On March 18, JD New Channel and New Distribution co-hosted the 'Boundless Commerce, Shared Vision' JD New Channel Unbounded Retail Industry Summit in Chengdu. Xu Lei, rotating CEO of JD Retail Group, attended and delivered a speech on the latest progress of JD's unbounded retail strategy. Zheng Hongyan, VP of JD Group and President of JD Retail New Channel Business Unit, announced that in 2019, JD New Channel's unbounded retail strategy would move from experimentation to implementation, and New Channel would upgrade to a more open and intelligent B2B2C platform.

From Experimentation to Implementation: JD New Channel Focuses on 'Openness' and 'Intelligence'

In 2018, JD New Channel first released its unbounded retail strategy, upgrading retail infrastructure from three dimensions: supply chain, scenarios, and marketing. After a year of implementation trials, New Channel has built a higher-quality retail infrastructure platform, achieving shared growth with users and partners.

In 2018, JD Zhangguibao users exceeded one million, with active users reaching 3.5 times the previous year; single-store output for Zhangguibao stores reached 2.3 times the previous year. As of now, New Channel's joint warehouses cover 30 provinces and nearly 300 cities, serving 70% of Zhangguibao stores. The open and efficient nature of joint warehouses has attracted more brand manufacturers, with New Channel's partner brands now exceeding 5,000.

Zheng Hongyan, VP of JD Group and President of JD Retail New Channel Business Unit, stated at the summit: "In 2018, New Channel's unbounded retail strategy was centered on 'people,' creating value by having 'goods' and 'scenes' revolve around consumers. In 2019, the strategy will enter the implementation phase. New Channel aims to upgrade from a supply chain to a comprehensive supply network on the supply side, to meet the shift on the demand side from 'online' and 'interactive' to 'intelligent.' At that point, New Channel will become a more open and intelligent B2B2C platform, achieving win-win outcomes with all channel partners."

7 Channel Solutions: Forging a More Open 'New Channel'

In traditional sales models, personnel, warehousing, vehicles, and cash flow are the four major cost factors for brand owners, and also pain points. Due to these four constraints, brand owners struggle to balance cost, efficiency, and experience. At this summit, JD New Channel announced the creation of 7 modular channel solutions, allowing brand owners to choose a more open, efficient, and economical channel model based on their category, brand, region, and development stage.

For example, brand owners with mature warehousing and distribution capabilities, or with mature regional distributor capabilities, can choose to have manufacturers directly serve small stores or authorize distributors to serve small stores. Brand owners without mature warehousing or distributor capabilities can choose JD Warehousing + JD Distribution or New Channel's joint warehouse distribution system to serve small stores.

It is reported that JD New Channel will also build an integrated B-end warehouse and distribution network consisting of provincial warehouses, city warehouses, city cluster warehouses, and joint warehouses, strengthening B-end truck transport to further improve service levels and reduce costs and increase efficiency. As an important part of the integrated B-end warehouse and distribution network, joint warehouses effectively improve delivery efficiency, reduce delivery costs, and serve terminal stores at the smallest granularity, and will continue to play an important role in 2019.

Currently, JD New Channel has taken the lead in becoming a million-user B2B platform nationwide that connects 1-6 tiers, penetrates deeply into markets below tier 3, and strives for omni-channel coverage. In 2019, with the 7 modular channel solutions and a more complete integrated B-end warehouse and distribution network, New Channel will help brand owners take their channels further, deeper, and more refined, creating a more comprehensive supply network.

At the summit, industry guests from Want Want, Uni-President, Yanghe, Bright Dairy, COFCO, Unilever, P&G, Nestlé, and others stated that in the era of unbounded retail, brand owners are also seeking innovation in sales models, hoping to leverage New Channel's integrated B-end warehouse and distribution network to cover terminal stores with high-quality goods and services more efficiently.

Technology Upgrades Retail Infrastructure: 'Thousand Stores, Thousand Faces' + Intelligent Distribution Platform Arm Intelligent Channels

In the era of unbounded retail, a series of changes on the demand side have placed higher demands on the intelligence level of retail infrastructure platforms. Relying on JD's big data and intelligent advantages, in 2019, JD New Channel will significantly upgrade a series of intelligent systems and data products.

At this summit, JD New Channel announced that JD Zhangguibao has taken the lead in the B2B industry in achieving 'Thousand Stores, Thousand Faces.' It is reported that 'Thousand Stores, Thousand Faces' is based on JD's AI algorithm system, which accurately matches each retail terminal user's product tags and store tags with a corresponding personalized app interface, helping small stores quickly find more suitable and profitable products, giving them an exclusive AI business manager who understands them better than they understand themselves.

New Channel's self-developed intelligent distribution platform, JD Fenxiaobao, will also be launched soon. Fenxiaobao links the needs of brand owners and channel partners, digitizing their offline fulfillment processes, and through an online system, achieves control over regions and prices across the entire supply chain from brand owners to small stores. It also adds differentiated products for channel partners such as distributors and wholesalers, increasing sales and profits.

To help brand owners achieve more efficient self-operation, New Channel's upgraded brand self-operation center, based on the original brand pavilion, will be relaunched. Through data integration and technology sharing, brand owners can participate in category management, pricing management, marketing management, user operations, and even end-consumer fan operations on Zhangguibao.

In addition, based on the supply network and technology, New Channel will leverage its accumulated big data assets to create data products for brand owners, channel distributors, and retailers, such as Huiyan 2.0, Qiaoguanjia, and Shengyijing. Adhering to the design principles of data closed-loop, structured indicators, visualized problems, data-driven decisions, and intelligent growth, these products are carefully crafted for user experience, considering the characteristics of different users. By tapping into the data productivity of upstream and downstream channels, New Channel aims to build an intelligent channel armed with data.

In 2019, JD New Channel will enter a large-scale implementation phase with its new unbounded retail strategy. Adhering to the principle of 'integrated openness,' New Channel will interact and collaborate more closely with brand owners, channel distributors, and retailers. New Channel is willing to work with users and partners in a more open manner to continuously optimize cost, efficiency, and experience, jointly entering the harvest period of unbounded retail, becoming the most trusted B2BC intelligent platform, and bringing quality goods and services to thousands of households.

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