Recreating a "JD.com" in Europe

The latest news shows that JD.com's (JD) European online retail business Joybuy will officially go live in March this year.

Joybuy is JD.com's European online retail business, which has already operated in core markets such as the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Relying on JD Logistics' integrated supply chain service system in Europe, which covers warehousing, transportation, transshipment, and last-mile delivery, Joybuy provides end-to-end fulfillment services. In major European cities, Joybuy already supports its own logistics 211 timeliness, achieving the promise of "same-day" or "next-day" delivery, attempting to establish a differentiated user experience from mainstream platforms like Amazon.

Marked by the official launch of Joybuy in March 2026, JD.com's long-term layout in the European market has moved from early exploration and infrastructure construction to a new stage of business integration and collaborative development.

JD.com's core strategy in Europe can be summarized as localizing and replicating its successful "retail + supply chain" integrated model validated in China, but adopting a more complex combination of approaches.

Joybuy is the concentrated outlet of this strategy facing consumers. It is not a new platform created out of thin air, but integrates JD.com's previous e-commerce explorations in Europe (such as the previously launched ochama business, which has been incorporated into it), aiming to create a localized e-commerce platform with "quality" and "timeliness" as its core mindset.

The cornerstone of the front-end experience is JD.com's heavy-asset infrastructure quietly built in Europe over the past few years, internally known as the "Global Networking Plan". Its core is a network of intelligent warehouses across Europe. JD Logistics has operated more than 130 various types of overseas warehouses in Europe, with a total management area of over 1.3 million square meters. More critically, JD.com is systematically introducing its mature intelligent logistics technology into Europe. For example, its first highly automated "Smart Wolf Warehouse" in the UK, by deploying nearly 200 intelligent robots, has increased picking and outbound efficiency by about four times, directly supporting the feasibility of front-end "same-day" delivery. This logistics system serves not only Joybuy's consumers but also brand merchants looking to expand into the European market, forming JD.com's physical service network in Europe.

In addition to building this "hard work" itself, JD.com is also rapidly acquiring core assets and capabilities in the local market through strategic acquisitions. The most notable is the acquisition of CECONOMY, a European consumer electronics retail giant (owning brands such as MediaMarkt and Saturn). This transaction was announced in July 2025, and by the end of 2025, JD.com had acquired approximately 59.8% of its equity, with the full process expected to be completed in the first half of 2026. The strategic value of this acquisition is immeasurable: CECONOMY has more than 1,000 physical stores in 12 European countries. This not only provides JD.com with a ready-made, large-scale offline traffic entrance and brand showroom, but its store network and local supply chain system are likely to be transformed into community-based pre-warehouses or after-sales service points in the future, thus realizing an integrated online and offline fulfillment model.

While bringing high-quality Chinese goods and supply chain efficiency to European consumers through Joybuy, JD.com is also using its domestic market advantages to actively help European brands enter China. This "two-way channel" strategy not only enriches JD.com's global supply chain inventory but also makes it more attractive and influential when establishing cooperative relationships with local European brands, feeding back to Joybuy's localized selection.

Looking at the overall situation, JD.com is trying to play a "trinity" big game in Europe: taking Joybuy as the main online front facing consumers; combining self-built intelligent logistics with thousands of acquired physical stores to form a virtual and real fulfillment and service network. This "heavy asset, deep integration, long cycle" approach also continues its layout and development thinking in China, deeply reflecting Liu Qiangdong's previously emphasized concept that internationalization is not simply doing cross-border e-commerce but deeply cultivating "local e-commerce".

It can be foreseen that with the final completion of the acquisition of CECONOMY and the release of synergies among various sectors, JD.com will no longer be just a cross-border seller or logistics service provider in Europe but a comprehensive commercial entity deeply embedded in the local retail ecosystem. Of course, this path is also full of challenges, including the profit pressure brought by huge capital investment, the integration difficulties of large European companies like CECONOMY, and the need to cope with strict EU regulatory scrutiny.

JD.com's systematic layout in Europe with Joybuy as the core is a "reloaded departure" after ten years of exploration, trial and error, and profound transformation of its internationalization strategy. Looking back at JD.com's journey overseas, starting with founder Liu Qiangdong's bold statement in 2014 that "Southeast Asia will be the first stop for going global," it has been nearly ten years, and this decade-long voyage has not been smooth sailing but more like a tumultuous maritime log.

In 2015, JD.com officially set sail overseas, with Indonesia as its first stop. It established JD.ID here and launched its own logistics system, intending to replicate its domestic success experience unchanged. The following year, JD Finance, now JD Digits, invested in the Thai online fashion brand Pomelo, starting to layout financial business locally.

By 2017, JD.com had jointly established JD CENTRAL with Thailand's largest retail group Central Group, making a big move into the Thai market. At this stage, JD.com's core strategy was to "replicate the Chinese model," relying on the combination of self-operated e-commerce and self-built logistics to gain a foothold in the fast-growing but competitive Southeast Asian market. However, the reality was that the high-investment, heavy-operation model encountered localization difficulties and faced competition from Shopee and Lazada. Although there were some gains during this period, the long-term losses and market share pressure were always like a stone pressing on the heart.

2022 became a pivotal turning point. JD.com successively shut down its e-commerce businesses in Thailand and Indonesia, and JD.ID and JD CENTRAL also ceased operations. This marked a major setback for JD.com's first phase of going global with self-operated platforms as the core. In June of the same year, JD.com launched the export e-commerce platform "JD Global Trade", focusing on North American and Southeast Asian markets, helping domestic factories and merchants integrate supply chain resources and providing one-stop going global solutions.

At the same time, the company also tried other paths, such as leveraging local traffic and channels through investment or cooperation, but most of these explorations failed to become the main line and further verified that core supply chain capabilities must be controlled by itself. After the logistics backbone network began to take shape, JD.com began a new round of more ambitious retail business localization experiments.

The Ochama project launched in Europe in 2022 is a typical representative. It is no longer a simple online mall but attempts to export the domestic "online ordering, offline pickup" omni-channel model and highly automated warehouse technology for the first time. This phase of experimentation, in contrast to the steady growth of its logistics business, ultimately led to a strategic re-convergence: integrating the experimental Ochama into the unified retail front-end Joybuy and determined to quickly obtain a mature local physical network and consumer base through strategic acquisitions (such as CECONOMY).

Looking back at these ten years, its path clearly shows the evolution from the light model of "goods going global" to the heavy model of "supply chain capabilities going global" and even "localization ecosystem landing". It gradually abandoned the pure traffic e-commerce thinking, established the unshakable cornerstone of independently built global intelligent supply chain, and accumulated positive and negative experiences through multiple localization experiments.

Therefore, the launch of Joybuy and the European layout is not an isolated commercial act but a picture that JD.com has found after paying a lot of tuition fees for ten years, which is most in line with its "retail + supply chain" gene: a deep localization ecosystem with Joybuy as the unified brand touchpoint, self-built logistics and thousands of acquired stores as the virtual and real fulfillment skeleton, and a two-way supply chain as the resource link.