(Yicai Global) May 30 -- JD Live, a core part of JD.Com, has reached an agreement to work with famed anchor Luo Yonghao’s live-streaming studio Make Friends as China’s largest online retailer gears up for the mid-year 618 Shopping Festival.

According to JD.Com, Luo will host three live-streaming events: one tomorrow as well as on June 3 and 17. To draw attention to Make Friends, the platform said it is offering a 38.2 percent discount on a Hangzhou-based property at tomorrow’s event.

Make Friends announced its entry onto Taobao Live, part of Alibaba’s online retail platform Taobao, last October. Its total sale through Taobao Live had exceeded CNY120 million (USD17 million) as of April 1 this year.

During the 618 Shopping Event in 2020, JD.Com said JD Live was planning to create its own live-streaming ecology. But some vendors believe that JD Live is more suited to services. One told Yicai Global that it had hired staff for live-streams on JD.Com for a long time, not to sell goods but to answer questions and serve users.

Beijing-based JD.Com hopes to improve user loyalty and sales through a professional live broadcast organization and make long-term investments in live-streaming, according to Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting.

At present, the growth rate of e-commerce live-streaming in China has been much faster than that of traditional e-commerce.

E-commerce gross merchandise volume on Kuaishou, a leading content community and social platform in China, rose 28 percent to 224.8 billion (USD31.7 billion) in the first quarter from a year earlier. Revenue from other services, of which the vast majority is e-commerce commissions, jumped by a more-than-expected 51 percent.

JD.Com’s first-quarter revenue rose 1.4 percent to CNY243 billion, the slowest growth in recent years and down from 18 percent in the same period of 2022.

Luo initially did live-streaming on popular short-video platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. As of 2 a.m. on April 2, cumulative sales by live-stream studios on Douyin topped CNY160 million (USD22.6 million).

Editors: Shi Yi, Peter Thomas