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Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com's partnership with American retail corporation Wal-Mart is proving successful — leaving even large competitors like Amazon in its wake — according to JD.com International President Winston Cheng.
"We're integrating with Wal-Mart in a much tighter partnership, which ... potentially, Amazon might do with Whole Foods,but for us, we've already started on this strategy over a year ago with Wal-Mart."
Cheng told CNBC.
JD.com is China's number two e-commerce player, ranked behind Alibaba. In 2016, the Chinese firm brought over Wal-Mart's e-commerce operations. Since then, both companies have been working to integrate their platforms, inventories and customer resources in China.
Chinese shoppers are now able to purchase U.S.-made products from Wal-Mart stores from JD's online platform directly. JD.com is offering customers over 1,700 of the U.S. firm's most popular items from its retail stores in China, reports said.
According to Cheng, the strategic partnership is bringing about significant benefits to both the companies.
"We bring, clearly, the online traffic to Wal-Mart," said Cheng. Furthermore, Wal-Mart is "offering space in their stores for our inventory ... so we have expanded our fulfillment capabilities as a result of that as well," he said, adding that the company also looks forward to selling "a tremendous number of quality imported products not previously widely available in China through Walmart and Sam's Club."
According to Cheng, JD.com's success in reaching consumers can be attributed in part to China's highly-developed e-commerce market.
Wal-Mart is not JD.com's only big-name collaborator. China tech firm Tencent also formed a deal with the e-commerce giant at the end of 2014, giving JD.com a headline slot on Tencent's highly-popular WeChat mobile app.
"With the Tencent partnership, we bring a lot of the mobile traffic also to our customers," Cheng said. "And with the Wal-Mart partnership, it's a fully-integrated online traffic to online e-commerce to offline retail strategy," he added.
By leveraging its online customers, and integrating the offline inventory management for both companies, JD.com is able to deliver items much faster to consumers, Cheng said, adding that the delivery time is now "about 30 minutes."
Amazon is currently expanding Prime Now, its one- and two-hour express delivery service that is currently available in over 30 U.S. cities. The American tech giant launched Prime Now in Singapore at the end of July in its first foray into the Southeast Asian market.
(CNBC)
