THE NEW INCARNATION OF JD’S JOYBUY

After Google invested $550 million in JD in June 2018, Chinese e-commerce giant JD launched a shop called Joybuy on the Google Express shopping site. Joy is a reference to the name of JD's mascot dog.

Joybuy offered simple consumer electronics by little-known brands, mostly priced under $100. JD later set up standalone websites in English (joybuy.com), Russian (joybuy.ru) and Spanish (joybuy.es).

The site seemingly wasn’t a success: at the end of November 2021, Jiemian reported how JD had informed the merchants selling on the platform that it was ‘upgrading’ Joybuy to a cross-border B2B platform, comparable to alibaba.com (Alibaba’s international B2B website).

  The new B2B site was finally launched on June 18th 2022. It was said to service ‘more than 110 countries and regions with a focus on Southeast Asian and North American markets.’ Just a few months later, on November 4th, JD announced another ‘business upgrade’ of Joybuy and that trading on the site had stopped, as reported by Pandaily.

In November 2022, the Joybuy website showed that it was ‘under maintenance’, which in China normally means that a business is shutting down. 😉 For a long time, the joybuy.com domain pointed to global.jd.com.

Remarkably enough, a B2C marketplace called joybuyselection.com remained online. More recently, it displayed an error message and a link that sent you back to whatever webpage you came from. Joybuy Selection also launched a Facebook page in November 2021. It has 57 followers and stopped posting after January 3rd, 2022.

A US website, joy-buy-us.com, also remained online for some time but now shows an error message and a link to Shopify.

And then, in February 2025 ... Joybuy quietly reincarnated in the UK. This new (sixth?) incarnation is again a B2C website that shares many similarities with Ochama, another B2C platform by JD in the European market.

Joybuy also launched Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Linktree pages.

The website states: "As jd.com’s European full-category online retail brand, Joybuy is committed to making shopping faster, more convenient, and more affordable for customers across the UK. Leveraging our self-operated logistics network, we provide same-day and next-day delivery nationwide, along with 30-minute Quick Commerce services in select areas of London. Our mission is to enhance the online shopping experience with a broad selection of quality products and exceptional service."

Notice the 'European online retail brand'? The website seems set up so that more countries can be added later. Will JD have a multi-brand strategy with this new B2C attempt, or are we witnessing a future rebranding of Ochama, which has also launched quick commerce (instant retail) in Amsterdam?

Watch this space.