JD expands its e-commerce empire to Spanish-speaking markets

Richard Liu, the legendary founder and CEO of Chinese online retailer JD Group, made his latest appearance at Madrid, the capital of Spain, on April 16th to introduce the firm’s expansion plans to the Spanish-speaking market which boasts a 400 million population, local media is reporting.

JD has just opened its Spanish website Joybuy.es for beta testing on April 12th to target Spain and Latin America. JD.com will enter the Spanish market through investments in logistics, goods, and services to integrate JD’s capabilities in China’s commodity supply chain and provide quality products to Spanish customers.

For starters, JD will enter the market with 100,000 popular items in partnership with one thousand partners including smartphone maker Nubia, electronics manufacturer Rappo, robotic vacuum cleaner maker iLife, and more. As in China, logistics is the main selling point for JD’s services. The company promises a 2-3 day delivery for premium packages and 7-20 day delivery for economic packages in Spain. The firm is also planning to set up local warehouses within this year.

The Chinese e-commerce giant is serious about taking its services global. The current move comes two months after its launch in Europe. France is the first stop in JD’s ambitious plan in the region, where the company plans to spend at least one billion euros over the next two years.

On the other hand, JD’s aggressive globalization plan reveals how crowded China’s e-commerce market really is. The cutthroat battle in the domestic market is forcing Chinese e-commerce platforms, including top players like JD, to look for new opportunities elsewhere. JD’s rival Alibaba has launched its own globalization plans much earlier than JD.