JD.com, the Chinese ecommerce giant founded by billionaire Richard Liu, will open its first office in Australia this month as it steps up expansion plans in the region and seeks to challenge Amazon’s dominance of the booming online retail market in the western world. The Beijing-based company which sells Australian food, dairy products, vitamins and cosmetics to millions of Chinese consumers, will announce on Thursday it is opening its Australian and New Zealand headquarters in Melbourne’s Collins Street on February 27. It follows a similar move by Chinese rival Alibaba last year and is further evidence China’s ecommerce giants are serious about accelerating their Australian sales. The initial investment in Melbourne will be small, with a handful of staff, including “business development officers” who will be looking to sign up small to medium Australian companies to the JD.com platform. JD.com and Jack Ma’s Alibaba dominate ecommerce in China. Nasdaq-listed JD.com, which made its name selling home appliances, now has 266 million active users. Tencent, which owns the popular Chinese social network platform WeChat, is a major shareholder. The company chose Melbourne over Sydney for the office because of the city’s access to local suppliers, a 24-hour shipping port and local government support. JD.com this week flagged plans to take on Amazon in Europe by 2019 and expand into the United States. Mr Liu told the Financial Times he planned to spend at least €1bn ($1.57 billion) over two years to build its logistics network in France. The arrival of another ecommerce player in Australia will fuel concern by local retailers about more competition, although JD.com and Alibaba are not targeting Australian customers in the short term. Source: www.afr.com.
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