JD.com eyes the established online retail platform The Very Group, returning to the UK market

This is not the first time JD.com has set its sights on the UK retail market. Previously, JD.com bid for UK electronics retail giant Currys in 2024 and negotiated with Sainsbury's to acquire Argos in 2025, but both attempts were ultimately abandoned.

If the acquisition of The Very Group advances into a substantive phase, it will mark JD.com's third large-scale M&A attempt in the UK market. From probing the market to multiple concrete moves, JD.com's presence in Europe is shifting from an exploratory phase to a new stage of heavy asset transactions and localized operations.

Regarding asset quality, The Very Group is far from a simple online traffic retailer. This well-established business traces its history back to 1923 and is now one of the largest integrated online retail platforms in the UK, operating its flagship brands Very and Littlewoods.

Financial data shows that The Very Group generates annual revenues of over £2 billion, has about 4.4 million active customers, and reached an EBITDA of £307 million in fiscal year 2025.

For JD.com, The Very Group's core moat lies not only in its supply chain with nearly 2,000 brands, but also in its deeply integrated consumer finance services—the group offers "buy now pay later" and revolving credit loan products via its Key Pay platform.

In the fiercely competitive European market, where customer acquisition costs are high, directly acquiring a platform with 4.4 million active buyers already engaged with its financial services would enable JD.com to bypass the long cold-start phase typically required.

Moreover, The Very Group's compliance qualifications and operational expertise in consumer finance are rare assets that Chinese cross-border e-commerce players would find difficult to replicate on their own in the UK’s payment ecosystem.

Bidding for The Very Group is part of JD.com’s broader European strategy recently.

At a famous sharing session a year ago, JD.com founder Richard Liu Qiangdong stated bluntly: “In the future, JD.com’s most important business will be international business.”

At the time, Liu also pointed out a specific direction, saying, “JD.com’s international business will not follow the cross-border e-commerce model. My strategy for international business is to do local e-commerce, hire local teams, and conduct local procurement.”

Driven by a sense of crisis brought by saturated competition, JD.com’s approach in Europe has clearly shifted away from the early years of asset-light expansion abroad, moving instead toward aggressive “acquire local giants + build heavy-asset supply chains” tactics.

Over the past year, JD.com’s European expansion has been extremely intensive and assertive.

In the second half of 2025, JD.com spent approximately €2.2 billion (about RMB 18.5 billion) to acquire an 85.2% stake in German consumer electronics giant Ceconomy, bringing renowned 3C brands MediaMarkt and Saturn, along with thousands of brick-and-mortar stores across Europe, under its umbrella in one move.

With this infrastructural foundation, in March this year, JD.com’s cross-border e-commerce platform Joybuy officially launched in six European countries including the UK, Germany, and France, and opened self-operated overseas warehouses equipped with automated facilities in Milton Keynes and Luton, UK.

JD.com is striving to replicate its highly regarded “self-operated + self-built logistics” model from China to Europe. If acquiring Ceconomy consolidated JD.com’s core 3C and home appliance territory in Europe, then targeting The Very Group is a key move to complete its “all-category supply chain” and “localized user engagement” in the UK market.

The Very Group’s strength lies in highly focused categories such as fashion, beauty, home, and toys. This business structure perfectly aligns with JD.com’s recent push to shed its “pure 3C electronics platform” image and pivot towards high-margin fashion sectors.

JD.com’s ambitions in the fashion and luxury sectors have been brewing for years.

In recent years, Zhang Zetian, JD.com’s fashion brand expansion advisor, has frequently appeared in international fashion social circles, acting as JD.com’s “brand ambassador” overseas.

From attending the Cannes gala in 2023 to support the fashion and luxury business, to making a high-profile appearance as an official advisor at Paris Fashion Week in March this year—sitting front row at designer Uma Wang’s show and networking with senior executives from Vogue and other top fashion media—her series of public appearances signals JD.com’s ongoing efforts to communicate its brand upgrade ambitions to European luxury groups and the fashion industry.

If JD.com successfully acquires The Very Group, it would quickly strengthen its bargaining power in the European fashion supply chain and leverage the group’s abundant local mid-to-high-end fashion resources to boost JD.com's main-site apparel and beauty business in China, fostering genuine cross-market synergy.

Despite this clear strategic logic, the acquisition and operation of cross-border retail assets still pose formidable challenges for JD.com. Integration of multinational acquisitions is notoriously difficult.

The Very Group is a century-old traditional British retailer with a company culture, organizational structure, and business model vastly different from the high-velocity, highly-executive style of Chinese internet giants. In previous cases of Chinese enterprises expanding abroad, integration failures due to culture clash were not uncommon.

Additionally, The Very Group is highly dependent on its consumer finance business. In the current macro environment, as the UK Financial Conduct Authority tightens regulations on “buy now pay later” products, compliance costs and bad debt risks are subtly increasing.

Overall, JD.com’s £2 billion evaluation for acquiring The Very Group is another strategic assault after several prior attempts in the UK market. This fully reflects JD.com’s urgency and determination to find a second growth curve overseas amid intense competition in China’s domestic e-commerce arena.

However, in the mature and fiercely contested European market, acquiring heavy assets is only a ticket to entry. The real test will be how JD.com can genuinely integrate the billion-pound local retail system with its digital supply chain, which will ultimately determine whether its overseas venture can break through.