The woman leading JD.com’s rise from online appliance seller to luxury fashion e-commerce giant
- Xia Ding, president of international fashion for China’s No. 2 e-commerce player, is looking to sign up more high-end brands
- To convince them she can point to the platform’s vision of ‘boundaryless retail’ that marries online, offline and virtual shopping
It started out selling consumer electronics online, but today, JD.com has a luxury fashion e-commerce portfolio to rival the likes of Yoox-Net-a-Porter and matchesfashion.com.
The No. 2 Chinese e-commerce company is courting on the one hand a group of luxury consumers among the biggest in the world, and on the other hand the high-end fashion brands that still haven’t opened an online boutique with it, or with any rival for that matter.
In her role as JD.com’s president of international fashion, one of Xia Ding’s many responsibilities is to present a convincing argument to those labels still not convinced they should sign up. She can point to a raft of hi-tech and innovative undertakings to make her case.
Ding joined JD.com early last year, with experience as a retail analyst travelling between the United States and China. Her first challenge at JD Fashion is probably the one most well-known to industry observers: developing and launching Toplife, a channel dedicated to setting high-end fashion brands apart from their mass-market counterparts.
The platform has since signed up a wide variety of brands, from niche French labels such as Perrin to recognised names such as Alexander McQueen and Saint Laurent, and now sells to 260 cities across China. Brands that join JD Fashion get access to “dust-free” warehouses and benefit from a white-glove delivery service, and protection against peddlers of counterfeit goods and third-party sellers – something JD.com prides itself on.
