Amazon spent $75M on Joyo — then ceded China's e-commerce to Alibaba and JD

Amazon entered China in 2004 by acquiring Joyo.com, the country's second-largest online bookseller, for $75 million. Joyo was founded by Lei Jun, and at its peak it was one of the largest online media retailers in the world. The acquisition was Amazon's first big push into a market that would be home to the world's largest e-commerce industry.

But Amazon never adapted to how Chinese consumers shopped. It did not run the kind of blowout sales events that Alibaba and JD.com made famous, and it imposed a minimum spend of 59–200 yuan for free delivery while competitors offered free shipping on every order. Local rivals built faster, cheaper logistics networks that Amazon could not match.

By 2011–2012, Amazon's share of China's e-commerce market was still above 15%. By 2019 it had fallen below 1%. On 18 April 2019, Amazon announced it would shut down its domestic marketplace in China, shifting to cross-border selling only. The retreat was complete by 18 July 2019. AWS and cross-border sales continued, but the domestic e-commerce business — the entire reason for the original acquisition — was gone.