China’s biggest retailer by revenue – JD.com – has test-launched a UK e-commerce site offering an extensive range of groceries, and commenced a major recruitment drive for “category superstars” ahead of a full launch later this year.
Called Joybuy, the site boasts full ranges of ambient and frozen foods, household, baby, beverages, personal care, beauty, health, pet, and nicotine products from major brands. Hundreds of Morrisons own-label goods are also available across several categories. At present, shopping the site is only open to consumers in certain London postcodes, but the company promises there are “more cities coming soon”.
A spokeswoman for JD.com told The Grocer Joybuy was “currently in a testing phase of its self-operated online retail business model” with a plan “for an official launch of the Joybuy platform by the end of 2025”.
JD.com – also known as Jingdong – serves nearly 600 million customers globally, it says, and operates the largest fulfilment infrastructure of any e-commerce company in China, enabling 90% of retail orders to be delivered within the same or next day.
The blurb on the UK Joybuy website states it too offers same-day and next-day delivery across the UK, with a service that “combines speed, reliability, and affordability to meet the needs of modern shoppers”.
The company has been quietly building a highly experienced team of UK grocery buyers and category chiefs in recent months.
Matthew Nobbs, former commercial director for rapid grocery player Gorillas, director of trading for Holland & Barrett and senior buying director for Lidl UK, was named as JD.com UK chief merchandise officer in February. Nobbs said he was “getting ready to rumble in the UK for one of China’s biggest success stories” in a LinkedIn post this week.
Richard Thorn, a former online trading manager at Sainsbury’s and Asda account lead for PepsiCo, was appointed senior category manager for food & beverage in January, joining from TikTok Shop UK, where he was food and drink lead. Buyers have also been recruited from Ocado Retail, Amazon and Tesco.
The company is currently advertising for more than 40 London-based roles, including fmcg, baby, personal care and ambient category managers.
In recent years, JD.com has been growing its presence outside China, establishing warehouses in the Netherlands, Poland and France, and “active assets” in the UK, Germany, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Indonesia, with “plans to enter other overseas markets”.
Unlike other Chinese e-commerce giants that have arrived in the West, like Temu and Alibaba, it operates as a retailer, holding stock in its own warehouses, rather than with a marketplace model where goods are shipped directly from brands and manufacturers to consumers.
A job description for the role of VP of leasing UK states the successful candidate “will help grow a diversified and expanding logistics/industrial real estate portfolio in the UK and other parts of Europe” with responsibility to “execute the business plans for various logistics assets across the country”.
In January, Jingdong Retail (UK), a subsidiary of JD.com, began leasing a 278,000 sq ft former UPS warehouse in Dunstable. Its property arm, Jingdong Property, operates warehouses in Milton Keynes, Coventry and Preston.
JD.com had global annual turnover in excess of $157bn last year, and is the 47th biggest company in the world by revenue according to the Fortune 500 Global List, ahead of Kroger, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Nestlé, Meta and Target.
“JD.com’s operations in Europe are built on the same principles that define our success in China: delivering high-quality products at great prices, backed by fast and reliable delivery,” a spokeswoman for the company told The Grocer.
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