Unilever partners with JD.com to boost sales in China

Unilever has sealed partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com to boost reach across China, according to reports.

There have been reports about the partnership recently and The Drum published the news yesterday. Lipton, Vaseline, Clear, Lux and OMO, all are Unilever brands, will use JD.com’s logistics network to distribute goods between warehouses and brick and mortar retail stores.

The deal will enable Unilever to leverage the logistics expertise from JD.com’s online business for its mostly offline sales channels in China and will enhance its localisation techniques. Prior to the partnership, Unilever worked with logistic companies such as DHL for its China distribution, but it has been struggling to connect with Chinese consumers due to a lack of local knowledge.

For JD.com, the deal is the latest in a string of initiatives by JD.com as part of its retail as a service (RaaS) strategy, aiming to provide technology and infrastructure services to companies outside of its own e-commerce platforms. It signed a similar deal with French company Danone last year and also works with German dairy company Oldenburger to provide warehousing, transportation and inventory management software.

Reuters reported the partnership before. From the report, the management of Unilever said JD.com would be able to help bring the companies’ most popular products to the most hard-to-reach communities in China, securely and quickly.