JD.com’s 618 Grand Promotion kicks off

JD.com officially launched its 618 Grand Promotion, the largest mid-year shopping festival in China, yesterday (31 May) – with the first on-demand delivery through JD Shop Now arriving at the customer’s doorstep within nine minutes.

In a statement summarising the launch performance, JD.com said that over 23% more brands achieved the RMB 100-million-yuan sales milestone within the first ten minutes compared to the previous year and 60% of newly onboarded merchants soared past their daily average sales volume for May.

This year’s JD 618 Grand Promotion marks the 20th birthday for JD.com and offers more than ten times the number of items as those featured during the 10-billion-yuan discount programme, which launched in March.

JD.com also flagged up the launch day’s success in terms of parcel delivery performance. According to the company: “Within the first ten minutes of the promotion’s launch, customers in over 700 counties and cities throughout the country received their orders. The first on-demand delivery through JD Shop Now arrived at a customer’s doorstep in Changsha city within just nine minutes.”