JD.com and Meili launch joint venture

JD.com, China’s largest retailer, and social e-commerce leader, Meili, have launched a joint venture to bring innovative social e-commerce features to shoppers and tools to businesses that want to reach consumers through social media. The new company will build and operate a social commerce platform leveraging JD’s current level-1 entry point on Weixin.

Weixin is the most popular social platform in China. This will enable the platform and its merchants to reach a broader customer base with innovative and interactive features. The joint venture will make online shopping more fun, exciting and fulfilling for Chinese consumers.

The platform will help to attract more merchants and expand the selection of products available through JD’s Weixin shopping entry point, particularly in long-tail product categories, like apparel, where Meili excels.

Merchants selling through the new platform will gain access to JD’s extensive logistics network and customer service offer, helping them both reach customers and improve customer satisfaction.

“This new JV combines JD’s unequalled expertise in customer service, logistics, retail infrastructure, and its reputation for quality and authenticity with Meili’s clear social commerce leadership and its ability to reach female shoppers, particularly in lower-tier cities. The new platform will change the way that sellers are able to target and serve a wide range of underserviced consumers in China,” said Chen Qi, CEO and founder of Meili, who has been named chairman of the new joint venture.

Established in mid-2016, Meili primarily targets female customers, and includes several different platforms under it, including MOGU Street and Meilishuo, among other popular shopping sites. Meili is experienced in integrating community, content and e-commerce and already leveraged this strength to achieve significant success within the Weixin ecosystem in the last year.

The new platform is scheduled to launch before next month’s Chinese New Year. It is expected to enhance e-commerce by lowering customer-acquisition and service cost for merchants, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, which will be able to leverage the huge volume of traffic coming through JD’s Weixin shopping entry point.