J&T Express in Mexico: A Security Map for Every Employee | Dark Currents: World View

By Ren Qian

Platforms and sellers from every direction are converging on Mexico — the world's fastest-growing e-commerce frontier — along routes that look crowded but rarely intersect. The本土 incumbent Mercado Libre, firmly in first place, recently released its Q3 figures: net revenue of $5.3 billion (up 35% year-over-year), with Mexico's GMV growing 27%. Amazon, after nine consecutive years of investment in Mexico, has attracted 27,000 sellers. Chinese-backed SHEIN and TEMU are doing $7–9 million in daily GMV in Mexico. Shopee and AliExpress are gaining ground fast.

E-commerce can only run as fast as logistics allows. According to Statista, four of the top five reasons Mexican consumers cite for not shopping online are logistics-related. The reasons they do like online shopping? Also mostly logistics-related.

Once logistics infrastructure falls out of step with e-commerce scale, platforms start colliding. This is especially visible in a new market's early stages.

By 2021, SHEIN's third year in Mexico, it already had substantial order volume and had expanded from online into physical retail. But last-mile delivery remained a chronic headache. Mexico's delivery partners were mostly traditional international giants — FedEx, DHL, UPS — plus local brands Estafeta and Redpack. These companies had poured money into distribution centers and pickup points, but largely concentrated on city centers and dense population zones. Remote and dangerous areas mostly got handed off to third parties.

The gap in parcel cognition was equally stark. Chinese e-commerce packages, especially cross-border, are mostly small goods and apparel, typically 200–300 grams. Mexican logistics companies generally assumed an average single parcel weight of 2.5 kg.

J&T Express smelled opportunity. In the winter of 2021, a vanguard team of roughly 20 people was dispatched to Mexico. Split into 10 groups, they fanned out across all 32 states to conduct ground surveys. Then, leveraging its capital advantage, J&T rapidly built out its network, securing all of SHEIN's local Mexico orders and about 60% of its cross-border business.

In May 2023, Temu entered Mexico too. Orders naturally flowed to J&T, which at the time derived 80% of its domestic China volume from Pinduoduo. But then something happened — at the end of 2023, exploding order volumes caused warehouse overflow, severe inventory backlogs, and delivery delays, which to some extent damaged J&T's relationships with other e-commerce platforms it served.

Building out last-mile pickup points, managing relationships with e-commerce platforms, and solving the problems of high prices and slow delivery — these have been the overriding priorities of J&T's three years in Mexico.

Meanwhile, other Chinese-background courier companies like iMile and Rabee have been making their own territorial gains. A hidden war of localization is unfolding — one that combines Chinese logistics and e-commerce model expertise with on-the-ground adaptation.

J&T's international expansion is in its DNA. Founded in Indonesia in 2015, the company became Southeast Asia's market leader in four years. In early 2020 it entered China, surpassing 20 million daily orders in just 10 months — a scale its domestic rivals took over a decade to reach.

A Mexico-based e-commerce practitioner told Anyong Waves: "Among all Chinese-background courier companies in Mexico, J&T is the most willing to burn money — tens of billions without blinking. The team is mainly from the Oppo-Vivo system, and their execution is extremely strong." He also revealed that J&T's daily volume was under 200,000 last year, but has already doubled this year, peaking at 700,000 orders per day during high season.

This traces back to Li Jie's decisive, almost ruthless style. He has said that internationalization isn't about taking business trips, getting a foreign education, or slapping your brand on something — it takes the courage to go all-in, to put down roots locally, and to build your own brand.

His playbook: first pick the "low-hanging fruit" — replicate proven success in markets like China, the largest and fastest-growing, to create a breadbasket market. Then take that experience into higher-potential markets like the Middle East and Latin America. J&T turned net profitable in the first half of this year — driven by its China business.

Now, as overseas competition heats up, a logistics company that can achieve nationwide coverage and meet e-commerce's service demands becomes that much more "scarce." Currently J&T has over 1,300 pickup points across Mexico. To ensure delivery safety, every courier carries a security map.

People naturally wonder: how did a company with globalization in its genes crack open Mexico? Recently, Anyong Waves spoke with Ethen Huang, J&T Express Mexico's VP, about how a group of people put down roots in an unfamiliar market — and the pain along the way.

"Anyong Looks at the World" is a new column from Anyong. Over the past three years, we've gradually built out a body of globalization content, and we're now rolling out more systematic coverage. Latin America remains a key focus.

The conversation follows:

The Right Route

Anyong: We heard your network launch took nearly half a year of preparation, and you discovered huge cognitive gaps?

Ethen: At the time we formed a project team in China. There weren't many research reports on Latin America available, so we organized the team while visiting freight forwarders with Mexico operations, gathering firsthand intel wherever we could.

In winter 2021, our vanguard team of 20-plus people flew to Mexico, split into 10 groups for concentrated ground surveys and field research. We broke nationwide coverage into phases, prioritizing state capitals with large populations and commercial density. In November we officially launched the network in Mexico City. By April the following year, we'd essentially completed coverage across Mexico.

After the launch came the long wait. The team was incredibly excited when we first achieved nationwide coverage, but excitement gave way to confusion — we had no customers yet. To open the market and build trust, we tried "free delivery," targeting local small and medium merchants to get the logistics network moving.

The client that truly broke things open for us was Italika, a Mexican本土 brand (under the economic conglomerate Grupo Salinas). For a company with nationwide needs, J&T was running routes that weren't fully loaded — the capital investment was substantial.

Beyond price and speed pain points, another major pain point in Mexican logistics is the签收率 (sign-off rate). Mexico has no parcel lockers, and local regulations require the user's handwritten signature. Plus there's no pre-delivery call to confirm timing, so lost packages are a serious problem.

Anyong: That seems to be what you've been criticized for most? Online comments say J&T's reputation is poor, yet you've never really argued back.

Ethen: In our first two years in Mexico, our main focus was building out the network and achieving nationwide coverage. That was crucial — it gave us the ticket into the first tier.

Last-mile delivery is the final and most critical link in logistics. But not every logistics company has the cash flow and guts to invest in it. Since our founding in 2015, our consensus has been: enter a country, and you must achieve full coverage fast.

Online reputation matters, but we were busy improving how the platforms evaluated us. Consumer skepticism drives us to think faster. Going forward, service quality and speed will be higher priorities. In Mexico we now offer a range of packages: door-to-door pickup, real-time tracking, electronic proof of delivery, and redelivery services where we proactively contact the customer.

Anyong: What happened with the warehouse overflow at the end of 2023?

Ethen: In 2023, as new e-commerce platforms and numerous Chinese sellers flooded in, Mexico's consumer demand genuinely exceeded our expectations. Our earlier forecasts and preparations couldn't keep pace with market growth. That was a major test of our entire logistics fulfillment capability.

Anyong: What adjustments did you make after this incident?

Ethen: Once we identified the problems, we focused on improving our supply chain — specifically the logic of how we build the network: pickup point delivery capacity and product speed planning. This year we completed our first round of facility upgrades; a second round of full automation equipment upgrades will happen by April next year.

There aren't many companies in Mexico with over 1,000 pickup points. We have 1,300. This November's peak season will be much more manageable than last year's.

Anyong: Based on your Southeast Asia and China experience, J&T's fit with e-commerce platforms is strong. But you've also developed 1,000-plus local SMEs. How did you earn their trust?

Ethen: I showed these businesses three things.

First, network construction — this takes time and capital. Second, system track-and-trace visibility across the entire chain. Third, our service logic differs from Mexican peers. We follow a more mature Chinese model that shortens the warehouse-dispatch-signoff cycle: market考核, scheduled干线 departure times, pickup point outbound times. When I demonstrated this Chinese experience through our systems and equipment, it became immediately clear.

Anyong: Chinese experience as dimensional reduction warfare.

Ethen: Mexico has many courier companies, but few with nationwide coverage. It's not just the massive upfront investment — there's also the complexity of geography and security.

Given Mexico's cultural specifics, we even hired professional local security teams. These teams can clearly tell you which routes and what time windows are more efficient for delivery, and which areas require selective avoidance. This depends on local experts from large enterprises joining us, with historical data and dynamic mapping.

Over two years, we've used this data to build our own strategic map, and this map underpins the integrated construction of our pickup points and the底层 logic of delivery.

We also had to account for network stability and delivery radius. Mexico's population distribution varies enormously — the north spans vast distances with higher urbanization, basically all core cities, while the southeast has many villages, so pickup point density differs greatly.

Anyong: As two companies that entered Mexico at roughly the same time, people inevitably compare J&T with your competitor. Across different dimensions, where do your differences lie?

Ethen: We respect our Chinese peers coming to Mexico together, but everyone has their own rules of survival. Our long-term development strategy in Mexico has been fairly clear from the start — you'll find J&T's current path is basically consistent with what we planned three years ago, because there were many temptations back then.

Setting platform factors aside, J&T's rapid rollout of last-mile networks in Mexico is inseparable from the company's capital investment. That was the most critical trigger condition.

From the start, we used nationwide coverage logic to reverse-engineer infrastructure investment, and we never stopped. For example, we now have 1,300-plus pickup points, over 2,000 vehicles, and more than 60 central warehouses. These investments determine whether you can stick to long-termism.

365 Days a Year, Can You Out-hustle?

Anyong: What's J&T's current staffing setup in Mexico?

Ethen: Mexican law caps the ratio of local to Chinese employees at 10:1. Our team is over 7,000 people. We have more Chinese people at the executive level, while 90% of department managers are local. Executives need to bring more Chinese experience and strategy.

Anyong: 365-day operations — I heard you were the first to launch this. Why?

Ethen: At the end of the day, it's not about hustling for hustling's sake — it's about delivery quality and speed. Legacy logistics companies like DHL, UPS, and FedEx generally don't offer weekend delivery. Mexico City's central post office closes at 3 p.m. Saturday and doesn't open Sunday. That means postal services are affected on weekends too — no delivery.

Based on our accumulated data, consumers still want to receive packages promptly, weekends included. We found Mexico-compliant ways to prioritize solving 365-day operations, and we've pushed the whole industry toward solving it. But in Latin American countries, weekend delivery means higher wages and labor costs — that's part of the cost.

Anyong: So how do you convince local staff to execute this?

Ethen: Mexican employees accept having rules set upfront and reaching consensus. Actually, Mexican young people are very hardworking — as long as it's clearly written in the employment contract which days you work and which you rest, with extra pay for weekend work, they can execute it.

We put respect for local employees in a very important position. They really want a sense of participation.

Initially we set two rules: First, all major decisions — whether the employee is local or not, as long as they're in the relevant module — they participate fully in the decision. Internal business data is shared同步 with executives and certain local employees.

Second, for all major decisions, executives spend time explaining to local employees why we're doing this and the logic behind it, because China's network logic and local Mexican understanding differ enormously. But once they understand, their execution capability is not bad.

Anyong: Any other localization experiences worth sharing?

Ethen: Mexican businesses, especially B2B ones, really want you to have a complete SOP — standard operating procedure. Every employee's badge, uniform, even their assigned vehicle, all need to be uniform.

Beyond basic logistics service, I think what truly won J&T customer recognition is our efficiency and execution — a stark contrast to the Latin temperament. Local businesses mostly communicate by email. When a client raises an issue in the morning, J&T has a solution by afternoon and implements it the next day. When they receive the reply that the problem is solved, this efficiency actually startles the other party's负责人.

Entering any new market, first you have to survive. At this stage, we've survived. At minimum we have clear strategy, baseline service quality, and decent customer volume.

Going forward, on one hand, many cross-border e-commerce platforms will focus more on local business, putting higher-dimensional demands on logistics' deep localization. On the other hand, Mexican local merchants are gradually adapting to e-commerce, and demand for efficient logistics service will surge. These two areas are the core directions for our future market development in Mexico.

Anyong Waves is recruiting fellow travelers to the regions we cover. If you're interested in globalization themes, we invite you to scan the code and participate in the Anyong "Waves Odyssey" research project. We look forward to pooling ideas and building an interactive, co-exploratory "globalization travel" community.

Image source: IC Photo