By Kathy Chu
Consumer-products giant Unilever PLC is expanding its e-commerce
presence in China to keep pace with the growing number of consumers
buying shampoo and deodorant online.
On Monday, Unilever announced the opening of a store on JD.com's
cross-border e-commerce platform to sell its Ponds, Dove and
Vaseline brands, as well as offer for the first time in China some
Lux shampoo products that are best sellers in Japan.
Unilever already has storefronts on JD.com's direct-sales site
as well as on Tmall, operated by JD.com rival Alibaba Group Holding
Ltd. The company's latest foray into Chinese e-commerce focuses on
JD Worldwide, a platform for companies to sell goods as imports,
meaning the wares don't have to go through a lengthy registration
process to be marketed in China.
The new store, which opens during a month of deep discounting on
JD.com tied to the e-commerce platform's June 18 anniversary, is
expected to provide Unilever with an avenue to test new offerings
online in China.
"If brands sell very well, we will import them in bulk," and
then sell them on other e-commerce platforms in China, said Andy
Li, director of Unilever's China e-commerce business.
Unilever's sales on JD.com more than tripled last year, a faster
growth rate than on Tmall, Mr. Li said. Unilever's online sales
total more than 1 billion yuan ($161 million) a year in China.
Unilever, like others in the consumer-goods industry, has
increasingly relied on emerging markets to drive the company's
growth but has struggled to adapt to the migration of Chinese
consumers to online shopping.
Unilever's China sales plunged in the second half of last year,
which the company attributed to a slowing Chinese economy and a
pullback in consumer spending. Retailing trends in China also
suggest Unilever was among several Western companies that
overestimated growth in brick-and-mortar sales.
Mr. Li said he believes Unilever has been ahead of many of its
peers in the consumer-goods space in leveraging e-commerce in China
to boost sales.
"Everybody is having this situation with how to balance online
and offline," said Mr. Li, noting that a challenge is to accurately
forecast online demand for Unilever's products.
Write to Kathy Chu at kathy.chu@wsj.com
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