JD.com pledges to make French wines more affordable with new shop

Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com has launched an online shop in time for Spring Festival that aims to offer top French wines to consumers at lower prices via direct shipping deals.

The shop, named ‘French Mall’, features French wines, as well as French foods, cosmetics and accessories. All products offered were ‘directly purchased, transported and distributed’ by JD.com, so as to cut costs and ‘significantly reduce the price’, according to the company.

The new initiative is expected to boost the company’s French wine sales from 4m bottles in 2014 to 7.5m in 2015, said JD.com, which is one of China’s biggest online retailers.

French wines still account for a third of China’s total wine imports, but shipments dropped in both volume and value in 2014, according to customs figures – suggesting government austerity measures have continued to bite.

JD.com’s move coincides with rising demand among non-government consumers for more affordable quality wines.

‘In France, a bottle of wine worth 10 euros (70 RMB) can be sold at around 400 RMB (56 euros) in China after changing hands several times,’ Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD.com, was quoted as telling China’s Xinhua news agency.

If imported directly by JD.com, ‘the same wine will be sold at only 175 RMB (25 euros) in the French Mall’, he said.

The French government has been working closely with JD.com on the new initiative. Senator Jean-Claude Lenoir, president of the Senate Committee on Economic Affairs of France, encouraged French companies to ‘help French products reach tens of millions of Chinese families’.

JD.com’s main consumers are the ‘white-collar workers’ between 25-35 years old, according to a research conducted by the company.

JD.com debuted on the Nasdaq in May 2014, and is due to announce its 2014 financial result on 3rd March.