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JD.com Opens 24/7 Store Chain 7FRESH LIFE in Beijing to Offer Mealtime Solutions

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com’s 7FRESH fresh food chain supermarket 7FRESH LIFE opened on December 20 in Beijing. 7FRESH LIFE is a 24/7 store offering mealtime solutions within an area between 300 to 400 square meters.

The newly opened 7FRESH LIFE is located in the Huilongguan residential area in Northern Beijing – one of the largest residential neighborhoods in Asia. Serving as a warm caring neighbor especially for young mothers and kitchen owners, 7FRESH LIFE is a combination of community “restaurant + fresh food store + convenience store” providing more than 3,000 different selected quality fresh items of produce, daily groceries and also ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat food, equipped with an in-store dining area. Parents will find quality fresh ingredients in 7FRESH LIFE for cooking a healthy meal for their children; busy working professionals will also find nutritious prepared food.

As a leader in omnichannel retail, 7FRESH also provides a location-based online channel through its app for consumers to buy from the community shop anytime and have items delivered to their doorstep as fast as in 30 minutes from the time of order. The home delivery service now covers a 1.5 km radius including 38 surrounding communities and three office areas, reaching 50,000 families and 1,000 office professionals in total. 7FRESH LIFE employs JD.com’s massive online offerings. In addition to the items offered in-store, a large number of products from JD.com’s e-commerce platform can be ordered through 7FRESH LIFE’s online channel, such as seasonal, large-size, beauty and baby and maternal products. It also provides comprehensive convenient value-added services such as power bank rental, 24-hour parcel pick-up lockers, bill payment, top up, courier and dry cleaning service, among others.

“With JD’s deep understanding of consumers and our strong supply chain providing global and local fresh produce and mealtime solutions, 7FRESH has become a trusted source for consumers buying fresh food offline,” said Jonathan Wang, Head of 7FRESH, JD.com. “7FRESH LIFE will better serve the diverse and unique needs of Chinese families, providing for each person at any time for any need, online or offline.”

7FRESH will open its services for industry partners to leverage its supply chain, IT and omnichannel capabilities, collaborating with traditional players to redefine the offline grocery market to satisfy the changing, fragmented and personalized needs of consumers.

Launched in January 2018, JD.com’s 7FRESH supermarket chain has proved itself a hit among Chinese consumers with nearly 20 stores opened in major cities such as Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu and Guangzhou. As one of JD.com’s key omnichannel retail offerings, 7FRESH provides a seamless online ordering and offline shopping experience and redefines the brick-and-mortar grocery store.

JD.com’s 7FRESH fresh food chain supermarket 7FRESH LIFE opened on December 20 in Beijing.

Lenovo and JD.com Announce Plan to Sell RMB 10 Billion in Enterprise Products in the Next Three Years

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com and Lenovo plan to sell RMB 10 billion in enterprise products in the next three years. As part of a strategic partnership between the two companies, Lenovo will offer its full line products for enterprise clients via JD’s enterprise procurement platform. The two parties will also launch a Business-to-Manufacturer (B2M) platform to provide enterprise clients with customized products and services.

With C2M being the hottest term of the past year, getting the insights to truly understand consumers has been invaluable to many retailers and manufacturers. The innate differences among enterprises also pose great challenges for the B2B industry, and customized products present a huge unmet opportunity. JD and Lenovo’s B2M platform will enable enterprise clients on JD to submit individual needs, based on which Lenovo will design and manufacture customized products accordingly.

Leveraging JD.com’s professional online procurement channel, JD Business, and vast logistics network, customization will no longer only available to large companies with abundant resources. Small-to-medium sized companies, which account for more than 90% of the market in China, will also be able to enjoy the service through the B2M initiative.

JD.com and Lenovo are long-time partners, and are already providing joint customer service covering delivery and installation, hardware maintenance, equipment repairing and replacement, and IT support. The two companies will take a step further to upgrade its supply chain and smart services collaboration. Lenovo’s over 2,000 service stations in more than 900 cities, and its smart service system will join JD’s service system, in order to provide leading customer service to enterprise clients nationwide.

“JD.com is one of Lenovo’s most important retail partners in China. We have maintained a deep strategic cooperation for years,” said Zheng Liu, General Manager of Lenovo Enterprise Products. “The launch of the B2M platform is an important milestone for the enterprise procurement industry, and it will further take the industry to a new level.”

“The digital transformation has greatly impacted the enterprise procurement sector. As China’s largest retailer, JD.com is committed to efforts to streamline the procurement process for enterprises of all sizes,” said Chunzheng Song, President of JD Business. “The partnership with Lenovo provides a pioneering solution, and we expect to leverage JD’s big data ability to continuously improve the customization for the traditional enterprise procurement sector.”

JD.com has more than seven million enterprise clients on its platform. Its enterprise procurement business JD Business aims to help 100 suppliers surpass RMB 1 billion in sales in 2020 and bring together 200 technical partners and 20,000 enterprise service partners on its platform.

SK-II Pitera™ Essence Limited Edition Featuring Mickey Mouse Launches on JD.com

Posted on by Hui Zhang

Just in time for the Christmas season, consumers on JD.com, China’s largest retailer online or offline, will be able to get their hands on the Limited Edition Pitera™ Essence. The Limited Edition Pitera™ Essence will available on JD.com starting December 15th through the end of the year.

This is not the first time SK-II has selected JD as a destination for its new product launches. In fact, the globally prestigious skincare brand has been doing so during holiday seasons since its flagship store first opened on JD in 2015. Earlier this year, JD.com created a new concept for holiday gifting and also initiated a related new marketing campaign to fulfill consumers’ gifting consumption demands during holidays such as New Year, Valentine’s Day, Chinese Valentine’s Day (July 7 of the lunar calendar), and May 20, which is considered Chinese Internet Valentine’s day because “520” in Mandarin sounds like “I love you”. Consumers rely on JD for their gifting needs because they trust JD.com’s product quality and delivery speed. Leveraging its technology strengths and big data capabilities, JD provides user engagement tools for brands to help them reach out to consumers more precisely and attract new consumers via games during holiday sales seasons.

One of the top priorities for gift givers is ensuring that the gift reaches the recipient in time. Leveraging the overall strength of its nationwide logistics network, JD offers a white glove delivery service, JD Luxury Express, which further enhances the standard delivery experience, as a value-added service, providing some offline glamor and intimacy to the online e-commerce experience. As of November 1st, the number of followers of SK-II flagship store on JD.com had surpassed 10 million, making its online store on JD the largest of all of its online stores.

“JD.com is a longtime trusted partner of ours in the Chinese market. We are excited to further our collaboration by having our Limited Edition Pitera™ Essence featuring Mickey Mouse launch on JD.com.” said Iris Xuan, SK-II Global Sales and Commercial Leader

“With this product release with SK-II, we hope to delight and surprise consumers, providing them the high-quality service they are used to receiving from us.” said Terry Wang, General Manager of JD Beauty. “As the most-trusted e-commerce platform by Chinese consumers, JD has become an ideal partner for the world’s top beauty brands,” said Terry, “JD is laser focused on bringing high-quality products to consumers, and helping brands better access and understand their consumers in the Chinese market.”

In this first ever collaboration with Disney, SK-II brings together the beloved True Original Mickey Mouse – one of the most recognizable pop culture icons of all time and PITERA™ Essence – SK-II’s signature Facial Treatment Essence that has been essentially unchanged for 39 years to celebrate the Year of the Mouse.

JD Partners with China Council of Lions Clubs to Bring School Supplies to Children in Need

Posted on by Hui Zhang

JD.com is partnering with China Council of Lions Clubs to donate everyday necessities including clothes and shoes as well as school supplies to children in need. Starting December 12 and lasting for two weeks, JD shoppers will be able to access a page within the JD app where they can buy products to be donated to children from underprivileged families.

The charity shopping page will be targeted at consumers whom JD has already determined through big data analysis are likely to make donations. When shoppers purchase supplies on the page, the goods will either be sent directly to the children or delivered to a district headquarters of China Council of Lions Clubs, where they will be dispatched to underprivileged children throughout 14 provinces in China.

China Council of Lions Clubs is the China arm of Lions Clubs International, a charitable community organization established in Illinois, USA in 1917. With the first China branch launching in Shenzhen in 2002, the organization has expanded throughout China’s major cities, with members participating in activities ranging from environmental protection and disaster relief to aid for children and young people.

“It’s great to see JD.com taking its status as China’s largest retailer seriously and giving back to society through this donation project,” said Hui Cao, Secondary Deputy Director of Beijing Office of China Council of Lions Clubs. “As one of the country’s leading e-commerce platforms with a loyal customer base, JD has the capacity to use its technology to make a widespread impact in the area of targeted poverty alleviation.”

“Lions Clubs International is an esteemed and very valuable organization to the world, and it is our honor to partner with them on this philanthropy project,” said Xinyuan Zhou, General Manager of Channel Innovation, JD Health. “By combining the power of JD’s e-commerce platform with the Lions Clubs charitable outreach network, we hope this initiative can make a difference in the lives of children across China.”

This is yet another example of how JD is using its e-commerce platform to benefit groups in need. The company has taken its responsibility to society seriously since the very beginning. In the past few years alone, JD has partnered with brands to raise money for left-behind children; donated to children with developmental disabilities; and ceaselessly worked to make its business more sustainable by adopting eco-friendly packing and transforming its logistics fleet with green technology.

Posted in ESG

JD Logistics Drives China’s Logistics Ecosystem Development

Posted on by Ling Cao

JD Logistics is now the world’s first e-commerce platform authorized to leverage the European Pallet Association e.V. (EPAL)’s industry-leading shipping pallets. The strategic partnership between JD Logistics and EPAL will enable EPAL pallets to be distributed to partners throughout China via JD Cloud Box.

JD Cloud Box is JD Logistics’ self-developed logistics transaction platform. JD Cloud Box will also offer repair and leasing services, and provide an online platform for real-time information and transactions relating to EPAL pallets in China. This will improve the efficiency of both pallet manufacturing and circulation.

EPAL is an open pooling system for logistics carriers founded in 1991, and is globally responsible for the high quality of the EPAL load carriers. The body grants EPAL licenses to carefully checked producers and repairers around the globe, and currently has more than 1,500 licensed production and repair operations in over 30 countries.

As part of JD Logistics’ overall commitment to a sustainable supply chain, JD Cloud Box plans to become the world’s leading open trading platform for exchangeable logistics containers. Going forward, JD Cloud Box will use EPAL products as the standard logistics carriers throughout the supply chain system. EPAL’s products will also be integrated in JD’s cross-border logistics operations.

“Our new partnership with EPAL brings us one step closer to making China’s logistics industry the global ‘smart’ leader,” said Jie Ji, Head of JD Cloud Box at JD Logistics. “Reliable access to high-quality pallets on an as-needed basis is crucial to ensuring a highly efficient supply chain ecosystem. We are making it much more convenient for companies across China to utilize EPAL’s pallets in their operations, and raising the standard for China’s logistics industry at large.”

“JD is the perfect partner for EPAL’s entry into China’s domestic pallet market. JD’s longstanding commitment to quality and self-built nationwide logistics network has solidified its trusted reputation among consumers and businesses alike,” said Robert Holliger, President of EPAL. “Combining our high quality standardized pallets and JD Logistics’ rich local expertise, the JD Cloud Box platform can transform the future of logistics in China.”

JD.com’s StarLink IoT Platform is the Future of Retail

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

This Singles’ Day, JD.com launched the world’s largest home appliance experience center –– JD E-SPACE –– in the city of Chongqing in western China. JD E-SPACE is the world’s first retail space to be completely covered by 5G, and has already been a resounding success. More than 10 million RMB worth of merchandise was sold in the first hour after opening.

This one-of-a-kind store is powered by JD’s StarLink IoT retail platform, a digital offline store middle platform that promises consumers a truly seamless interactive retail experience.

Already in use in over 10,000 offline stores across China, JD StarLink integrates over 1,000 different technologies and applications. It uses IoT, intelligent perception and identification technologies and more. The solution leverages JD.com’s partnership with Intel’s Open Retail Initiative, and the use of open-source EdgeX IoT middleware and Intel’s edge computing technologies. This allows for instant communication between instore smart devices, allowing for a seamless shopping experience for consumers, while streamlining data management for retailers. JD StarLink now provides comprehensive analysis for smart store management, operations and marketing. It covers traffic analysis, customer profile, new customer attraction, membership marketing, and more.

The JD StarLink platform enhances every aspect of the traditional brick and mortar store model, effortlessly melding online and offline commerce. For example, JD Smart Store Cam uses facial recognition to register shoppers’ basic attributes such as age, in order to recommend items and offer coupons, and the JD Cloud Shelf and the Interactive Shelf help shoppers to get more information about products, redeem discounts, and even visualize what a product might look like in their home. Consumers can even “try on” clothes with AR Fitting Room and pay for their purchases via facial recognition. The JD E-SPACE store in Chongqing boasts the largest number of digital price tags in the world, which adjust in real-time to reflect price changes and changes in inventory, while offering opportunities for consumers to receive discounts on products.

“JD’s StarLink IoT platform improves user experience and extends the length of time spent in store by providing valuable tools to analyze user attributes, transaction volumes and conversion rates and more,” said Miao Luo, Head of JD StarLink IoT Platform. “JD StarLink will continue to push the bounds of what is possible for dynamic consumer interaction, helping usher in an exciting new era in offline retail.”

JD’s IoT Smart Housing Solution Brings the Future of Living to Hundreds of Residential Compounds Across China

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

Air conditioning that cools your house automatically before you get home; an elevator waiting for you before you even enter the lobby; a security system you can monitor while at work: welcome to the age of the smart living. With the help of JD.com’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, more and more families across China are benefitting from a smart home lifestyle.

Thanks to growing consumer demand for convenience and security, the Chinese smart home market is growing fast: in 2018, it was valued at US $7 billion, and is expected to increase fivefold by the year 2025. Likewise, current household penetration for smart home appliances in China is expected to jump from 4.6% today to 13.7% by 2023. In 2019, sales of smart locks and smart curtains on JD.com increased by 62x and 22x respectively, illustrating the surge in demand.

With China’s white-hot real estate market finally beginning to cool off, real estate companies are now embracing the smart home community as a way to add value to their properties. But what makes JD’s smart home initiative unique is that it is focused not only on the individual house level, but at the residential compound level. What does this mean? Through a centralized visual operations system, for example, property managers can identify a broken street lamp and repair it instantly.

JD IoT has already signed partnerships with more than 20 leaders in the real estate industry across 30 cities in China to provide IoT solutions for smart home and smart property management. Some of the features available include, facial recognition for building access, temporary QR code access for visitors, smart parking payment, management via app and more.

One such partnership is with Tianrun Real Estate, which recently installed JD smart home solutions in the Tianrun Avenue Foch community in Beijing. Families in the residential community can enjoy a range of smart living features, such as air conditioning that turns on before they get home, elevators and lights scheduled to activate on their arrival, and air purifying and humidifying systems that adjust to climate conditions throughout the day.

Similarly, in the Caifu Building in Changsha, JD provides a fully integrated software and hardware system platform, which includes a property management system, smart services such as smart access, smart parking, and smart elevators, and parking smart payment and management apps for owners.

“JD IoT is China’s largest smart home ecosystem, now serving over 25 million homes, encompassing more than 4,000 different products from 1000 brands,” said John Zhou, President of JD IoT. “As more individual customers, and property developers embark on their “smart” transformations, JD is increasingly the partner of choice in this rapidly growing sector.”

“JD IoT provides the most comprehensive IoT ecosystem out there, enabling us to swiftly deploy IoT technology throughout our properties, and helping our residents enjoy a secure, convenient and advanced living experience,” said Cheng Jiang, Director of Marketing at Tianrun Tongtai Estate. “By deploying JD’s IoT platform throughout our properties, residents enjoy a lifestyle that they never even imagined was possible.”

JD Launches New Industrial IoT Solution for the Energy Sector

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

China’s largest retailer, JD.com is pushing into the energy sector with a new industrial Internet of Things (IoT) solution. Applying JD’s industrial IoT capabilities to the energy sector, JD is helping the energy sector to modernize and increase efficiency, satisfying consumers’ daily energy needs, while helping businesses on their low-carbon transformation journey.

JD has partnered with State Grid, China’s national power company, to implement its IoT solution in China. This partnership is announced just as JD.com and JD Digits, a leading digital technology company, jointly hold their largest tech event of the year, JD Discovery (JDD) on November 19, in the Shunyi District of Beijing. With a total attendance of over 4,500 people, JDD gathers industry experts from all areas of technology to discuss the most pertinent issues and developments in the industry today.

Through the partnership, JD’s IoT solution will help State Grid build its own smart platform to manage its devices and meters, including electricity meters, power distributors, humidity sensors, temperature sensors and more with its smart IoT platform. Through the implementation of IoT capabilities, State Grid will be able to eliminate data islands, and collect and analyze information about energy usage across different devices in order to take steps to optimize their operations.

JD’s solution addresses several challenges facing the energy industry. This includes overall management of entire systems, and even making adjustments at the granular housing community or resident level. Take electric car charging stations as an example. China is already the world’s largest electric vehicle market, with the country’s electric vehicle fleet expected to swell to 162 million vehicles by 2040, according to forecasts by BloombergNEF. Right now, China’s over 460,000 public charging points beat the U.S.’s 60,000 by roughly an 8:1 ratio. State Grid previously announced plans to build 120,000 public charging stations by 2020. The question then becomes how to optimize the number of electric car charging stations available at a single time and location to ensure that there are enough to satisfy demand but not so many that they are wasteful, inefficient, and unnecessarily costly. Adding JD’s IIoT solution to the equation can provide energy companies like State Grid with valuable tools to analyze and better and address energy needs. Say an electric car driver works nights and doesn’t need to charge their car at rush hour – in this case the system might analyze energy usage fluctuations throughout the day, and notify the driver that he or she can get a discount if they choose to charge at a time when the station is not busy, such as late morning.

The solution can even help optimize energy usage for residents and housing communities, while providing incentives for individual users to reduce their energy usage. AC usage in the summer is case in point. Without seamless, smart integration of temperature sensors, energy meters and other systems, most residents likely do not know that turning their AC down just one degree cooler actually puts a lot of strain on an already strained energy system. With JD’s IIoT capabilities, however, it would be possible to not only analyze energy usage but also to implement a dynamic pricing system that can notify consumers of their energy usage, and incentivize them to make minor adjustments that result in better usage and efficiency for all.

“Most people, from corporations to individuals, are conscious of the urgent need to better manage and reduce energy consumption, but without reliable data and analysis capabilities, it is hard to know how to do so,” said John Zhou, President of IoT at JD.com. “Our IoT platform solution for the energy industry breaks down barriers between devices, companies and even individuals, allowing for a complete picture of energy usage. With this information, we can work with companies like State Grid to take steps in the right direction to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and bring more benefit to society. This is just one example of how we can leverage our capabilities to empower industries beyond the ones JD.com operates in with innovative solutions to address their most pressing challenges.”