JD Worldwide launches U.S. Mall to deliver authentic American goods to China
NEW YORK — JD Worldwide announced the launch of U.S. Mall, a new channel that will offer authentic American products for sale in China, at the company’s first-ever business conference in the U.S on Monday.
JD.com features American brands, including Converse, Samsonite and Ocean Spray. Health care and beauty products, like Sephora, Dove, Olay and Gillette, account for some of “the fastest growing on the site,” according to Senior Director of International Communications Josh Gartner.
The U.S. Mall will give an advantage for companies that want to test the Chinese market without establishing a physical presence in China, providing a “particularly good opportunity to get access to our 100 million customers,” Gartner said.
In order to streamline its access, JD.com will partner with DHL Global Forwarding. Because JD controls its entire logistics network, it can offer same-day delivery if consumers order by 11 a.m., and next-day delivery if they order by 11 p.m.
In addition to offering lightening-speed delivery times, JD hopes to attract consumers with starpower. Monday’s conference coincided with Taylor Swift’s announcement that she will be selling merchandise from her first clothing line — which includes dresses, sweatshirts and tops — exclusively on JD.com, the largest retailer in China.
A style icon who has graced the cover of Vogue and boasts 60.6 million Twitter followers, JD.com executives said Swift is poised to attract business.
“Taylor Swift will give you a lot of publicity,” John Gilstrap, Empire State Development’s executive VP of business attraction and expansion, said.
Fortuitously for JD, the announcement of the U.S. Mall’s launch comes three days after the Wall Street Journal reported that American Apparel & Footwear Association had issued an open letter to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., a Chinese online retailer, criticizing the growing number of knockoffs that Alibaba’s platforms are selling.
“We only sell authentic products — authorized products from the brands and company supplies,” Haoyu Shen, CEO of JD Mall, said. “So that is why we see today Taylor Swift choosing JD as [her] exclusive distributor of [fashion] merchandise in China.”
JD enforces a zero-tolerance policy for selling fakes and counterfeits.
“Our reputation of only selling authentic products is very important to us,” he said.
Describing the zero-tolerance policy as an important part of the company’s “core values,” Belinda Chen, director of JD Worldwide, said the company cracks down on counterfeiters.
“We have a very stringent system for monitoring our merchants and our products,” Chen said.
JD works with one of the largest third-party inspection agencies, employing mystery shoppers to buy products on the website and check for authenticity and quality.
“As soon as we find something that is suspected not to be 100 percent authentic, we take immediate measures to stop the seller, to recuperate all of the loss incurred by the consumer, and we have a very stringent punishment system to prevent any future not-authentic product from entering our system,” Chen said.
Founded in 2004, JD is ranked within the top three international online retailers, after Amazon and Apple, and ranked first in customer satisfaction last year. With 3,500 delivery centers around China, the company owned 56.3% market share in the first quarter of 2015 and saw 689 million orders in 2014.
But JD is still expanding within China. By the end of 2015, JD will reach 400,000 of China’s 600,000 villages, according to President and CEO Richard Liu.
“China is a very special market,” he said.
Although the structure of the country’s economy has changed over the past few decades, the consumption “has not changed at all.”
Representing the world’s largest economic market, China is home to more than 649 million Internet users — half of whom are existing e-commerce consumers.
Although the company has been known to target wealthier Chinese consumers, it seeks to expand its reach across class boundaries.
“We’re penetrating lower-tier cities,” Shen said. “Going to the lower-tier cities has been one of our big pushes in the last few years and going forward, as well. So, we are a full-category retailer and we are covering all of China.”