"Whoever disobeys Xu Lei is disobeying me" - Liu Qiangdong.
On April 7, JD.com announced that Xu Lei would succeed Liu Qiangdong as CEO of JD.com. At the same time, Xu Lei will join the board of directors of JD Group as an executive director.
Liu Qiangdong will continue to serve as the chairman of the board of directors of JD.com, while committing to the company's long-term strategic design, major strategic decision-making and deployment, young leading talent training and rural revitalization.
This means that the "second in command" Xu Lei officially took over Liu Qiangdong and became the manager of the Jingdong Group. Similar to founders who have retreated to the second line such as Huang Zheng and Zhang Yiming, Liu Qiangdong will focus more on the company's long-term strategy.
Judging from the previous information, such a baton is not surprising.
Xu Lei has been in Jingdong Group for more than 10 years, successively serving as the retail CEO of Jingdong Group, the chief marketing officer of Jingdong Group, the head of the wireless business department and the head of the marketing department of Jingdong Mall.
For example, after the Liu Qiang Dongmingzhou incident in 2018, JD.com's brand image was seriously damaged, and on the other side of the operating conditions, in the third quarter of 2018, JD.com's active user growth decreased for the first time, about 9 million less than the second quarter, and the stock price also fell to the bottom.
Liu Qiangdong, who was affected by the incident, gradually moved away from the spotlight, and it was Xu Lei who was pushed to the front of the stage to fight the fire.
At the end of 2018, JD.com announced the largest organizational restructuring in history, under the new organizational structure, JD.com will divide the customer as the center into the front, middle and back office, and the heads of the front, middle and back office will report to Xu Lei, the CMO of Jingdong Group and the first rotating CEO of Jingdong Mall since July this year.
Xu Lei set the main tone for JD.com, which was in the fog at the time: accelerated growth with quality. Subsequently, comprehensive optimization was carried out in strategic design, business breakthroughs, and organizational optimization.
By 2019, JD.com has begun to return to the fast lane of growth, with GMV breaking through the 2 trillion yuan mark for the first time in the year, an increase of nearly 25% year-on-year, and successfully turning losses into profits, with a net profit of 12.2 billion yuan.
Not only that, Xu Lei also saw the importance of sinking market traffic in time, and shouted out the slogan of "in the next three years, a Jingdong retail will be recreated in the sinking emerging market" in 2020, and the importance of the Jingxi business group has been continuously improved.
The latest financial report data proves that Xu Lei's decision is somewhat forward-looking. For the whole of last year, JD.com's active buyer users were about 570 million, a net increase of 100 million from the previous year, and 70% of these 100 million people came from the sinking market.
In addition, Xu Lei also led the design of JD.com's 618 shopping festival. 618's predecessor was an event called "Red June", and Xu Lei believes that promotions can be done for 20 days, and traffic can also be guided by marketing rhythms, but consumers must remember a symbol, that is, JD.com's 618. In 2014, the Jingdong 618 Shopping Festival was officially born.
Today, JD.com 618 and Taobao's Double Eleven have become the two most famous shopping festivals.
In the early days when Xu Lei was pushed to the front of the stage, in order to stabilize the hearts and minds of the army, Liu Qiangdong even released the harsh words of "whoever disobeys Xu Lei is not obedient to me." Nowadays, in the overall stall environment of the Internet industry, Jingdong's performance is still "able to fight", Xu Lei is naturally indispensable, so he has received more and more positive voices, and also gives Liu Qiangdong the space to take another step back behind the scenes.
But at this stage, JD.com is still facing many problems. Heavy logistics and heavy entity moat to Jingdong to bring the ability to resist pressure, but also need a large amount of investment to maintain operation, in addition, Jingxi, JD production and development and other new business also need to continue to invest, last year, JD's net loss reached 3.6 billion yuan, and in the previous year, JD.com achieved a profit of 49.4 billion yuan.
After taking over as CEO, Xu Lei will be more flexible in business management and adjustment, and may be able to change the loss situation.
It is worth mentioning that although he is no longer the CEO of the group, Liu Qiangdong is still the largest shareholder of JD.com and has absolute control. ACCORDING TO JD.com's previous filings with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Liu Qiangdong held 434.5 million ordinary shares, accounting for 13.9% of the shares and 76.9% of the total voting rights.
After the news of Xu Lei's takeover was announced, the stock price of Jingdong Hong Kong stocks rose first and then fell, and as of press time, the decline was 2.56%.
Produced by ZAKER News
Text / Bao Xingwa
Editor / Zeng Xiantian