interactive campaign, with items from popular brands such as Pico Neo3 VR goggles, down jackets from BOSIDENG, bedclothes from Shuixing Home Textile, lights from Opple Lighting, skincare products from Dr. Yu and more.

During the gala, sales of middle to high-end Chinese liquor baijiu increased 11 times YoY on JD.com. The hot phrase “new year gift box” was searched over 110 million times on JD Super, JD’s omni-channel supermarket. Sales of low-sugar pastry gift boxes rose by 6 times YoY, Enfamil Premium A2 formula increased 230% compared with the daily average during the festival promotion on JD Worldwide, JD’s import products business and sales of Pedigree Petfoods increased 12 times YoY, just to name a few.

At the same time, transaction volume of Xiaomi products on JD exceeded 100 million RMB, that of Pico products increased 50 times compared with the same lunar new year period last year. Searches for Anta’s winter sports products grew four times YoY; and 20,000 users searched for Voyah FREE, the electric SUVs under Dongfeng Motor on JD, which is the brand that also offered free leasing for lucky users in the campaign.

JD App’s landing page during the Spring Festival Gala 

JD’s Chinese New Year Grand Promotion which has begun on January 9^th and will last until Feb 7^th have so far helped 3 million rural households sell over 39 million agricultural products, adding roughly 1,700 RMB income per household. Supported by JD’s rural revitalization program, a number of China’s local specialties such as the hairy crabs from Suqian of Jiangsu province become well-known and accessible nationwide. JD also brought these agricultural products to the limelight of the gala for greater market opportunities.

On the offline shopping side, over two thirds of offline stores on JD’s on-demand local retail platform will open their doors during the holidays including supermarkets, drug stores, florists, cell phone stores, baby & mother stores, liquor shops and more, to provide timely supplies and delivery service in more than 1,700 counties and towns across China.

Logistics

At 22.06 p.m. during the live show on New Year’s Eve, Ms. Li from Bijie of Guizhou, a landlocked province in the southwest of China, became the first recipient of a gift won from the gala interactive campaign.

This year marks the 10th year in a row that JD.com commits to delivery service in all parts of the country during the Spring Festival holidays, and more than 200,000 JD couriers stayed in their posts to ensure that customers can receive their orders as usual.

The first gift from the interactive campaign delivered to the lucky user’s home 

Meanwhile, the company has allocated 400 million RMB ($63 million USD) allowance to take care of its employees who stay put during the festival contributing to the stable operations in sales, logistics, technological support and more.

As orders mount up during the Chinese New Year Grand Promotion, JD ensures a low-carbon journey for parcels moving from warehouses to customers’ homes, including expanding use of greener packages, photovoltaic power, electronic vehicles, new technologies in data centers and more. On the packaging side alone, JD has massively reduced carbon materials in 95% of its delivery boxes and introduced recyclable boxes and original packages developed together with the manufacturers, and it is estimated that each parcel delivered by JD can save an average of 400 grams CO2 when compared to the traditional way.

Technology

JD Cloud successfully buttressed the technological operations for the gala campaign and JD’s supply chain fulfillment concurrently during the event. Its hybrid cloud OS system well-managed the traffic rush during the gala when the anchors instructed hundreds of millions of viewers to shake their phones together.

The computing task, as daunting as the number implies, is paramount to ensure a smooth red envelope grabbing experience. However, it only took JD Cloud’s teams 19 days for technical preparation without adding on extra server resources.

More than 70 data centers, near 3 million dockers, 10 million+ core computing power and hundreds of specialist teams were mobilized for the project. This is undoubtedly a significant achievement for JD’s cloud computing system, proving its competence in processing QPS or instantaneous traffic peak of an enormous volume, as well as frequent scenario switches on such large scale computing resources.

JD Cloud’s teams fully geared up for the gala

A spokesperson of JD Cloud noted that JD’s technological capabilities and experiences accumulated over the years through an array of large shopping festivals like JD’s 618 and Single’s Day Grand Promotions, and by serving over 550 million active users and managing nearly 10 million self-operated SKUs on a daily basis, all of which has honed the platform’s ability to pass this gala test with flying colors.

Globalization

For many Chinese people living overseas, they can also enjoy the gala campaign for red envelopes as well as JD’s cross-border e-commerce service on JD’s site for overseas Chinese. For this year’s spring festival, Chinese customers living in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, US, Canada, Australia and more regions have ordered 4.5 times more of Chinese brands’ products on JD.com compared with the same lunar new year period last year.

Ms. Liu and her daughter living in New York read Chinese children books bought on JD.com 

In recent years, JD.com is stepping up efforts in building its integrated supply chain capabilities on the international stage, positioning itself as the technology and service solution provider to promote trade between China and the world via its services to brands, merchants and customers globally.

To date, JD’s global supply chain network has covered more than 220 countries and regions in the world, with its international logistics arm operating around 80 bonded and overseas warehouses and several cargo flight routes between China and the US, UK and Thailand. Together with various shipping services by air, railway, sea and trucks as well as other cross-border services, overseas orders can be delivered from door-to-door as fast as 48 hours.

This January JD.com opened four locations of its robotics-operated supermarket chain “ochama“ in the Netherlands, which marks the first omni-channel retailor in the country that offers both food and non-food in one shopping App. Additionally, JD.com and Shopify announced a partnership to create an accelerated channel for US merchants to sell in China and Chinese quality products to access the US market.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)