(Yicai Global) Nov. 25 -- Chinese e-commerce firm Vipshop Holdings will shut its own-brand Pinjun Express this month and entrust deliveries to market giant SF Express in a bid to reduce operating costs, financial news site Yixian reported.

SF Express has taken on some package delivery services as a third-party logistics provider before a formal partnership is reached, the report said, citing Guangzhou-based Vipshop.

The cost of delivering parcels using its own service was higher than the industry average, so Vipshop began to experiment with a third-party service early this year. The actual performance cost and cost percentage both dropped as of the third quarter, it said. Vipshop has 340 million registered users and millions of orders a day.

Vipshop said that ending its own shipment service is in line with the firm's overall strategy. In response to the emergence of e-commerce rivals such as Pinduoduo, Vipshop embraced a 'return to discount sale' strategy in August last year. It had started out as a discounter of famous-brand products.

Net profit at Vipshop almost tripled to USD122.5 million in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to its latest earnings report. Revenue rose 10 percent and active user numbers jumped 21 percent in the same period.

Profit soared mainly because of a strategy to focus on the highly profitable apparel category, Chief Financial Officer Yang Donghao said.