China’s JD.com Targets European Market to Take on Shein and Temu

Shein and Temu have found competition. It is another Chinese e-commerce giant: JD.com. The platform, which also offers all kinds of products at low prices, has set its sights on entering Europe and competing directly against the giants.

The formula proposed by JD.com is both simple and functional: the company intends to take over the German companu Ceconomy for €2.2 billion, and thus enter the European continent hand in hand with a giant that is already established in the territory.

With this move, JD.com absorbs a giant that has 1,000 stores and more than 50,000 employees in eleven countries. Parent company MediaMarkt has a well-established physical presence and an extensive store network, as well as millions of customers. JD.com also ensures that it will be able to enter the physical retail market.

JD.com will acquire Ceconomy, the German parent company of MediaWorld, Saturn and MediaMarkt

This Chinese giant does not operate as a typical ecommerce company, but its bet is to control its logistics, with hyper-automated centers, its own delivery drivers and a network that allows it to deliver the same day in most of China. In the Asian country it has 820 warehouses, almost 38,000 delivery vehicles and a network of 320,000 people working in logistics.

JD.com was founded in 1998 by Richard Liu. In 2024, it was competing directly against Alibaba. In the first half of the year, it achieved an attributable net profit of 19.774 billion yuan ($2.752 billion), 54% above the result posted in the first half of 2023

The company’s net revenue in the first six months of 2024 reached 551.446 billion yuan ($7.676 billion), up 3.9%, including a 3.9% increase in the retail business to 483.907 million yuan ($6,736 million), and 11% in the logistics business to 86,344 million yuan ($12,020 million).