BEIJING - More than 100 traditional brands in China have joined hands to promote online sales, with assistance from Chinese e-commerce company JD.com.

The time-honored brands, known as laozihao in Chinese, come from 13 provincial regions. They have established a sales alliance at JD. Com, according to the Beijing Morning Post.

Featuring mainly the catering sector, the alliance is aimed at empowering the brands and expanding their market both online and offline.

JD.com has pledged to assist the alliance in lowering their distribution costs using its abilities in marketing, logistics, and supply chains.

More than 60 percent of the time-honored brands in the food industry have launched online sales through the JD supermarket platform, the newspaper said.

In 2018, the JD supermarket will provide an online sales platform for 500 national or local time-honored brand in the food industry.

Over the next three years, JD supermarket expects to have at least one time-honored brand with over one billion yuan in annual sales volume and ten with more than 100 million yuan in annual sales.

"JD would like to help the time-honored brands reduce their operation costs through our big data services," said Feng Yi, spokesperson for JD.com.

Currently 1,128 time-honored brands have obtained official recognition from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), with the companies having an average age of 160 years. More than 60 percent are engaged in medicine and catering.

With consumption trends changing in China, many traditional brands have faced challenges due to their lack of competitiveness in production and operation.

In 2017, the MOC and 15 other central authorities jointly published a general plan to bring new life to these time-honored brands and improve their online and offline integration.