Recently, the home building materials industry has ushered in major giant trends. JD.com has officially increased its focus on self-operated home decoration, becoming the focus of the entire industry.
According to the latest data disclosed on April 20: JD.com’s self-operated home decoration net sales in the first quarter of 2026 exceeded 1 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 138%. The official new AI smart home decoration brand has officially launched, using self-operated closed-loop model + AI technology to fully penetrate the entire home decoration link.
Looking back on the strategic layout, JD.com’s Building Materials Spring Merchant Conference on April 3 clearly announced that it will invest more than 1 billion yuan in the next three years to comprehensively promote the popularization of smart homes, drive the two-wheel drive of “goods + services”, and focus on the home improvement inventory replacement market.
The supply chain and delivery end are comprehensively upgraded: JD.com relies on the global supply chain to complete direct procurement of building materials from sources in 14 countries; the design end is connected to the JoyAI large model +
Thousands of designers generate personalized home decoration plans with one click; 5,200 direct industrial workers are deployed on the construction side, supporting 108 standard construction techniques and 705 full-process quality inspection systems. At the same time, AI smart doors, smart water purification sinks and other whole-house integrated smart products are launched to achieve a fully self-operated closed loop from material selection, design, construction to after-sales.
The e-commerce giant’s full-link end of the home decoration industry is similar to JD.com’s previous cross-border layout of the entire home decoration industry chain. It is an industry-level strategic event and directly affects the entire industry chain of upstream panels, customization, and main materials.
As a practitioner who has been deeply involved in the panel industry for many years, I believe that JD.com’s entry into home decoration is by no means a simple cross-border traffic, but a bottom-level reconstruction of the entire home decoration and building materials supply chain. It will have a profound impact on the upstream panel industry, which is mainly reflected in the following three core essences:
1. The supply chain is deintermediated, and panel price profits are compressed.
The core of JD.com’s self-operated model is direct procurement from the source, cutting out multi-tier dealer price increases, and relying on the advantages of massive centralized procurement to reduce costs.
In the future, cabinet panels and customized base materials in JD’s home decoration packages will be given priority to be supplied directly from the source factory. The price difference space of traditional panel intermediaries and regional second-batch dealers will be greatly squeezed, and the industry’s low-price involution will further intensify.
2. Standardization + AI selection will force the board to become digitalized and universal.
JD.com’s AI home decoration focuses on standardized packages and intelligent selection. It has unified rigid standards for the environmental protection grade, specifications and sizes, decorative colors, and physical properties of the boards.
This means that ordinary small plate factories with no standards, no environmental protection endorsement, and non-standard small plate factories will be eliminated. Only plates that meet the general standards of large manufacturers, ENF-level environmental protection, and standardized specifications can enter the JD supply chain system.
3. The entire home decoration chain is self-operated, and the upstream panels have shifted from “selling products” to “supplying supporting products”.
In the past, panel dealers only sold panels and earned the price difference on materials; after JD.com opened up the entire home decoration process, panels are no longer isolated items, but a basic supporting set for whole-house customization and smart home decoration.
The logic of the industry has completely changed: simply selling panels is no longer competitive. Only panel brands that can adapt to whole-house solutions, intelligent customization, and environmentally friendly integrated supply can get the market dividends of giants.
Witnessing the rounds of changes in the home decoration industry, from store melee, dealer involution, to the full-link entry of Internet giants, I have a profound understanding: the industry has never had a stable business, and the entry of giants is not a crisis, but a watershed for weeding out laggards and achieving quality.
The era when the sheet metal industry relies on poor information, low prices to increase volume, and old channels to make money is completely over.
If you want to survive and live well in the changing situation, all sheet metal factories, brands, and dealers should keep in mind the following three core survival suggestions:
Suggestion 1: Actively embrace the supply chain and strive to be a high-quality supporting supplier for giants.
Factories whose own boards meet environmental protection standards, have stable production capacity, and standardized quality actively connect with the supply chain systems of platforms such as JD.com and strive to become the designated base material supplier for self-operated home decoration.
Relying on the huge traffic and order volume of giants to stabilize basic production capacity and revitalize factory production lines is the safest way for small and medium-sized plate mills to break through.
Recommendation 2: Avoid the red ocean of standardization and deepen the differentiation of plate segments.
Jingdong Home Decoration focuses on general-purpose home decoration packages and standardized boards.
Board practitioners must proactively offset competition and not fight for low-priced general-purpose boards. Instead, they must develop high-end solid wood, specialty finishes, functional boards (moisture-proof, flame-retardant, antibacterial, and formaldehyde-free customization), designer-specific boards, and deeply cultivate local private sector, high-end customization, and villa engineering channels. They must expand into subdivided areas that cannot be covered by the large-scale giants and guard their exclusive profit moats.
Recommendation 3: Upgrade the hard power of products and stick to the moat of environmental protection and standardization.
AI home decoration and platform centralized procurement will only set the threshold for base materials higher and higher.
All plate practitioners must prioritize polishing the core of their products, strictly abide by the new ENF-level national environmental protection bottom line, unify plate specifications, edge banding processes, and quality inspection standards, and improve product testing reports and brand endorsements.
In the future, the competition in the industry will no longer be about channels and connections, but hard power in environmental protection, quality, and standardization. These are the core barriers that can never be replaced by platforms.
