Everything Starts Small

Everybody that devote their life to business field most likely knows about big companies like Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard or Amazon. These big companies start their business from a garage. Yes, a simple homey garage. As a starter for this article, I want to say that everything starts small. Even for big guys like them.

Even for us, human. Human start from learning from a simple leg. They start to crawl. Stand up, and then learn to walk. After they master those basic skills, they start to run, jump, even back-flip for some people with kinesthetic ability. I will say it again, everything starts small.

Also, every small thing we started will encounter obstacles. We failed, we fall, but strive to become a successful human being. Life is hard, they said. Science and willingness to be stronger are likely the most characters we have to keep in mind.

Meet Jingdong

I want to tell you about one company from China. We can learn many things from this company, especially for you who want to start their small business website. This company named JingDong. Back in July 1998, a guy named Liu Qiangdong (a.k.a. Richard Liu) started this JingDong Company. The company was first named JingDong Century Trading Co., Ltd. They sell magneto-optical in Beijing China.

In January 2004, He went online and started his company's B2C site. The name is jdlaser.com. After 3 years running the business, in June 2007, the company began using the domain name 360buy.com. The company also changed its name to Jingdong Mall. The company changed their name again in March 2013 to JD.com, still with their identity as e-commerce business website.

Back in 2017, they achieved a sales record of US$ 19.1 billion in 2017 Singles' Day. This proves us that it takes 19 years to build a huge company like this e-commerce website. They even expand his website to Russia and also Worldwide. They compete with other big company in China like ******* Group that also run their e-commerce website, specific in selling manufacture product.

So what we can learn about this company? How they survived the competition and start to develop its brand and entice their website to the citizen of the world? What kind of strategy that they used? There is one thing, I think this is the old, yet gold business strategy to make the company survived and even make the competitors aware of their existence.

Originality

Differentiation. Originality. I always love to tell and discuss this awesome topic. With the broad competition before our eyes, we can survive and strive to the top with maintaining our originality. Just like Apple who made them as exclusive, innovative, and made-super-expensive-products company. Amazon as the e-commerce website for books. And other companies that carve their identity to its customers.

As well as Jingdong. Their try to tell the people that they are the biggest company to sell electronic products with its luxury brand. This company is successful to make the customers think about JD as the e-commerce website that provides them lux, yet original products. They also started their partnership with Farfetch to complete its strategy in June 2017. Mr. Richard invested US$397 million for this partnership.

And now, they claim themselves as the world's leading company in high tech and AI delivery system through drones, autonomous technology, and robots. They also possess the largest drone delivery system, infrastructure, and capability in the world. Finally, in March 2014, JD provided its customers same-day delivery system in 43 cities under Jingdong's 211 program 211 and next-day delivery in another 256 cities across China. And who knows, maybe they will spread its autonomous delivery system across the country and make more robots to do so. Well, I will say that this is a tremendous progress in 19 years running their business, as we back in 1998.

Jingdong to Indonesia

But obviously, it's not enough. In November 2015, Jingdong company also start to expand his wing and come to Indonesia. Since Indonesia is one of the most prospective countries to gain customers, they made JingDong Indonesia and named its domain as JD.ID. Let's take the statistic first. I shared this statistic in my last article.

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This provides us a magnificent information about the growth of m-commerce shoppers. JD learn about this and not just develop its e-commerce website, but also their mobile application. Since the growth of mobile phone usage in Indonesia increasing, they found this as an opportunity and start to run their Android and iOS app.

In 2017, Indonesia provides market shares that worth almost 200 trillion Rupiah. But with the competitors that already there, how will they win or at least make a brand awareness about their website and mobile apps? Believe it or not, they also use the differentiation strategy to make the customers learn about their existence.

Developing Identity

When the other e-commerce website just the simple online transaction to sellers and customers without considering about the originality of the products, Jingdong started developing its identity as the e-commerce website that provides the customer with only new and original products. They don't sell second or fake products to the customer and they prove it with the marvelous system based on customers satisfaction.

This is a perfect turn point to make other competitors aware that they are competing with new (but old as well) competitor. A powerful competitor with its awesome identity. Ready to serve the customers the lux, yet new and original products.

Inspiration and Lesson

What we should learn about them is the awareness of opportunity, the development of identity and their years of experience to build an e-commerce website. From small business website to huge e-commerce website with its branch in Russia and Indonesia.

To all small business website that wants to thrive their business, we can learn to find our identity, the core value of our small business website and promote it to prospective customers. But I will not say that it is easy. Even if you already know what kind of originality that you want to maintain, you still have lots of homework to do. You have to be specific about your market shares, what kind of products which you provided, what type of marketing strategy you choose for your small business website, and tons of other tasks ahead. But who knows you will be the next huge e-commerce website and sit right next to Jingdong or Amazon? Time will tell us.

To any small business website out there, in my next article, I want to discuss what best website that we have in our 2017. And next week, I want to share about how to make an innovative environment in your company as I promised before. See you next time!