Liu Qiangdong is so powerful, JD cross-border has penetrated 24 countries in Europe

JD.com's global overseas sales layout has expanded to 24 European countries

Liu Qiangdong does not want to give up cross-border e-commerce.

On February 1, JD.com's cross-border e-commerce export platform "JD Global Sales" announced that its layout in overseas markets will be further expanded to 24 European countries on the basis of the five countries that were previously opened: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Local consumers can open the JD App and place orders directly.

JD.com Global Sales Site Source: JD.com

According to the official website of JD.com, JD.com Global Sales is a selection of high-quality products directly mailed to Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and various countries/regions around the world on the basis of the original only for consumers in Chinese mainland, and is committed to allowing global users to buy JD Mall products.

Overseas users can use a variety of international credit cards to pay for goods at JD Worldwide, and can choose two logistics methods: third-party express transportation and consolidated transportation.

The former is to pay the cross-border freight and deliver it directly to the user's home, while the latter is to be shipped by a third-party merchant to the consolidation warehouse and then delivered to the user's home, which is suitable for the scenario of multiple orders combined delivery, which can save part of the freight.

JD.com's global sales and consumption trends show that since the launch of the JD.com New Year Festival, categories including underwear, books, personal care, health and other categories, as well as Spring Festival couplets, red envelopes and other festival supplies have continued to sell well in the European market.

Therefore, JD Global Sales has also launched a special session for the European New Year Festival, bringing together festival decorations, kitchen appliances, clothing, gifts and other special goods, in addition to the common discounts, there are also free first shipping discounts for the whole site over 888 yuan.

From this point of view, "JD Global Sales" can actually be understood as an extension of JD Mall's business overseas, and the main audience may still be overseas Chinese.

Previously, when Jingdong officially announced that it had reached a cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala, it also said that as the exclusive interactive cooperation platform of this year's Spring Festival Gala, it will send 100 million physical gifts to audiences at home and abroad. With JD.com's global sales covering more European countries, local Chinese can also participate in the interaction and draw gifts.

It is worth mentioning that before JD Global announced its business expansion, we noticed that Ochama Oma, an overseas e-commerce platform owned by JD.com, had taken the lead in entering the market in 24 European countries.

In October last year, Ochama, a retail platform registered by JD.com in the Netherlands, announced that it would soon enter 19 markets including Austria, Finland and Italy.

Ochama shopping page Source: Ochama

With Ochama's successful entry into these countries, consumers in 24 European countries can now shop for goods in one place, which is equivalent to most of Europe. At the same time, JD.com has built its own warehousing network and collaborative warehouse in the European market, and its warehousing network service capabilities basically cover major European countries, which will further consolidate its position in the European e-commerce market.

Last year's 11.11, Ochama's door-to-door delivery service has covered 24 countries in Europe, and the business hours of some pick-up points in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium have been extended to 22 o'clock at night.

Today, JD's global sales are also covering these 24 countries, which means that domestic sellers can more easily sell goods to European consumers simultaneously, effectively ensuring the supply of JD's goods, and then realizing the in-depth layout of the European market.

JD Overseas: "E-commerce" has not moved, and "supply chain" comes first

When it comes to cross-border e-commerce, JD.com's layout is actually not too late.

As early as 2014, Liu Qiangdong expressed Jingdong Group's determination to internationalize: "Whether it is internationalized or not determines the life and death of Jingdong in the future." ”

It is also from this year that JD.com has successively spent huge sums of money in Russia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Spain and other countries. In Liu Qiangdong's words, JD.com is to "create another JD.com" overseas.

In 2015, JD.com established a joint venture with Provident Capital, the largest local investment company in Indonesia. In 2018, JD.com and Central Group of Thailand jointly created JD.com Thailand.

In 2017, JD.com set up a strategy department and an international business development department. During the Spring Festival of 2018, Liu Qiangdong issued an internal letter, saying that in the coming year, the business in Thailand, Indonesia and other places will be fully rolled out, and the regional offices in New York, Australia and Milan will also be unveiled.

At that time, JD.com also revealed that in the second half of 2018, it would use Los Angeles as a base to enter the U.S. market with its own logistics center model. In terms of the European market, there is also news that JD.com will invest at least 1 billion euros to build a logistics network in France.

Two years later, in September 2020, Yan Xiaobing, the former head of JD Retail's 3C home appliance retail business group, took over as the head of JD's international business department. Yan Xiaobing, the most powerful head of JD.com's 3C category and Liu Qiangdong's "confidant", is in charge of international business, which was once regarded by the outside world as a signal for JD.com's international business.

However, at the end of 2021, JD.com announced that its cross-border e-commerce B2C platform JOYBUY would be upgraded to a cross-border B2B trading and service platform, and shut down the operation of the original business of the English and Russian stations.

JD.COM SHUTS DOWN JOYBUY'S ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN SITES SOURCE: JD.COM

After the Spring Festival in 2022, Yan Xiaobing also "retired" on the grounds of family needs and physical reasons. Although Yan Xiaobing will return to JD again in July 2023, he will return as the head of the newly established JD.com's innovative retail department, and he will have nothing to do with JD's international business.

At the beginning of 2023, JD Indonesia and Thailand have successively announced that all services will be suspended from March 31. In a short period of time, JD.com's overseas e-commerce business contracted and shut down one after another, which once made the outside world think that JD.com had given up globalization.

But while the e-commerce business is shrinking, JD.com's logistics and supply chain business is still soaring overseas. Perhaps, as Liu Qiangdong said, what JD wants to do is to "globalize the supply chain service with logistics as the carrier", so it will accelerate the layout of overseas warehousing and logistics, and suspend the development of e-commerce business.

According to the data previously released by JD Logistics, it continues to promote the global "network weaving plan", and currently has nearly 90 overseas warehouses, bonded warehouses and direct mail warehouses around the world, and its logistics supply chain services cover most countries and regions around the world.

Not long ago, JD Logistics also announced that it had reached a strategic cooperation with EVRi, one of the largest parcel delivery providers in the UK, and the two sides jointly created two-way logistics services covering China and the UK, further strengthening JD's local distribution capabilities in Europe.

JD and EVRi signing site Source: JD Logistics

Today, JD.com's cross-border e-commerce business has a deep layout in 24 European countries, and its logistics capabilities have also become a business card to highlight its core competitiveness.

From this point of view, JD.com's globalization is more like "the soldiers and horses have not moved, and the grain and grass go first". Just like when it built its own logistics in China, JD.com intends to strengthen the global logistics network infrastructure first, and then carry out e-commerce business, so that it can be more handy.

AliExpress and Temu are far ahead, how can JD recreate a JD?

At the 2018 Winter Davos Annual Meeting, Liu Qiangdong said that his goal is to become the world's largest e-commerce, not just in China. At the same time, he firmly believes that in the next 10 years, China's largest e-commerce company must also be the world's largest e-commerce company.

Now half of the time has passed since Liu Qiangdong's original "prediction", no matter who can be called "China's largest e-commerce company", there is still a distance from "the largest in the world".

On February 1, local time, Amazon just released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023.

According to the report, as of December 31, 2023, Amazon's net sales in the fourth quarter were $169.961 billion, an increase of 14% compared with $149.204 billion in the same period of 2022, a year-on-year increase of 13% excluding the impact of exchange rate changes, and a net profit of $10.624 billion, a significant increase of more than 37 times compared with the net profit of $278 million in the same period in 2022.

With net sales of more than 1.2 trillion yuan in one quarter, Amazon remains the behemoth of the global e-commerce market. And in terms of market capitalization, as of now, Amazon's U.S. stock market is more than $1.65 trillion, Ali's $184.3 billion, Pinduoduo's $168.2 billion, and JD.com's U.S. stock is $34.97 billion — Amazon is more than four times their combined market capitalization.

Even, in the 2024 list of the world's most admired companies just released by Fortune magazine, Amazon has been ranked in the top three for the eighth consecutive year...... Compared with Amazon, domestic e-commerce companies still have a significant lack of voice in the global market.

However, at least Ali International Digital Business Group, including AliExpress and Lazada, as well as Pinduoduo's Temu, are surging overseas, trying to compete with Amazon, and JD.com looks more like a "laggard".

This situation may be caused by the different strategic directions of globalization of various enterprises. For example, Ali has both cross-border e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, as well as Cainiao International as the logistics base, while Pinduoduo Temu is expanding on the basis of the platform, and the logistics is handed over to third-party service providers such as J&T.

However, if you want to win the global e-commerce market, an influential platform and fulfillment capabilities are indispensable. Today's JD.com must also go overseas to seek new growth points for e-commerce business, and Europe is expected to become the base camp for JD.com's global expansion - the overseas layout of major domestic e-commerce players will be the same.

Author | Li Songyue