"I will never allow myself to occupy JD.com shares without control and play with investors." Liu Qiangdong's bold words in front of reporters are now becoming a reality. Recently, Liu Qiangdong once again sold 45% of the equity of Jingdong company to Miao Qin, vice president of Jingdong, which also made Liu Qiangdong, who has been silent for a long time since the Mingzhou incident, once again on the hot topic.
The Mingzhou incident four years ago plunged Liu Qiangdong and Jingdong into the whirlpool of public opinion. In the face of public doubts, Jingdong issued an announcement in a timely manner to clear up relations with Liu Qiangdong. Even then Liu Qiangdong was acquitted. But its position in Jingdong is no longer what it used to be.
In the following days, Liu Qiangdong successively withdrew from the management of more than 200 JD.com enterprises. In April this year, Liu Qiangdong announced that he would step down as CEO of JD.com and hand over to Xu Lei. All kinds of indications show that Dongge, the founder of Jingdong in the past, is running counter to Jingdong. The link between the two has become increasingly fragile.
Now China's Internet industry is ushering in a new round of reshuffle, and many well-known Internet tycoons have successively delegated power, retreated to the second line, and even bid farewell to the business community. The wheel of the times is rolling forward, Liu Qiangdong is not the first, but the probability is not the last. Looking back at Liu Qiangdong's family history, who would have thought that he would come to this point?
First, the village and town teenagers, brave to break into Beijing
Liu Qiangdong was born at the bottom, since he was a child, his family was poor, his parents could not take care of him for a living for a living for many years, and the young Liu Qiangdong had to learn to make everything by himself. This also allowed him to cultivate a self-reliant and independent thinking personality from an early age. Coupled with the life experience in the countryside, compared with the vigorous behavior of other business tycoons, calling the wind and rain, Liu Qiangdong has more kindness and compassion, and looks more grounded.
In the 1990s, Liu Qiangdong graduated from high school and was successfully admitted to the Department of Sociology of Chinese University. The villagers learned that Liu Qiangdong was admitted to a famous school, and gathered together to collect five hundred yuan to give to Qiangdong, so that he could suffer less in college and study well. Liu Qiangdong was very grateful, solemnly accepted the kindness of the villagers, and then sewed the five hundred yuan into his underwear.
In this way, the teenager who grew up in the village and town bravely entered Beijing with his dream and five hundred yuan. In the next few decades, he will cut through the thorns and eventually become a world-famous business tycoon.
Second, part-time in college, entrepreneurial failure
Liu Qiangdong's first goal after entering the university is to achieve economic independence and no longer ask for money from his family in the days to come. For this reason he has frequently participated in many part-time jobs since the beginning of his freshman year. In 1993, China connected to the first network cable, which opened the door to the Internet. At the same time, Liu Qiangdong was also fascinated by computer programming. In order to learn programming, he often slept in the computer room in college. The kung fu pays off, and Liu Qiangdong, who has achieved success, successfully won the first bucket of gold by writing software for the company. At this time, he was just a sophomore.
Liu Qiangdong, who made money, did not slacken off, and he worked harder to write software for enterprises: writing power systems for the power company in his hometown, and writing cash register systems for fast food restaurants. At the same time, other part-time jobs did not stop. By the senior year, Liu Qiangdong, who insisted on "making money" for four years, had saved nearly 200,000 belongings.
At this moment, the confident Dongge decided to do a big job, so he scraped up some money from his relatives and bought a restaurant near the school to be transferred, ready to do a catering business. Liu Qiangdong's idea is good, he wants to make a chain of restaurants. And the first restaurant was also cleverly opened near the university, and the students' money was relatively easy to earn. As long as the business is stable, the scale of expansion is not a problem.
However, Liu Qiangdong, who has just entered the society, is still put together by his own employees. Liu Qiangdong treats his employees very well, not only providing accommodation for employees, but also having two meat and two vegetarian meals every day. The most important thing is that the salary treatment has been doubled.
But Liu Qiangdong's kindness did not make employees admit their feelings. Instead, employees are greedy for money because of their trust: chefs buy food at high prices and eat kickbacks. The front desk does not write statements and falls in love with the cook. The young man who buys vegetables keeps rising in price, bean sprouts from 8 corners to 2 yuan, beef from 8 yuan to 17 yuan... In the end, the restaurant lost money one after another, Liu Qiangdong had to close the restaurant, and the more than 200,000 yuan saved before was also put in.
The experience of the failure of this meal business has had a profound impact on Liu Qiangdong, and many years later, he recalled in an interview with reporters: he not only had to bear the responsibility for the bankruptcy of the restaurant, but also the responsibility of not educating the staff.
Third, work in foreign companies and establish JD.com
However, the tenacious Liu Qiangdong was not defeated. After graduating from university, he entered a foreign company. In the two years of working in foreign companies, Liu Qiangdong learned the most about accurate management. To a large extent, this has also affected the corporate culture of JD.com in the future.
In 1988, Liu Qiangdong, whose entrepreneurial passion was rekindled, resigned from his job in a foreign company without his parents and rented a small counter in Zhongguancun, Beijing, to start his second business. At that time, he mainly sold recorders and CDs. The name of the counter is "Jingdong Multimedia", which is the predecessor of Jingdong. But the business competition in Zhongguancun, Beijing, is fiercer than Liu Qiangdong imagined, more than a dozen stores are doing the same business, and the annual sales of larger stores have reached tens of millions. This made Liu Qiangdong, who only had more than 10,000 yuan of entrepreneurial funds, feel difficult.
In order to expand sales, Liu Qiangdong has to go out every day to hand out leaflets. At the same time, in order to compete with the differentiation of large stores, Liu Qiangdong began to learn to pay more attention to the needs of customers, buy a burner and send a fool-like multimedia system. At that time, in the case of counterfeit goods in Zhongguancun and the store was bullying, Liu Qiangdong stood up and was the first to promise customers that they would never sell fakes, and insisted on providing customers with repair and return and replacement services. In this way, Jingdong Multimedia became more and more popular and began to represent Yamaha, NEC and other big brands.
In 2001, Jingdong has become the largest optomagnetic product agent in the country at that time. But at the same time, JD.com's gross profit has also fallen sharply. Liu Qiangdong realized that Jingdong's development had encountered a bottleneck. After much thought, Liu Qiangdong decided to imitate Gome's business model as a retail store. Liu Qiangdong's decision allowed JD.com to enter a high-speed expansion. By 2003, JD.com had 12 stores.
Fourth, SARS is coming, and the desperate situation is coming
The success of the retail store made Liu Qiangdong breathe. But just as the so-called good things are more grinding, just when Liu Qiangdong is preparing to expand further, in 2003, "SARS" came. Liu Qiangdong does not want any employees to be infected with SARS because of their work. So he gave his employees a long vacation.
Employees are safe, but JD.com's crisis has not been lifted at all. At that time, JD.com was facing great inventory pressure. And because of the impact of SARS, the price of IT products has dropped again and again. At that time, Jingdong was facing a desperate situation. In order to survive, Liu Qiangdong had to abandon the plan of retail store chains and inquire around for a way out.
Kung Fu pays off, and Liu Qiangdong, who inquired around, heard that someone was selling things online. At that time, although Liu Qiangdong was a "network blind", he still created an online mall for Jingdong, installed an Internet cable for the company, and pulled the few remaining employees to post advertisements around on major Internet forums. Finally, a forum moderator recognized JD.com and knew that JD.com does not sell fakes. JD.com's online business started like this.
Soon after the end of "SARS", but Jingdong's online mall became more and more popular, in 2004, the increasingly popular online business made Liu Qiangdong finally make up his mind to close all offline stores and completely transform Jingdong into an e-commerce company.
In 2007, JD.com received its first round of financing, followed by JD.com's emergence among e-commerce companies and its successful listing in the United States in 2014. At this time, Jingdong has become an e-commerce giant, and Liu Qiangdong's personal wealth has also grown. Everything looks wonderful.
Fifth, Liu Qiangdong and milk tea sister
When Liu Qiangdong is mentioned, he has to mention the milk tea sister Zhang Zetian. As Liu Qiangdong's wife, Zhang Zetian has been active in the public eye for a long time. Some people say that this is "showing kindness and love", and some people feel that this is purely to create momentum for the development of JD.com.
Zhang Zetian became an Internet celebrity when he was a student because of a photo of holding milk tea, and then he was successfully admitted to Tsinghua University. In 2014, their relationship was exposed. A year later the two married in Australia and had children shortly thereafter. Everything seemed to be going well, but the "Mingzhou Incident" of 2018 cast a shadow over the marriage of the two.
The Mingzhou incident refers to the September 2, 2018, when Liu Qiangdong was arrested in Minnesota on suspicion of sexually assaulting a female college student. Although subsequent investigations proved Liu Qiangdong's innocence. But this incident still caused a series of impacts on Jingdong and Liu Qiangdong. Jingdong issued an announcement shortly after the incident that everything was Liu Qiangdong's personal behavior and had nothing to do with Jingdong. And Liu Qiangdong has also been deeply involved in the whirlpool of negative public opinion for a long time.
Now it seems that Liu Qiangdong's continuous decentralization in Jingdong may also have a lot to do with the Mingzhou incident. Before the Mingzhou incident, Liu Qiangdong had always appeared in front of everyone with a positive image, which was also a façade for Jingdong. But after the Mingzhou incident, the situation has completely changed, JD.com's stock price has fallen sharply in a short period of time, and even now that the incident has ended for two years, JD.com may no longer tolerate its association with Liu Qiangdong, who has a negative image.
However, recently, someone photographed Liu Qiangdong and Zhang Zetian visiting a supermarket in Minneapolis, USA, and in the photo, Zhang Zetian was obviously pregnant, and the two expressions were relaxed and sweet. Some people feel that this means that the marriage between the two has not been affected by the Mingzhou incident, and some people feel that this is still "showing". But no matter what, the two of them have come all the way and faced countless rumors, which is really not easy.
epilogue
Today's Jingdong has become a household name, I believe that even if it is separated from Liu Qiangdong's "aura", Jingdong can continue to develop, continue to explore, and still maintain the leading position in the e-commerce industry in the future, and continue to bring a good consumer experience to users. For Liu Qiangdong, leaving JD.com is not the first setback he has faced in his life. Life is such ups and downs, no one can be brilliant forever, and Liu Qiangdong, who has been reborn in desperate situations several times, is no exception.