Rock fans, marketing maniacs, these are Xu Lei's labels, but they are not comprehensive. If you must say, it may be more appropriate to summarize Xu Lei with "nothing to be afraid of".
Author | Zhang Chao Edited | Luo Lijuan
Xu Lei, the second place of Jingdong, a person who has frequently broken into the public's vision recently.
"Jingdong people have long held their breath, Jingdong, live up to every love!"
"We are ready to go and will do our best to support Shanghai."
On social media, the screenshot of Jingdong CEO Xu Lei's speech was widely disseminated along with a number of photos of Jingdong's brothers aiding Shanghai teams around the world and photos of Jingdong Logistics's red team.
Jingdong organized local courier brothers to aid Shanghai (Source: Network)
In addition, the public knows very little about the Internet tycoon.
Looking at the "helmsman" of today's Internet manufacturers, Xu Lei is undoubtedly a different existence.
It is surprising that the CEO of a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of more than $90 billion dares to express himself directly in a special period; even in the era of fierce public relations of Internet tycoons, such situations are still rare.
Xu Lei's body will always be labeled with various labels - rock fans, marketing maniacs, etc.; each one is Xu Lei, but none of them can fully and thoroughly summarize Xu Lei.
He can become the CEO of JD.com Group, not as smooth as the outside world imagines, but has experienced ups and downs. In the repeated ups and downs of the workplace experience, the uninhibited and fearless energy in Xu Lei's bones may have helped him step by step to this day.
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Alternative tab
From a nameless workplace white to a well-known big man in the Internet industry, Xu Lei's ascension has surprised many people, and it is inevitable to look at his background.
Referring to Xu Lei's identity, it is rumored on the Internet that he is an authentic Beijinger and the younger brother of Xu Xin, an important investor in JD.com.
In fact, when the online discussion was the most intense, Xu Lei personally refuted the rumor, "Before saying that I was the younger brother of an investor, this kind of joke is harmless, just the tongue movement of the brainless person after tea and dinner"; and for the "Beijinger" statement, he said that his hometown is in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, and the popular traffic star Cai Xukun is a fellow countryman.
However, because his parents were both military school teachers, Xu Lei left his hometown since he was a child and grew up in the Beijing military compound. Even if Xu Lei did not inherit the mantle of his parents and entered the military life, living in the military compound could not avoid some of the things that were heard, such as the prohibition of orders and the mountains of military orders, which may also be the reason why he took "establishing laws" as the core of the management system in his future work.
Xu Lei is still a very controlling person in his bones and does not like any unplanned changes. "I want everything to be under control, and suddenly a good thing falls on my head, and others will feel a windfall, but for me, it will feel even more uncomfortable." 」 In an interview with microscopy stories, Xu Lei said, "Only what I can predict is the safest." ”
But this does not mean that he is a conservative and pedantic person, on the contrary, Xu Lei is independent in thought, trendy, likes rock music, and chases stars.
According to his micro-story, in order to distinguish the categories of rock and roll in college, he also found a copy of "World Rock history" and read it every day in the dormitory; in order to play Cui Jian's "Flower Room Girl", he looked everywhere to get a guitar practice; in order to save money to buy tapes, he often ate the cheapest instant noodles.
Even though he matured a lot under the grinding of work later, at Cui Jian's concert in 2006, Xu Lei still cried the whole performance. The first song, "Rock on the New Long March Road", "As soon as the melody is thought of, I can't do it'." Xu Lei said to the microscopic story.
At the age of 32, after experiencing various trials in the workplace and life, Xu Lei suddenly felt that he "lived and understood". So he gave himself his first tattoo, a "stand-alone" scorpion representing Scorpio; another tattoo that has been publicly reported by the media many times is on the inside of his right arm, with a small seal tattoo of "Nothing, Fearless.".
Xu Lei tattoo (Image source: Internet)
For the most part, Xu Lei is such a person with a clear personality, with the innings of a Beijinger personality, but not domineering— a point that people who have worked with him later agree.
Before JD.com, Xu Lei had two other work experiences that were important to him.
In 2000, Xu Lei joined Lenovo, mainly responsible for the network promotion of Lenovo brands and various products. At that time, Lenovo was a veritable main force in the industry, and the development of various businesses was booming. When Xu Lei later recalled this work experience, he said, "All my vocational training was completed in two and a half years of Lenovo."
With the blessing of Lenovo's experience, Xu Lei successfully entered The Haoye Advertising Network, the largest professional network marketing service provider in China at that time, and successively served as the sales director of the northern region, the executive director of the customer department, the deputy general manager and the general manager; the service customers included Taobao, Excellent Amazon, China Mobile, Bank of China, Beijing Hyundai, etc.
It was not until 2007 that the "fate" of Xu Lei and Jingdong began.
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Twists and turns on the road
Xu Lei first contacted JD.com, thanks to the matchmaking of intermediary Xu Xin.
In 2007, the daily order processing volume of Jingdong Mall has exceeded 3,000, and the three major logistics systems of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have been built, and in August of the same year, they obtained today's capital investment, but at that time, Jingdong did not even build a complete market structure.
Under the impetus of Xu Xin, the "Queen of Venture Capital" and founding partner of Today Capital, Xu Lei was introduced to Liu Qiangdong.
At that time, although Xu Lei was only in his early thirties, he had become the general manager of Haoye Network. In such a position, any change of Xu Lei needs to be carefully considered, and finally he guides the market work of Jingdong Mall as a market consultant.
According to Li Chengdong, the founder of Dolphin Society, Xu Lei contributed a lot to the early Jingdong mall marketing system and team, and recommended Chu Shiyuan to Jingdong as the marketing director, who worked for the Jingdong marketing department for ten years.
At that time, Xu Lei may not have expected to have such a deep "bond" with this enterprise, and even become the "second position".
Image source: Dolphin Society
In March 2009, the monthly sales of Jingdong Mall exceeded 200 million yuan; in June, the monthly sales exceeded 300 million yuan, which was the same as the annual sales in 2007; the daily order processing capacity has exceeded 20,000 orders.
Also in this year, Xu Lei officially joined JD.com as vice president of marketing of JD Mall, fully responsible for JD Mall advertising promotion, public relations promotion, brand building, government public relations, campus and corporate marketing, etc., and he also became the first CMO in the practical sense of JD.com.
During this period, Xu Lei's achievements were remarkable, not only helping JD.com improve brand awareness and user coverage, but also opening up the book market in addition to the 3C category, and also allowing JD.com to successfully occupy the second place position of China's e-commerce platform.
Surprisingly, In 2011, Xu Lei left JD.com and joined the B2C website U-Buy Shoe City operated by shoe giant Belle International Holdings as the CMO, responsible for U-buy marketing, public relations publicity, brand building and wireless business.
As for the reason for the departure, Xu Lei did not disclose that some media said that he "liked to find new stimuli after taking JD.com to a rapid growth track"; Li Chengdong, the founder of Dolphin Society, learned from insiders that this may involve internal power changes, "Xu Lei once had a lot of power when he first joined JD.com, but as the company grew larger, Xu Lei's power was also weakened and marginalized." ”
Xu Lei's first collaboration with JD.com lasted a short period of two years and ended until he returned again in February 2013 as a senior vice president in charge of marketing.
Li Chengdong learned from informed sources that Xu Lei's return this time is actually "fighting fires" and pulling the Jingdong marketing department back to the lane of "efficiency is king, result-oriented" recognized by Liu Qiangdong; because the former head of market work has been continuing the idea of foreign enterprise work - "big money, more investment", which is not only contrary to Liu Qiangdong's result-oriented concept, but also failed to help Jingdong find a new ROI growth point.
Xu Lei, who returned again, although he had the meaning of being in danger, he did not receive much attention.
In 2015, Xiong Qingyun, former vice president of P&G's Meishang Business Unit in Greater China and "P&G's highest position in the world's local Chinese", joined JD.com in a high profile and was fully responsible for the marketing of JD.com Mall. Xu Lei, the "first comer", was pushed to the business end, responsible for the closed-loop integration of front-end businesses and teams such as the Jingdong Mall APP, PC and WeChat Hand Q, and completed the establishment of the mall marketing platform system.
A clear contrast is that when he was first in charge of marketing work, Xu Lei reported to Liu Qiangdong, but this time he reported to Shen Haoyu, then CEO of Jingdong Mall. The outside world generally interprets this adjustment as Xu Lei "giving way" to Xiong Qingyun, and the "new Jingdong people" are downgraded to make way for the "new new Jingdong people".
This time, Xu Lei did not choose to go away, but did business step by step. In the words of JD Group, he "cultivated a number of excellent teams that dare to fight hard battles and face difficulties around the product development system of the mobile terminal and the platform operation system around the whole life cycle management of users, and made outstanding contributions to the construction and shaping of the JD brand and the strategy of transforming to the mobile terminal".
In 2016, Xu Lei was promoted to senior vice president of JD Group, re-taking over the marketing department, and officially opening his personal "golden age".
In April of the following year, Xu Lei served as the group's CMO, reporting to Liu Qiangdong, and was fully responsible for the integrated marketing functions of the group as a whole, including malls, finance, insurance, logistics, JD cloud and other businesses, as well as the group's overall domestic market public relations strategy planning functions.
After that, Jingdong vaguely emerged from the posture of setting the second position as Xu Lei: in 2018, Jingdong Mall implemented a rotating CEO system, and Xu Lei served as the first rotating CEO; at the beginning of 2019, he explained the business philosophy on behalf of Jingdong Mall at the annual commendation meeting; with the upgrading of Jingdong Mall to Jingdong Retail Group, Xu Lei also became the CEO of Jingdong Retail Group.
"The company was very convinced of him." Some Jingdong insiders said that Xu Lei's business ability is obvious to all, with "three highs": high emotional intelligence, high pattern, and high management level.
"His relationship with JD.com's procurement, marketing, logistics, and technology departments is very good, which is difficult to do." He was approachable even to the media and rarely reported negatively about him. "JD.com's internal employee evaluation.
Until 2021, Xu Lei was appointed president of Jingdong Group, and the position of Jingdong's second boss can be said to be solid; in April 2022, he officially took over the position of CEO of Jingdong Group from Liu Qiangdong and shouldered more pressure.
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Walking "Fearless"
Among Xu Lei's past achievements, the most outsider example is that he successfully built "Jingdong 618" into another e-commerce promotion in addition to Ali's "Double 11".
As we all know, June 18 is the celebration day of Jingdong store, in order to celebrate this day, Jingdong created the theme of "Red June" and began to promote it in 2010.
In 2013, Xu Lei, who returned for the second time, boldly advocated at the Jingdong store celebration month preparation activity that "don't red June anymore, just directly highlight 618". In his view, 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.
But in fact, it is not easy for the company to abandon the publicity strategy of "Red June" and "618".
In an interview with Microscopic Story, Xu Lei recalled, "At the beginning, only 3 people approved of me." But Xu Lei, who has done enough research and preparation work, insists that this is something he must achieve.
"Since I study this every day and have a clear judgment, this truth is in my hands." In the end, at xu Lei's insistence, 618 was a great success.
For the things you love, persevere and act directly. "I am a craftsman who eats by craft at the end of the world, hates to pretend to hold myself, and simply and directly loves and hates to distinguish my personality and independence." This is Xu Lei's evaluation of himself.
Perhaps it is not difficult to understand why he would boldly speak out when Jingdong was on the cusp of the storm. Even though he knew that it might arouse public attention, he still chose to express it euphemistically because "the feeling of not being able to make it feel uncomfortable".
Recently, there is also an interesting chat content circulating on the Internet, which records Xu Lei's "heroic" measures to ensure logistics in the face of the epidemic.
According to Xu Lei, JD.com has a warehouse in Gu'an, Hebei Province, which mainly serves the Beijing area. Some time ago, due to the epidemic situation in Tianjin, Gu'an, Langfang, the warehouse gate in Hebei, the back to Tianjin, Hebei does not allow access, warehouse goods can not be transported out, seriously affected the speed of food distribution in Beijing, "Finally we smashed the back wall of the warehouse, overnight built a road where trucks can enter and exit, and the property, the village said hello, from Tianjin out of a large circle to ensure the supply of Beijing." ”
In this Shanghai epidemic, Xu Lei even took Jingdong to ensure supply at any cost, and he even publicly stated: "In terms of anti-epidemic rescue, we have never spared no effort to count." It is reported that as of April 16, Jingdong Logistics has recruited and mobilized a total of 3246 front-line anti-epidemic supply personnel such as courier brothers and sorters nationwide to go to Shanghai for reinforcements within a week, and the vast majority have arrived in Shanghai; it is expected that the transportation capacity will return to 60% of the pre-epidemic on April 17, and the overall order fulfillment rate will reach about 80% next week.
Not only did he engrave "nothing to be fearless" on his body, Xu Lei also put this creed into action.
However, standing in the position of CEO of Jingdong Group, for Xu Lei, such "nothing to be afraid of" may face more and more costs and challenges.
According to the financial report, jd.com's net revenue in 2021 was 951.6 billion yuan, an increase of 27.6% over 2020; net loss attributable to common shareholders was 3.6 billion yuan, compared with net profit of 49.4 billion yuan in 2020; and net profit attributable to common shareholders based on non-US GAAP was 17.2 billion yuan, slightly up from 2020 (net profit of 16.8 billion yuan).
Today, when the Internet traffic dividend peaks, Jingdong's industry second-in-command position is in jeopardy, not only the number of annual active users is surpassed by the rising star Pinduoduoduo, but also encounters content e-commerce challenges in the live e-commerce industry; originally wanted to explore the sinking market with the help of Jingxi, the business has also shown a trend of layoffs since the end of last year, and Jingdong urgently needs to find a second development curve.
Xu Lei weibo signature
However, according to Xu Lei's consistent style of handling things, he may not be so anxious, just like his signature on Weibo:
"I walk in the rain and never hit the umbrella; I have my own sky, and it never rains."