Shopify and JD.com Partnership Will Help Expand Largest E-Commerce Market
The Chinese e-commerce market, the world’s largest, has often been inaccessible for small businesses who are unable to sell their goods on a global scale due to regulatory and logistical obstacles, among other challenges. A new industry partnership, however, could open up the space for retailers both small and large.
Shopify, a Canadian multinational e-commerce company, and JD.com, a Chinese e-commerce company, are collaborating to knock down existing walls, allowing merchants to list their products on JD’s cross-border e-commerce platform, JD Worldwide. The new sales channel opens access to JD’s 550 million active customers in China.
China E-Commerce Market a Boon for Retailers:
- Estimated to be worth $3.3 trillion by 2025
- Five times larger than the U.S. e-commerce market
- Over half (52%) of all retail sales in China in 2021 were predicted to come from e-commerce alone.
While it typically takes 12 months for foreign brands to begin selling in China, JD Marketplace will allow Shopify merchants in the U.S. to access the market in as quickly as three to four weeks.
The channel will expedite the process by assisting with onboarding, managing end-to-end fulfillment from JD’s U.S. warehouses directly to consumers in China, and leveraging JD.com’s China-U.S. cargo flights, 1,300-plus warehouses, and 200,000-plus delivery personnel in China. JD Marketplace will also provide price conversions, taking into account foreign exchange rates and taxes, as well as assisting with translating product names and descriptions.
“Bringing together two world-class commerce platforms — Shopify and JD.com — is a major step in solving cross-border commerce for merchants," said Aaron Brown, vice president, Shopify, in a statement. "The future of commerce is commerce everywhere — and that starts by removing barriers to entry to one of the most important ecommerce markets in the world.”
JD Marketplace launched on Jan. 18. Shopify and JD.com state this is simply the first step in a strategic partnership that “aims to help solve cross-border commerce challenges across product sourcing, selling, and logistics for merchants in the U.S. and China.”