China's e-commerce has entered the era of agents

Text | Lu Jiu Finance

E-commerce, which connects the entire retail industry, what new surprises will it bring in the future era of agents?

The image comes from Lujiu Finance

Xu Lei, Liu Qiangdong retreated. At this point, the last founder of China's top three e-commerce companies has also retreated to the second line.

In today's world where everyone talks about the real economy, sustainable development and institutional advantages, in the new environment, what is the difference between the road that China's e-commerce has to take?

E-commerce used to be the tide of twenty years ago, and today it is the infrastructure of society, from a new economy to a very traditional retail business.

Internet jianghu, too late to say goodbye

Xu Lei succeeded Liu Qiangdong to power JD.com, and the last founder of China's top three e-commerce companies took a back seat, which means the end of an era.

Ma Yun, who was the first to quit, once said that his retirement was the beginning of a system inheritance. It is not a one-man choice, but the success of a system.

This is more like a metaphor: today's Internet jianghu has long passed the happy revenge of fighting and reaching the top, but has reached a new stage of establishing rules and systems.

The Internet is a product of the times brought about by technological development. More than 20 years ago, this was a rare "no man's land", no one knew where the road was, and the Internet needed to "create the times with heroes". No one can deny the enlightenment and merits of Ma Yun, Liu Qiangdong, Ma Huateng, Wang Xing, and Huang Zheng, who are pioneers, to the Internet.

But beneath the aura, there are also shadows.

The rise of Internet companies needs to sacrifice at least two generations. The first generation, reckless and fierce, with a fierce style, recognized only one result, that is, rapid growth. All departments make way for sales, give way to performance, and make way for survival.

The first generation of entrepreneurs must be accompanied by meritorious deeds, part of the gray area.

Whether it is the jianghu culture advocated by Ma Yun or Liu Qiangdong's "brotherly" feelings, there is a clear atmosphere of grass and reckless rivers and lakes, and this atmosphere is also brought into their business decisions.

Secondary harms of the Internet, such as commercial monopoly, platform two-choice, and big data killing, are also highlighted here. In the early years, regulators gave Internet innovators enough tolerance, and both sides tried to seek the "greatest common denominator" in the development of emerging things.

Supervision and temptation have become the "bite" of the intertwined teeth of the dog, and the tortuous evolution of the Internet industry has also entered from small streams and small rivers to large rivers to today's "deep sea area".

From the perspective of the development trajectory of the Internet industry, almost the "ceiling", the Internet industry from the incremental "positive and positive game", began to enter the inner volume of the "zero-sum game", the growth sought between the enterprises, is based on the share reduction of friends, the previous barbaric growth of the business model, at this stage of the secondary harm is also geometrically magnified.

From the incremental era to the stock era, the regulators already have enough management experience, they are standing at the height of the entire society, seeking a sustainable and healthy development path, and the behavior style of the first generation has long been unsuitable for the times, if it continues, there will inevitably be big problems.

At this time, it is necessary to introduce the second generation and correct the deviation of the first generation, although this stage is still based on performance, but it is necessary to clean up the gray area, save the amount, and find the increment.

In the era without the Internet, only the Internet of the times, it can be said that the "Ma Yuns" have completed the mission entrusted to them by the times.

Someone once asked, "How should life be spent?" Jin Yong replied: "Make a big fuss and quietly leave." ”

The decent exit after the first generation of Internet bigwigs stirred up the storm is a pattern and a choice of the times.

Can agents really take power?

After Liu Qiangdong retired, although it was seen as the end of an era. However, in the eyes of people in the industry, there are still doubts about whether the agent can truly achieve power.

First, Ma Yun, Liu Qiangdong and Huang Zheng still have absolute right to speak from the perspective of company equity. The essence of an agent is a professional manager, if there is disagreement on business strategy, can you stick to your own opinion?

Second, among the entrepreneurs of the original Generation of the Internet, even the oldest Ma Yun is in his prime. With rich entrepreneurial experience and management experience, after retiring, will they really stand by and watch?

As the youngest Huang Zheng said when he retired: "As a founder, I jumped out to touch the stones on the road 10 years later." ”

Lu Jiu Finance noted that Liu Qiangdong will continue to serve as the chairman of the board of directors of JD.com, and he will devote more energy to long-term strategic design, major strategic decision-making and deployment, training of young leaders and rural revitalization.

In the eyes of some Internet observers, the exit of these founders is more like a company that has entered the bottleneck period and is fully looking for the layout of the second growth curve in the next decade.

However, in the view of some people in the industry, these upper-level agents are not airborne, but old people who fight out with performance from the business line. Even if these founders do not retreat, they are all real power factions in various enterprises.

Daniel Zhang, who once led the creation of "Double 11", is also the most successful e-commerce festival in the industry so far, and has made great contributions to Taobao's business. After Daniel Zhang took office, he made great strides in the combing of business lines and system construction, and behind this change, he was actually completing the management model led by the system.

Xu Lei once presided over the Jingdong Wireless Business Department, and he once led the team to make the Jingdong Mall APP into a traffic source of more than 70% of the Jingdong platform, saying that it is the guide of Jingdong's transformation of mobile Internet, which is not excessive.

According to the evaluation of insiders, Xu Lei is a person who recognizes the rules. Xu Lei himself has also admitted that Jingdong has achieved millions of orders from 8,000 per day, and the marketing expenses have ranged from 0 to billions, and the power of the group CMO is really too big. This made him feel "uneasy", so he decided to control himself and put his power in the "cage" of the system.

It can be said that in the mature period, agents are entering the era dominated by security profits and refined management, and this management model is "stable" and iterative in small steps. If there is no big change, the founders have no room for too much interference.

The retreat of the founders is like disembarking from a giant ship, sitting on a speedboat, and exploring the future star sea as quickly as possible; and the agent is to take the helm of the giant ship and try not to touch the "reef".

The respective pains of the agents

An era has an era of challenges, although the successor agents do not need to fight the world, but not to say that they want to lead the company to face the current turbulent environment and the unpredictable future, it is said that each company itself has urgent problems to solve, or must face the opponent who has already lit the sword.

What JD Xu Lei has to face is the impact of Meituan's instant retail in first-tier cities, as well as the problem that the sinking market has been weak.

Meituan continues to expand cooperation in first-tier cities, cheap to a needle and a line, expensive to 3C digital, to achieve more and more SKUs of instant delivery, almost completed the full coverage of people's daily lives, caused a certain impact on various home appliances, is already an unquestionable fact, Jingdong has been the most affected, but also basically become a consensus.

The contradiction of Jingdong is that, on the one hand, the logistics and supply chain construction of Jingdong in counties, townships and villages and other areas, no one can currently stand out, and the threat of the US group is now only in first-tier cities; on the other hand, first-tier cities just happen to be the basic disk of Jingdong, and in the sinking market where logistics dominates, the growth and penetration of Jingdong does not seem to be fast enough.

The latest performance report shows that JD.com's annual active users will increase by about 98 million in 2021, reaching 569.7 million, while Pinduoduo will increase by 81 million in the same period, reaching 869 million. Considering the absolute gap in the base, JD.com's penetration speed in the sinking market may indeed not be fast. In addition, Jingxi, which was launched for the sinking market, is still classified as a "new business", and in the fourth quarter of 2021, together with JD Production and Development and JD International, it contributed 8.2 billion yuan in revenue, accounting for less than 3% of the total revenue in the quarter.

How to hold the basic disk while accelerating the penetration of the sinking market, the problem is handed over to Xu Lei.

Ali Daniel Zhang to face the problem that the company is too large, how to integrate to make the company more flexible and creative.

In recent years, Ali's friends have developed rapidly, so that Ali has been in a relatively passive position. The traditional e-commerce Pinduoduo took the lead in opening the sinking market, and used 5 years to surpass Taobao; live e-commerce Taobao itself is not backward, but the dependence on large anchors is strong, and Weiya and Sydney have retired; near-field e-commerce has always been suppressed by the US group.

In fact, whether it is traditional e-commerce, live e-commerce or instant retail, ali has a good hand in the theoretical analysis, but unfortunately, due to the huge and complex system, there are many involvements between businesses, and cross-departmental cooperation and communication difficulties, resulting in insufficient efficiency. Lu Jiu Finance mentioned in the article "Everything comes home, Ali's local life has a few cards in his hand": "Ali's ship may be too large, so that every integration is a whole body. ”

Daniel Zhang upgraded the "diversified governance" system after taking office, one of the main purposes is to use "a more agile organization to face the future". As for whether After the major adjustment of the organizational structure at the end of 2021, it remains to be seen whether Ali can really become flexible and agile again, and whether this agility will really help Ali's re-development.

Since the second quarter of 2021, Pinduoduo has achieved profitability for three consecutive quarters and achieved annual profitability in 2021, but the total annual revenue of less than 100 billion yuan, and a profit level of about 7.8 billion yuan, is not the same order of magnitude as Ali's Chinese business scale.

In short, Xu Lei, Daniel Zhang, and Chen Lei, none of them have a light burden.

Retail always has a chance

However, we have reason to expect from agents, because the retail industry to which e-commerce belongs will always have new opportunities.

Initially, being able to buy things online and someone to send it to the door is a surprise for people, even if the variety of goods is very small, the delivery time is very long; later, "everything can be purchased online", only the unexpected, there is nothing that cannot be found, and the delivery time is shortened to a day or even half an hour; today, the Internet has become the infrastructure of society, and e-commerce has transformed from a new economy into a very traditional retail business.

In the past "cat and dog" era, most people thought that there was no new opportunity in the e-commerce industry, but they saw Pinduoduo turn out to be born and grow rapidly; there was also a period of time when many people ridiculed Jingdong for being too "heavy" and not making money, and the power of infrastructure was displayed, and Jingdong's supply chain and logistics warehousing efficiency amazed the world; as for those who think that only first- and second-tier cities have consumption power, they can only sigh in the face of the power of the sinking market.

In today's top three era, it seems that there is no opportunity, and the US group suddenly enters the instant retail, which once again proves that the retail market opportunity will always exist.

The emergence of opportunities stems from the changing market demand at any time, so that the entire industry is always full of uncertainty. While seeing the opportunity, Ali, JD.com, and Pinduoduo also see the challenges brought about by uncertainty, so these three companies are getting heavier and heavier, because only "heavy" things are the moats that can provide competitiveness for a long time.

The main directions chosen by each company are different, JD Bet Logistics and Warehousing, Ali Bet Treasure offline various formats, pinduoduo bet on agriculture.

In essence, it's a cognitive contest for retail.

Do the agents who have taken over the founder's class have a new understanding of retail, can they provide new development ideas for various companies, and what new opportunities can they explore and create surprises? Can agents leave a strong mark on the history of the development of each company?

Their time has only just begun.