KOTRA headquarters in Seoul [KOTRA]
KOTRA headquarters in Seoul [KOTRA]

JD.com, China's largest e-commerce company, has established a purchasing base in Korea and is moving to buy Korean consumer goods directly — bypassing intermediary distributors — in categories including cosmetics, food and fashion. The company signed import contracts worth $1.5 million with nine Korean firms at its first event here.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said Wednesday they hosted a "JD.com Direct Purchase Listing Briefing and Consultation" at KOTRA's Seoul headquarters, inviting a buying delegation from JD Group.

To identify Korean consumer goods, JD established a dedicated sourcing subsidiary in Korea on June 18. The unit is designed to find and purchase Korean products targeting Chinese consumers directly on the ground.

The 12-member buying delegation that visited Korea included JD Vice Chairman and Cross-Border President Vincent Yang and Vice President and Cross-Border General Manager Chen Cheng. The group included a number of senior decision-makers with actual purchasing authority.

More than 200 Korean consumer goods companies attended the product listing briefing. Of those, 54 firms pre-selected by JD and KOTRA held one-on-one consultations with JD's merchandise planners by product category.

Contracts were also signed on the spot. JD agreed to import products worth a combined $1.5 million from nine Korean consumer goods companies by year's end.

Fashion products from Recklowe will be purchased directly by JD, which has opened a flagship store it operates on JD.com. Eland's jewelry brand LLOYD is also entering the Chinese market through the direct-purchase model.

Kim Min-hwa, head of JD.com Korea, said sales of Korean consumer goods on JD.com have continued to grow thanks to their quality and marketability. "JD has already established a logistics subsidiary in Korea offering various solutions including import and export, bonded warehousing and individual shipments," Kim said. "With this new purchasing office in place, we want to work with KOTRA to identify and export even more outstanding Korean consumer goods companies."

For Korean companies, a key advantage is the ability to deal directly with a major platform without going through local vendors in China. When JD purchases products directly, companies can also reduce some of the operational burden involved in entering the Chinese market — including inventory management, logistics and payment processing.

Kim Seong-jun, chief executive of Recklowe, said entering JD directly has resolved logistics, payment and other related challenges in one go. "For small and medium-sized enterprises, exporting is not easy even when the product is competitive," he said.

Eland's LLOYD said JD's direct purchasing and operation of an official brand store has significantly reduced the operational burden of entering the Chinese market, covering inventory, logistics and payments. "We will do our best to offer quality products at reasonable prices to customers using the JD platform," the company said.

The growing share of online sales in China's consumer market is also seen as an opportunity for Korean consumer goods companies. According to KOTRA, online retail's share of China's goods and services market rose from about 30 percent in 2020 to more than 44 percent in the first half of this year.

Korean consumer goods exports to China are also rebounding. Exports of five major consumer goods categories — cosmetics, food, fashion apparel, household goods and pharmaceuticals — totaled $3.44 billion in the first half of this year, up 8.7 percent from $3.16 billion in the same period last year.

Following the event, JD plans to expand its dedicated Korean consumer goods section on JD.com and work with KOTRA to identify additional companies for listing.

JD has also been expanding its global footprint. The company rose to 41st place in the 2026 Fortune Global 500, released last month, improving on its previous ranking and appearing on the list for 11 consecutive years — the highest ranking among private companies on the Chinese mainland.

Kang Gyeong-seong, president of KOTRA, said collaboration with major local platforms is essential for effectively entering a Chinese market evolving through digitalization, urbanization and aging. "We will do our utmost to support Korean consumer goods companies in partnering with major retail networks in each country so they can enter overseas markets more effectively," he said.


kwater@heraldcorp.com