According to recent UK media reports, JD.com is evaluating an acquisition of the long-established British online retail platform The Very Group for approximately £2 billion. Sources indicate that the US private equity giant Carlyle Group, which currently holds a controlling stake in the group, has formally initiated the sale process for this asset, with the overall valuation pegged at around £2 billion.

This is not JD.com's first foray into the UK retail market. Previously, the company had bid for the British electronics retail giant Currys in 2024 and engaged in talks to acquire Argos from Sainsbury's in 2025, but both attempts were ultimately abandoned. If the acquisition of The Very Group proceeds to a substantive stage, it would mark JD.com's third major merger and acquisition attempt in the UK market. From initial probes to successive moves, JD.com's penetration into the European market is transitioning from a trial phase into a new stage characterized by heavy asset transactions and localized operations. Regarding the quality of the target asset, The Very Group is not merely an online traffic-driven retailer. This century-old enterprise, with origins dating back to 1923, is currently one of the UK's largest integrated online retail platforms, operating under its two main brands, Very and Littlewoods. Relevant financial data shows that The Very Group generates annual revenue exceeding £2 billion, boasts approximately 4.4 million active customers, and achieved an EBITDA of £307 million for the 2025 fiscal year. For JD.com, the group's core competitive moats, beyond its supply chain of goods from nearly 2,000 brands, include its deeply integrated consumer financial services tied to its retail business—the group offers "buy now, pay later" and revolving credit loan services through its Key Pay platform. In the European market, where customer acquisition costs are high and local e-commerce competition is fierce, directly acquiring a platform with 4.4 million active buyers possessing inherent financial loyalty would allow JD.com to skip the lengthy cold-start cycle entirely. Simultaneously, The Very Group's local consumer financial compliance credentials and operational experience represent scarce assets that are difficult for Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms to independently build when expanding their payment ecosystems in the UK. The bid for The Very Group is a piece of JD.com's recently ambitious European strategy. At a notable sharing session a year ago, JD.com Group founder Richard Liu stated directly, "The most important part of JD.com's future business is its international business." At that time, Liu also outlined the specific direction, stating, "JD.com's international business will not follow the cross-border e-commerce model. My international business strategy is local e-commerce, building local teams, and sourcing locally." It is evident that, driven by a sense of crisis in the battle for market share, JD.com's approach in Europe has clearly moved away from the earlier exploratory phase of "asset-light overseas expansion" and shifted towards a hard-entry model of "acquiring local giants + building heavy-asset supply chains." Over the past year, JD.com's European layout has been exceptionally dense and assertive. In the second half of 2025, JD.com spent approximately €2.2 billion (around RMB 18.5 billion) to acquire an 85.2% stake in the German consumer electronics retail giant Ceconomy, thereby gaining control of two well-known European 3C brands, MediaMarkt and Saturn, along with thousands of physical stores. Building on this infrastructure, in March of this year, JD.com's cross-border e-commerce platform Joybuy officially launched in six European countries including the UK, Germany, and France, and activated self-operated overseas warehouses equipped with automation in Milton Keynes and Luton, UK. JD.com is attempting to replicate its domestically renowned "self-operated + self-built logistics" model in Europe. If acquiring Germany's Ceconomy solidified JD.com's foundational position in Europe's 3C and home appliances sector, then this current targeting of The Very Group represents a key step for JD.com to complete its "full-category supply chain" and "localized user mindshare" in the UK market. The Very Group's strengths are highly concentrated in fashion, beauty, home goods, and toys. This business structure aligns closely with JD.com's strategic imperative in recent years to shed its label as a "pure 3C and digital platform" and aggressively develop the high-margin fashion industry. JD.com's ambitions in the fashion and luxury sectors have been brewing for some time. In recent years, Zhang Zetian, serving as JD.com's fashion brand expansion advisor, has frequently appeared in international fashion social circles, acting as JD.com's overseas "investment attraction ambassador." From her appearance at the Cannes dinner in 2023 to boost the fashion and luxury business, to her high-profile attendance at Paris Fashion Week in an official advisory capacity this March, where she sat in the front row at renowned designer Uma Wang's show and interacted with top fashion media executives from Vogue, among others, this series of public moves reflects JD.com's commercial intent to continuously signal its brand upgrade to European luxury groups and the fashion industry. Should JD.com successfully bring The Very Group under its wing, it could not only rapidly strengthen its influence in the European fashion supply chain but also leverage the platform's rich local mid-to-high-end fashion resources to bolster its domestic main site's apparel and beauty business, creating two-way synergy between domestic and international markets. Despite the clear strategic logic, the acquisition and operation of cross-border retail assets still present severe objective challenges for JD.com. The difficulty of integrating cross-border mergers and acquisitions has never been trivial. The Very Group is a century-old traditional British retailer. Its corporate culture and organizational structure inherently clash with the Chinese internet giant's business model characterized by "high turnover and strong execution." In previous cases of Chinese companies' overseas acquisitions, integration failures due to cultural conflicts have not been uncommon. Furthermore, The Very Group heavily relies on its consumer finance business. Against the current macroeconomic backdrop of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority increasingly tightening regulations on "buy now, pay later" services, compliance costs and bad debt risks are also rising implicitly. Overall, JD.com's £2 billion evaluation for acquiring The Very Group represents another strategic offensive following its repeated probes in the UK market. This fully reflects the urgency and firm resolve with which JD.com is seeking a second growth curve overseas amidst the fierce competition in the domestic e-commerce market. However, in the mature and highly competitive European market, acquiring heavy assets is merely obtaining an entry ticket. The true core determinant of whether this overseas campaign can break through lies in how effectively JD.com can integrate a multi-billion-pound local retail system with its own digital supply chain.