Text | Rust-free bowl Pecan
Three years ago, on April 3, Wang Xing, who has always been praised as "having a big picture view" and "good at observing the general situation", sent a circle of friends:
"In the next few years, it should be wonderful to see how Huang Zheng of Pinduoduo and Jiang Fan of Taobao/Tmall, two very smart people, compete."
For a time, public opinion was in an uproar, and for the rest of that day, the "war" between the two new generation leaders of e-commerce even preceded reality and took the lead in the overwhelming articles in the media.
The fate of the Internet industry is always difficult to predict, the much-anticipated game did not happen, on March 17, 2021, with the release of Pinduoduo's financial report, it was Huang Zheng who announced his resignation as chairman and officially retired.
Along with him faded out of the public eye is Jiang Fan, tianyancha information shows that Jiang Fan is no longer the legal representative, chairman and general manager of Taobao and Tmall, in a sense, the Taobao story that belongs to him has officially ended.
Going around, the young talents who used to be in the limelight are only left with the name that did not appear in the circle of friends.
On April 7, Xu Lei, who had been practicing for 7 months in the position of president of Jingdong Group, ended his "probationary period" ahead of schedule and took over as CEO of the group, responsible for daily operation and management.
The dividing line between the old and the new era suddenly fell.
Succession, retirement and departure, the new generation of Jun's masterpiece farewell adolescence
The transition of power to the Internet giants is as fascinating as the political game in house of cards.
Although Xu Lei has appeared in the seat of the rotating CEO of Jingdong Mall and the president of Jingdong Group for 43 months before sitting in the CEO's office chair, the public still lacks understanding of the "second chief of Jingdong".
Needless to say that compared with the first generation of tyrants such as Ma Yun and Liu Qiangdong, even compared with the second generation of Internet people such as Daniel Zhang, Jiang Fan, and Huang Zheng, Xu Lei's mysterious feeling is also the strongest.
Time back to 2013, that year, Jiang Fan just entered Ali, Xu Lei returned to JD.com, Huang Zheng began his third venture, Daniel Zhang is preparing for his fame battle on the wireless business side.
History is always full of wonderful coincidences, if there is no popular Internet retail, the post-70s Daniel Zhang, the 75s Xu Lei, the 80s Huang Zheng, the 85s Jiang Fan may never be put into the same collection.
However, the future can not be assumed after all, the fate of the sudden rise of the corner, this belongs to the new generation of e-commerce Junjie's weaving, has been quietly tightened, tightened.
Interestingly, when you compare Xu Lei with the other three, there is always a moment and angle that surprises you with the common traits between them, and in the remaining time of solo observation, Xu Lei has always been Xu Lei himself.
In terms of personal personality, he is more compared with Huang Zheng, and the Internet images of both are low-key, taciturn, pragmatic, and have also made extraordinary achievements in the sinking market.
Huang Zheng's brilliance needless to say, and regarding Xu Lei's achievements, an intuitive proof is that the Jingxi he launched in order to balance Pinduoduo contributed nearly 70 million user growth to JD.com in 2021, when the traffic dividend peaked.
In terms of specific business capabilities, Xu Lei's counterparts have been replaced by Jiang Fan, all engaged in marketing, are all stalwarts of a new generation, have a great future, and have made great contributions to the growth of the brand retail business.
The only regret is that Jiang Fan after 85 is far from learning the former's handling and caution.
Looking at the work experience and trajectory, Xu Lei is the same as the successor of another major business, Daniel Zhang, who, as the initiator of "Double 11", has also been the main general of Ali's retail business "ALL IN Wireless" for a long time.
In contrast, Xu Lei, during the time when he regained control of the Jingdong marketing department, Jingdong did not publish GMV data for the first time, pessimism spread within the company, the stock price also fell to a low point, Liu Qiangdong was forced to return to the front line, and adjusted the organizational structure.
Xu Lei, who was ordered to be in danger, proposed to change Jingdong's Siqing "Red June" to "618" and benchmark with "Double 11"; at the same time, like Daniel Zhang, he was also responsible for the wireless process of JD.com, and in two years, he successfully completed the wireless with JD.com and helped JD.com's business to shift to the mobile terminal.
After this, there was the rumored sentence of Liu Qiangdong: "Whoever disobeys Xu Lei is disobeying me." ”
Time changes, along with Xu Lei's baton, the new generation of Internet people in the past are no longer young, and they have also completed the highlight performances of their careers.
With the overlap of succession, retirement and departure stories, the era of Chinese Internet youth has also pulled down the curtain.
Chinese The Internet does not need "rule by man"
In the nineties, when Internet innovation was still a little barren, Bill Gates predicted the kaleidoscopic boom of the Internet, and he commented:
"If we miss the internet today, we're missing not just an opportunity, but an entire era."
It was the most reckless era of China's Internet economy, and it was also the most turbulent, messy and imaginative era.
Ma Yun can start with the Yellow Pages, jump from the developer of the website, and engage in e-commerce; Liu Qiangdong can withdraw from the multimedia shops in Zhongguancun and enter the Internet retail, even in the decade after that, Huang Zheng can change his identity as a page game entrepreneur to change to social retail in the sinking market.
A market that is not completely closed by ecology gives everyone the right to trial and error, and also creates more possibilities.
From this point of view, the recent frequent transfer of the baton also invisibly transmits a signal:
The boundaries of the head companies have been determined, and the Internet market has begun to sail into the "still water zone".
According to the research report "Operation of Mainland Internet Listed Enterprises in the First Quarter of 2021" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in the first quarter of 2021, the total market value of the top 10 Internet companies in China has accounted for 80% of the industry.
The highly centralized market brings a rare calm, but also gives the "No. 1" who is in charge of the major brands a short rest and a long-distance view.
In March 2021, Huang Zheng, who stepped down as chairman of Pinduoduo, said that he would devote himself to relevant research in the field of food science and life science in the future, and coincidentally, Zhang Yiming, who stepped down as CEO and chairman of the board of directors of ByteDance, also said that he would no longer focus on the daily management of the company, but would focus on long-term important issues such as long-term strategy, corporate culture and social responsibility.
This point was translated into a string of more poetic words in the external announcement of Jingdong Group:
"Just like a giant ship sailing deep in the ocean, it takes someone to ensure that the giant ship remains stable in the telescope's field of view, and someone who can map the ship's farther course."
In a sense, this transfer of power in the process of navigation is not only a trust in the strategic vision of the predecessor "No. 1", but also a test of the enterprise management system.
Looking back at the past, in the history of business, there is no shortage of business leaders with distinct personalities and charisma, who have created amazing values in different periods, however, the "Number One" are only passers-by after all, and the foundation of the enterprise is evergreen, and what is needed is not outstanding managers, but the soil that can nurture outstanding managers.
Daniel Zhang is fortunate that in Ali, he is neither the elder nor the most favored successor, but Ali's system gives him the opportunity to show his talents.
He admitted, "Ali is more diverse and doesn't strictly dictate what CFOs should do. It is impossible to do business in a position like mine in another company. ”
In a sense, Xu Lei is also the "lucky one".
An interesting detail is that Xu Lei is not the elder of JD.com, and even after joining JD.com, he has had the experience of job hopping. As the talents introduced by Xu Xin, president of Today Capital, to Liu Qiangdong, Xu Lei and chen Shengqiang, later CEO of JD Finance, have been branded as "outsiders" in the initial development process of JD.com.
At that time, within Jingdong, Liu Qiangdong, who was emotionally heavy, demanded that the wages of all "outsiders" could not be higher than those of Jingdong's old employees, so half of the salaries offered to this group of elites had to be paid from the books of today's capital.
In the end, these elites contributed to JD.com with their outstanding abilities and erased the prejudice of the portal.
It is precisely because of this that two years after Xu Lei left his post, Liu Qiangdong, who was going to study in the United States, deliberately asked Xu Lei to drink a few drinks and called him back.
From this point of view, different from the "same-level power transition" of Pinduoduo and Byte, and also different from the Ali family identity of Daniel Zhang, Xu Lei has completed the identity transformation from outsiders, to brothers, middle-level cadres, to group managers in Jingdong, it can be said that Xu Lei's succession trajectory is itself a proof of the continuous evolution of Jingdong's talent training and promotion system, and healthy operation.
Jingdong is getting heavier and heavier, and Xu Lei is getting lighter
On this basis, behind the change of power, what has changed is not only the management ecology of China's Internet, but also the more complex e-commerce jianghu under the feet.
If Liu Qiangdong rises with the "top five e-commerce" era composed of Ali, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin and Kuaishou, it is an era of GMV and an era of the most concentrated traffic.
Then, with Xu Lei's "ascension" comes the collapse of the old order of e-commerce. "Interconnection" has personally crushed the ambition of the platform's "two choices one", and ushered in a new era of traffic decentralization under the new play of interest in e-commerce and trust in e-commerce.
For JD.com, the intersection of the old order and the new order in the general environment is, to some extent, the front and back of a coin.
The front of this coin is that in the "getting heavier" business structure, JD.com's physical color is getting stronger and stronger. Under the background of the overall fatigue of the e-commerce platform, JD.com has become the most "stable" one.
In terms of business structure, JD retail, JD logistics and new businesses (JD Production and Development, Jingxi Business Group, Overseas Business, Technological Innovation and Community Group Buying, etc.) make up JD.com's business territory. Among them, as the only profitable business segment of JD.com, JD Retail bears the heavy responsibility of blood transfusion.
According to the financial report, the annual revenue of Jingdong Retail in 2021 is 866.3 billion yuan, accounting for more than 90% of the total revenue, and the person in charge of this "profit cow" is Xu Lei.
Under the continuous blood transfusion of the retail sector, JD Logistics ushered in the dawn of "turning losses into profits" in the fourth quarter of last year. The increase in the profitability of the logistics sector is due to the scale effect. According to the financial report, in 2021, more than 50% of JD Logistics' revenue will come from third-party customers outside the group.
Behind the increase in the profitability of the logistics sector, JD.com did spend most of its money on logistics and supply chains last year. In 2021 alone, JD.com built 400 new logistics warehouses, with more than 300,000 front-line employees, and related compensation and welfare expenses increased by nearly 10 billion yuan compared with 2020.
Jd.com, which is getting heavier and heavier, is becoming more and more solid, maintaining a relatively stable growth resilience in the intersection of the old and new orders.
But as mentioned above, this is the front of the coin, and the reverse is what Can Xu Lei, who takes over the flag, bring to JD.com? Is he really ready?
Frankly, skepticism is not in the minority. From chief marketing officer, CEO of JD Retail, president of JD Group to ceo of JD Group today, Xu Lei started from marketing and experienced multiple identity changes.
The chief marketing officer is the marketer, the head of the retail sector and the group president are the executive, and these roles are essentially "wheelmakers" rather than the real group CEO, not "the people who point the way.".
As you can imagine, these so-called "number two positions" are the executors and acceptors of Liu Qiangdong's instructions, they are the managers of the plate, with a strong team, they realize the ideal map drawn by the "number one position" in every detail.
But they are never real managers.
Today, Xu Lei is the manager, which means he needs to be the "person who points the way."
We can't give a clear answer to the question of "is Xu Lei ready" because the "Jingdong time" belonging to Xu Lei has just begun.
But a detail may help us find the fragments of answers. In September 2021, Xu Lei began to serve as the president of JD Group, when he was responsible for the daily operation and coordinated development of JD's various business segments.
The time is set back to March this year, which is Xu Lei's latest public voice. In the evaluation of Jingdong's annual performance, Xu Lei's words not only show that Jingdong will pay more attention to stock advantages in the future, but also have a judgment on the overall trend of the Internet industry:
"The development of China's Internet industry is becoming more and more mature, and it will abandon the extensive traffic-based growth mode such as subsidies and enter the stage of refined operation." In such a new environment, JD.com's user growth and operation are facing long-term tests, and there are higher goals and requirements waiting for JD.com to complete. ”
Combined with JD.com's future, we have reason to believe that Xu Lei is clearly ready to become a "manager".
This manager, whose entrepreneurial experience is different from Liu Qiangdong's, has completed the identity transformation from an outsider, a brother to a manager, he has personally experienced the ups and downs of the giant ship of Jingdong, has left, watched, but finally became the "captain" of this ship.
Putting aside the identity of the "captain", he who likes rock music is obviously an "outlier" of JD.com, after all, he is too different from the familiar JD.com.
But except for Liu Qiangdong, perhaps no one knows JD.com better than this "outlier". When he was appointed CEO of JD.com in 2019, he was not used to wearing a suit and speaking on behalf of JD.com.
Change always happens in an instant, and it also lays the groundwork for the subsequent alternation. After that day, Xu Lei, who likes to share music on Weibo, emptied his Weibo and put all his energy into his work at JD.com.
On the podium of the annual meeting of Jingdong Mall that year, Xu Lei ended his speech with "the heart is on this shore, and the heart is on the other side". In the past, the main speaker of this annual meeting was always Liu Qiangdong.