Chinese internet giant launches attack on Italy

Chinese internet giant JD.com wants to expand to Italy: the Milan office would be the second European office in a short period of time for Alibaba‘s great rival.

Sights on Europe

The establishment of an office in Milan is another indicator of JD.com’s European expansion drift, as the company will almost certainly extend to even more European countries soon.  At the recent opening of the Paris office, the company already revealed they were searching for locations in Germany and the United Kingdom.

The Chinese webshop was founded in 1998 and has a worth of nearly 47 billion euros on the stock exchange. JD.com has more than 150,000 employees worldwide. Most important investors of the online store include American supermarket chain Walmart (11%) and technology companies Tencent and Google. To be allowed to participate in the international expansion, Google already invested 550 million dollars (480 million euros) in the company. On the home market, the online retailer provides mainly products such as smartphones, laptops, cosmetics, food and airline tickets.

By concentrating on the European market JD.com poaches on Amazon’s territory, currently the market leader. Unlike Amazon, JD.com controls their own logistics network, which means that the Chinese online store has to build a network of warehouses in Europe. Only for the last mile itself, the company would like to work together with local partners.