On May 10th, Yunji, a social e-commerce unicorn, held a conference in Hangzhou with its core partners to deepen strategic cooperation. More than 20 logistics service providers and over 100 renowned and innovative brands from home and abroad signed strategic cooperation agreement with Yunji during the conference.

To our knowledge, since its establishment in May 2015, Yunji has witnessed explosive growth for two years running, with annual sales increasing more than 400%. So far, there are over 4 million store owners and 30 million VIP customers on the Yunji platform. Not long ago, on April 23, Yunji announced closing a $120 million Series B round of financing.

Yunji’s strategic cooperation with a hundred brands and more than 20 logistics service providers indicates that those brands and logistic companies take a bullish view of the social e-commerce industry, and that that Yunji, an industry leader, is determined to upgrade its supply chain and smart logistics system in an all-round way.

● Social e-commerce model attracts a hundred brands to become strategic partners

Hong Kai, Vice President of E-commerce Vertical of Nielsen, a world-renowned market research company, attended the conference and delivered a speech Retail Evolution Theory: Changes and Opportunities in the New Era of Retail Industry. “In the Information age, consumers have become the explorers of information instead of mere recipients. Consumers experience is especially important during the retail revolution.” In his speech, Hong Kai pointed out that consumer demand should be the starting point of sales. The retail business model is no longer ubiquitous; instead it has become increasingly composite and integrated.

Yunji, which was founded three years ago, is just such a social e-commerce company with an innovative retail model. It integrates resources such as commodity, logistics, IT and customer service, and makes them available to store owners through cloud sharing. Store owners only need to publicize on social networks. By effectively linking their products to consumers, crowds of consumers and stacks of orders will follow. Social e-commerce model is different from the traditional one. It is based on trust among people, allowing people to pass information and finish transactions through their social relationship, and connecting consumers and products in a low-cost and high-efficiency way.

“Social e-commerce model, which is best represented by Yunji, will bring three major changes to brand owners.” Ding Jie, global partner of Bain & Company, a global strategy consulting firm, said that the “customer-oriented” operation model based on social relationship has transformed the traditional retail model in three ways: R&D, marketing and sales. “The tracking of consumption trend on the platform, which is supported by data, gives real-time feedback on R&D, production and supply chain of a brand; the word-of-mouth influence of social e-commerce model links products and consumer demands precisely and efficiently; and by streamlining brand-to-consumer transaction, costs will be reduced.”

Danone, a multinational food giant, was among those brands that signed the strategic agreement with Yunji on the spot. Zhou Zhigang, vice president of Danone’s Early Life Nutrition Division, revealed that his division had signed a cooperation agreement with Yunji in Pudong, Shanghai on March 21. The first batch of Early Life Nutrition products, including Aptamil and Nutrilon milk powder, saw a 12 million yuan of sales volume within half a day after it appeared on the Yunji platform, hitting a new record high.

As a company enjoying a global reputation for its mother-infant products, Danone’s Early Life Nutrition Division boasts a number of well-known brands which can be found in more than 130 countries and regions around the world. Among them, Aptamil and Nutrilon brands are especially popular among Chinese mothers. However, currently there are numerous mother-infant products with multiple sales channels and varied quality standards. Due to low market entry requirement and long procurement chain, consumer experiences are sometimes unsatisfactory. To solve this problem, Yunji adopts a procurement model which carefully selects high-quality products around the world, cooperates with Danone’s Early Life Nutrition Division in supply and sales, and provides customers with safe and reliable milk powder.

Among the one hundred brands that signed strategic agreement with Yunji, there are foreign big-names such as Danone, Shengmu, LG, LOVO, Johnson & Johnson, etc.; and there are time-honored Chinese brands such as Tong Ren Tang, Hu Qing Yu Tang, and Wu Fang Zhai. Besides, you can also find a number of cutting-edge innovative brands such as MR.ING and Qing Guniang. These brands have full confidence in the great potential of social e-commerce. 

● Turn "Made in China" into "Brand of China”

In April 2017, the State Council approved setting up Chinese Brands Day on May 10 in order to promote well-known domestic brands and popularize independent brands. This year witnesses the second Chinese Brands Day, during which Yunji established cooperation with a multiple of Chinese brands. The day is especially meaningful for Yunji, now three-years old.

“Excellent Chinese brands meet the changing demands of customers through continuous innovation of products and services. These brands gradually accumulate popularity and trust among consumers, thus employing premium pricing and building a competitive edge.” Xiao Shanglue, founder and CEO of Yunji, believes that brands and social e-commerce represented by Yunji are connected by trust and recognition.

Through word-of-mouth recommendation, Yunji provides a new solution for tens of thousands of customers to buy and sell global products and achieve consumption upgrades in the social e-commerce era. It now enjoys reputations such as “Social E-commerce Unicorn” and “Global Boutique Supermarket”.

At the end of last year, Yunji announced the launch of “Three 500s” strategy, i.e. selecting 500 major brands, 500 innovative brands and 500 credible factories, aiming to incubate innovative brands and turn “Made in China” into “Brand of China”.

Hu Jianjian, COO of Yunji, revealed at the conference that this year, Yunji will launch a new strategy “Quality Manufacturing 500”. This is a product certification system and is more advanced than those currently adopted by the industry. This customer-oriented system evaluates comprehensively from product selection to product design and quality control, ensuring the quality of supply chain and helping premium brands to upgrade. This full-link quality control system not only sets higher benchmark for the industry, but also selects credible manufacturers, helps customers find high-quality products, and improves product quality from all respects. In addition, based on strict control of the supply chain, Yunji aims to make the "Quality Manufacturing 500" the best recognized quality certification system in the industry.

Thanks to the strict quality control, Hu Jianjian said, Yunji's overall refund rate in Q1 was 1.13%, far lower than that of traditional e-commerce businesses.

● Yunji builds a smart shipping system to ensure “no remote areas in China”

At the May 10th conference, Yunji not only sighed strategic cooperation agreement with over 100 brands, but also with more than 20 logistics service providers including SF Express, YundaEx, EMS, JD Logistics and Best Express, aiming to comprehensively upgrade its smart logistics system.

Hao Huan, co-founder and CTO of Yunji, revealed at the conference that Yunji will focus on a new smart shipping system and will build a full-link logistics system incorporating suppliers, collection warehouses, pre-stored warehouses and customers.

According to Hao Huan, for traditional shipping, brand owners need to choose a logistics service provider and solve abnormal situations all on their own, often ending up in delayed delivery or inconsistency between plan and actual delivery. But with Yunji's smart shipping system, brand owners can work with Yunji and make a delivery plan in advance, track the actual daily delivery quantity and compare it with the plan, broadcast their daily progress, and check delivery, transportation, reservation, and warehousing in real time.

Take a Guangzhou-based brand Adolph as an example. What the company needs to do is just to ship products to collection warehouses located in Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an, Langfang, Hangzhou, and Urumqi. These products will then be delivered to hundreds of pre-stored warehouses nationwide through of Yunji's smart shipping system. Later products will be sent to consumers at low cost and high efficiency. Hao Huan said that Yunji's smart shipping system can achieve 100% of activity satisfaction rate and 99.93% of cargo intactness rate, and can reduce logistics cost by 3%-20%, all well above the industry average.

According to Hao Huan, the smart shipping system will be further improved in the future to meet more logistics demands apart from Yunji’s own needs. The system will be open to more brand owners to help them reduce logistics cost and reach more customers nationwide, and ensure that there is “no remote areas in China”.

Yunji’s medium-term goal for the year 2024 is to have 50 million individual store owners on the platform, create 5 million part-time job opportunities, send 50 packages per year to 200 million customers, achieve an annual turnover of above 1 trillion yuan, and build a world-class personal retail service platform.