The Chinese internet giant JD.com will open its first physical store in Europe on Thursday 11 November. Leiden (Bètaplein) has that scoop. The store is called Ochama – to avoid confusion with sports store JD Sports – and sells both food and non-food.
JD is one of the largest online stores in the world and only has to tolerate Amazon and Alibaba. Earlier this year, the Chinese opened a large distribution center of 18,000 square meters in Venray. The expectation is that the company wants to serve several countries in Europe from here.
JD is a combination of a webshop and physical stores. In the Netherlands, it will initially open four stores, where customers can also pick up products ordered online. In addition to that in Leiden, there will be an Ochama branch in Diemen. It is not yet known where the two other locations will be.
The Chinese want to sell food (including many fresh products), household appliances and articles in the field of gaming and home life in the Netherlands. These include A-brands from Unilever, Procter&Gamble and Douwe Egberts, among others. According to supermarket trade magazine Distrifood the intention is that the (web) supermarket will work with a variant of the Amazon Prime model. Members receive exclusive coupons and save 10 percent. JD also has supermarkets in China under the name 7Fresh. The American supermarket giant Walmart, among others, has an interest in this company.
Apparently this combination works. First acquire a good position online and then expand offline as well
Stone shops
At JD, they do not want to comment on the expansion plans in the Netherlands yet. Supermarket expert Erik Hemmes sees the arrival of the Chinese as confirmation that more and more companies that started online, eventually also opt for brick shops. Apparently this combination works. First acquire a good position online and then expand offline as well. You also see that happening at Amazon, which is working on Amazon Go supermarkets in the US and also in England. These are shops that are equipped with the latest technological gadgets, including cashless payment. JD.com is also experimenting with its own stores in China and now clearly wants to gain a foothold in Europe as well.”
Hemmes’ colleague Rupert Parker Brady also mentions the rise of premium subscriptions at more and more retail formulas. Albert Heijn also recently started doing this: you pay a limited amount per year and then receive extras. In this way, stores try to attract customers. In that sense, it is smart that JD.com is immediately committed to this. We will see to what extent the competition will suffer from this new player. He is not a small boy, there are plenty of opportunities to invest in this interesting market.”
What do you think of the arrival of this web giant?
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