Text | Zero-state LT, author of | Yu Kun, Editor | Hu Zhanjia
Pengrun Building is Huang Guangyu's current daily office location, which was the largest single office building in Asia when it was first completed in 2000. The stars have shifted and the winds and clouds have changed, and the name of the largest single office building in Asia has been taken away by Tencent Building, and Gome has long since lost its former glory.
After the return of Huang Guangyu, the top level of Gome has undergone major changes.
On January 27 this year, Gome Electric added a new chairman position, which was served by Huang Guangyu's younger sister Huang Xiuhong. In addition, Li Juntao, a veteran minister of Gome, returned to Lumei Group as vice president of Gome Electric Appliances.
Using his own relatives and old courtiers, Huang Guangyu has no one to use?
Shortly after his release, he announced that he would "use 18 months to restore the original market position of enterprises", and in the blink of an eye, the timetable of this plan has passed by two-thirds, and most of the outside world is skeptical about whether Gome can "restore the original market position" as scheduled, and even some voices believe that Gome's hope of achieving this goal is very slim.
From the initiation of the case in November 2008 to the return of parole in June 2020, Huang Guangyu has been "absent" of Gome for 12 years. During this period, it was mainly his wife Cuckoo who took care of the business and business. Although it seems that the plate is still there, these 12 years are also 12 years when China's traditional retail ecology has been completely subverted.
After being released from prison, Huang Guangyu, who saw the different situations, was not without the heart of reform, and vigorously introduced Internet talents, restarted the e-commerce strategy, tried entertainment marketing and all-category expansion, but repeatedly encountered setbacks, the senior management team continued to fluctuate, the online and offline progress was not as expected, and the company's performance did not stop losses.
Cuckoo used his own insistence to defend the world belonging to Gome, and if the "radical" Huang Guangyu could not lead the company to a higher level, I don't know if he would feel a little ashamed in his heart.
01 Defend
At the beginning of 2021, when the market learned that Huang Guangyu was about to be released to truly take charge of Gome, the company's stock price had ushered in a wave of soaring, which undoubtedly showed that the outside world was full of expectations for Huang Guangyu at that time, and Huang Guangyu's past resume could also afford such high hopes.
Known as the founder of China's electrical chain business model, Huang Guangyu once topped the "Hurun Rich List" three times in 2003, 2004 and 2008. Only in November 2008, Huang Guangyu was suddenly imprisoned and sentenced to 14 years in prison for illegal business operations, insider trading and bribery.
Huang Guangyu's imprisonment was also a year in which Gome's market position was reversed, in 2008, Suning Electric Appliances surpassed Gome's 45.9 billion yuan for the first time with sales of 49.9 billion yuan, since then, Gome has been left behind by Suning, and the gap between positions has become wider and wider.
Gome is like a big ship in the merchant sea, the helmsman is not on the ship, even if it can be remotely controlled, but it will eventually encounter no small obstacles. The storm soon came, and in May 2010, the "Gome Huang Chen Dispute" broke out, but fortunately, with his wife Cuckoo charging in front of the stage, Huang Guangyu won control of the group.
Cuckoos attending the event
However, since the "absence" of Huang Guangyu, China's mobile Internet has surged and the traditional retail ecology has undergone great changes, and Gome has not failed to notice the changes in this situation, and even has long realized the importance of the Internet, and has continuously launched a defense war.
In 2002, Gome established the e-commerce department, and in 2008, it became a first-class business department. At the end of 2010, Gome acquired 80% of the shares of Kuba.com, and in the same year, Kuba.com entered Tmall Mall. In order to enter the line, Cuckoo spent 50 million yuan to build an online Gome mall.
In the cuckoo era, Gome did not start out in a conservative posture. In 2012, the domestic e-commerce price war officially began, and Jingdong launched a fierce offensive to offline retail: it proposed that the price of major appliances products would be 10% lower than that of Gome and Suning in the next three years. Gome responded to the battle, and the top level said that Gome never shy away from any form of price war, declaring that the price of all goods in the Gome electrical appliance online mall will be 5% lower than that of the Jingdong mall. In addition, Gome also adjusted the price of more than 1700 stores of Gome Electrical Appliances at that time, directly breaking the online price, the price of all products is lower than Jingdong, and consumers are welcome to compare prices on the spot, if it is higher than the online price, the store will adjust the price in time to ensure that the price is lower.
However, the price war bore the brunt of the impact on the company's performance in the current period, in 2012, Gome recorded its first net loss of 597 million yuan since its listing for eight years; Suning also failed to "survive", recording its first loss after listing in the third quarter of 2013.
Such a scene made gome e-commerce under the leadership of Cuckoo begin to shrink, and revenue and profit returned to the main line of KPI assessment. Cuckoo once compared the Internet to "flying in the sky", in her view, "the sky flying will eventually fall".
02 Change
The cash-burning subsidy model did not achieve the expected results quickly, the lack of experience of offline executives in online e-commerce, and the internal management dispute within the company caused internal friction, which hindered Gome and made it miss the golden opportunity to force e-commerce.
However, although the golden opportunity to seize market share was missed, Cuckoo's conservative and heavy offline channels did not allow Gome to be too involved in further huge losses caused by the price war, and also maintained the advantage of Gome's offline deposits. It is only because the Internet has built a new commercial order in the home appliance industry, and it is difficult for Gome to stay out of the matter.
Huang Guangyu is not blind to the change of the situation, before and after his release from prison, he showed a sense of change and made some changes to Gome.
Online, in order to make up for the shortcomings of the line, Gome chose to "ally" with the online traffic giant. In 2020, Gome, JD.com and Pinduoduo have reached a total of US$300 million in convertible bond transactions, and if the latter two are exercised as scheduled, 5.62% and 2.8% of the total share capital of Gome will be converted. Huang Guangyu expects Gome to open up traffic entrances and exits on these giant platforms and expand its voice over upstream manufacturers.
Huang Guangyu also restarted the e-commerce strategy and tried entertainment marketing in early 2021, changing the name of gome's e-commerce platform: from the original "Gome" to the current "true happiness", trying to expand it from the home appliance sector to all categories. Home appliance 3C business traffic peaked, gome wants to expand the category to increase the richness of goods to increase the user repurchase rate.
Offline, the positioning of the store will be transferred from the home appliance store to the local life service, with the new brand of "GomeJia", which is divided into four forms according to different levels: city store, business circle store, regional point and community store. Huang Guangyu expects the number of stores to expand by 6,000 in 18 months, and the number of monthly active users from online and offline ports will exceed 100 million.
In addition, Huang Guangyu also strives to include various Internet talents under his command to inject some fresh air into the company. In 2020, former Baidu executive Xiang Hailong joined Gome as CEO of Gome Online; in 2021, Cao Chengzhi, Ding Wei and Hu Guanzhong from the "Ali Department" were recruited by Huang Guangyu to serve as VP (Vice President) of Gome Retail Holdings Business Strategy and Execution Center, True Happiness COO (Chief Operating Officer) and Gome Group CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) respectively.
After the return of Huang Guangyu, under the group's umbrella, he sorted out and built six major platforms consisting of online "True Happiness", offline "Gome", "Sharing and Co-construction" of supply chain open platform, "Dress Up Home" of home furnishing platform, logistics distribution platform Anxun Logistics and "Gome Cellar" of wine supply chain.
The action of change has been born, but how effective is it?
03 Dilemma
Although there is a desire for reform, the difficulty of reform is real.
First of all, from the perspective of the general background, Gome has missed the golden development period of the mobile Internet and the traffic accumulation period of online e-commerce, and if you want to catch up, it is almost impossible.
Huang Guangyu hopes to open up a low-cost path to obtain traffic through the so-called entertainment marketing, but throughout the development of e-commerce, the traffic of the current giants is all burned by burning money.
A closer look at the product architecture of "True Happiness" shows that it is mainly intended to create two platforms: one is an entertainment content platform that integrates short videos, live broadcasts and notes, which is "happy"; the other is a full-category e-commerce platform that wants to expand, which is "shopping".
Although the idea is beautiful, "true happiness" itself has the problem that the traffic relationship between the content platform and the e-commerce platform is not clear.
Secondly, the general content platform has the confidence to further monetize commodity transactions after accumulating a huge traffic pool, and Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu are all the same. And "True Happiness" also lacks unique advantages in content platforms and e-commerce platforms, and the aggregation of the two makes it seem a bit different.
But Gome's "one-pot end" approach also has helplessness, today's market pattern has no time for Gome to accumulate traffic a little bit, Gome itself also lacks the capital to burn money, so it can only take this seemingly inverted development path.
Offline "Gome" follows the strategy of large stores, and more is to provide display and drainage functions. For this model, JD.com and Suning have also tried, but they are less active because it is difficult to make a profit. It was not until September 2021 that JD.com opened its first JD MALL store in Xi'an
Third, in terms of corporate governance, Gome under the leadership of Huang Guangyu is somewhat bulky and outdated, and the entire organization is still serving offline retail, with slow approval and decision-making.
The cost of interpretation of the Internet business within Gome is too high, and conventional e-commerce concepts such as DAU and customer acquisition costs are not understood and accepted by all senior management teams. Gome still carries more rigid and traditional retail corporate culture genes, which makes it difficult for talents from Internet companies to adapt and display their talents. Xiang Hailong left less than a year after becoming CEO of Gome Online, and Hu Guanzhong chose to leave after several months in office.
The life of executives is not good, and ordinary employees can not escape the "doom".
In November, a screenshot of an internal document from Gome Holdings Group circulated online. The contents of the document show that Gome has counted in great detail how long employees have watched videos during working hours, how much traffic they have used, and punished employees for "touching fish". This management system of near-surveillance of employees is jaw-dropping, and it can be seen from Huang Guangyu's "urgency" to promote the company's business with the ultimate pressure on employees.
A heated employee briefing
Back at Cuckoo, she is still the CEO of Gome Holdings Group, but after her husband returned to China, she attended various industry summits and increasingly began to play a role in promoting corporate strategy and demonstrating corporate culture.
In the more than ten years that Cuckoo was in charge of Gome in front of the stage, the approach was slightly conservative, but this conservatism stemmed from the development of Gome at that time and the company genes of Gome, but fortunately, she kept the foundation of Gome and Huang Guangyu.
After Huang Guangyu was released from prison, his actions were frequent, and although the remarks of wanting to return to his original position within eighteen months seemed to be blood-boiling, they were somewhat radical, and the rivers and lakes had changed, even if Huang Guangyu had great talent and strategy, it was difficult to have the power to go against the heavens. His radicalism is a bit like a let go of a fight that has been trapped in prison for many years and finally gained freedom, but such a fight is risky, and if the family is buried, it is obvious that it will not be able to stand the cuckoo for many years.