JD.com 'softens' image for female customers

JD.com, a leading Chinese B2C online marketplace, hosted its first fashion show on Thursday, showcasing some of its e-retailers' collections for 2014 Spring and Summer.

The company, which has built its e-commerce empire through selling consumer electronics, has put the "softening" of its image at the top of its agenda, said Kate Kui, vice-president of JD.com, who is in charge of the company's open platform business.

Kui said about half JD.com's registered users are female so it is high time for the online platform to change its image and offer more choice to female customers.

Apart from bringing in more high-end fashion brands, the company is making efforts to tweak the design of its website to make it "softer".

Although the majority of JD.com's business comes from its self-operated online marketplace, the company has since 2010 offered an open platform on which third-party retailers can do business.

Roughly 30,000 retailers have joined the open platform, about 12,000 of them in the garment industry, the company said. JD.com said earlier that about half of its turnover in 2016 is expected to come from the open platform.