JD Worldwide Steps Up International Merchant Recruitment

JD.com steps up international merchant recruitment to increase supply of imported goods to China

by Ker Zheng

Last week JD.com announced that it was stepping up its drive to recruit overseas merchants for its cross-border e-commerce platform, JD Worldwide.

JD.com’s import division was given more priority at the end of November 2019, as the size of the import cross-border e-commerce market in China is expected to hit 12.7 trillion RMB by 2020, according to iiMedia.

The different types of stores that can be set up are as follows:

1. Store flagship store (Trademark 35 required): Global supermarket/departmentstore/convenience store chains, large global trading companies.

2. Flagship brand store:Well-known international brands; brands that are at the top of their respective subcategories.

3. Specialty stores: Special machine and tool brands from certain countries, large airport duty-free stores, post office stores from different countries, etc. 

Those applying to open a store now will be eligible for the following benefits:

 - Free agency services:One-on-one guidance from pre-vetted service providers

 - Quick brand audits: Those with strong qualifications will be reviewed by the JD Worldwide team within a week's time

 - Operational assistance: JD Worldwide will assist you in putting together a growth plan for your brand

- Learning & growth: Brands will have access to JD Worldwide's learning platform

JD Worldwide was launched on April 15th, 2015, and has since grown to over 20,000 brands and over 10 million SKUs from suppliers in over 100 countries.  JD Worldwide is located through a button and tab on JD.com’s main website, so that merchants can attract traffic from its general user base. 

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Why is JD.com investing heavily in its import business? 

Historically, JD.com has suffered from its inability to appeal to female customers for categories such as apparel and cosmetics. 

The company was originally founded as an electronics retailer catering to male customers, and though it now does well in selling food, FMCG, and other daily necessity products, it still fails to appeal to the female customer. This is a big issue, because categories such as cosmetics and luxury are very high-margin products, and JD.com is missing out. Growing these categories could help a lot to pad the company's bottom line. 

The company’s investment in its cross-border e-commerce division is part of this strategy. In the cross-border e-commmerce space, the top categories tend to be beauty, health, luxury, and mom & baby products, and women tend to be the dominant consumers for these categories. 

Pinduoduo is doing the same thing, ramping up its recruitment of international merchants so that it can diversify away from lower-tier cities and lift the average basket value of its transactions with imported products. 

It remains to be seen how successful either player will be in competing with Alibaba, which recently acquired Netease's import platform Kaola, giving it a ~60% share of the import e-commerce market. 

JD.com does have slight advantages in that it manages its logistics in-house, giving it better control of the customer experience. JD.com also has many mini-programs on WeChat, which help to drive additional traffic. It wouldn't be unheard of to see JD.com launching a JD Worldwide mini-program store just for imported e-commerce goods. 



JD.com

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