Liu Qiangdong, fifty only
Liu Qiangdong, who was born on Valentine's Day, has just celebrated his fiftieth birthday.
Fifty years old is the end of the career for the average person, but for the founder of the world's top 500 companies, it is the year to fight. What's more, among that generation of entrepreneurs, Liu Qiangdong, who started his business in his 20s, was quite young.
In the past year, Liu Qiangdong, who returned to Jingdong Taiwan, made a series of big moves, trying to make the giant ship Jingdong turn its head and return to the right course in the context of changing wind direction. The figure at the helm seems to have returned to the early days of JD.com.
Liu Qiangdong is only fifty, and he still has inexhaustible strength.
Reorganize JD.com, Liu Qiangdong quickly cut through the mess
At the JD management training meeting in November 2022, Liu Qiangdong said angrily: "Executives talk too much about bells and whistles, but too little about cost, efficiency, and experience. ”
Liu Qiangdong's dissatisfaction with senior executives has given birth to JD.com's drastic reform of the management team and organizational structure in 2023. The first of these swords is swung at the organizational structure.
On April 12, 2023, JD Retail launched a new round of organizational structure adjustment, which mainly includes three aspects.
First, the business group system was abolished and adjusted to the business division system. The former head of the business group serves as the head of the business department;
Second, each business unit under the overall management of the original business group will be divided into many procurement and sales combat units according to subdivided categories, giving category leaders more autonomy in operation and management decision-making, including personnel appointment and dismissal;
Third, in the split procurement and sales units, there is no longer a distinction between POP business and JD's self-operated business, and the two are fully connected, managed by a unified category leader, and further realize the "equal rights" of traffic.
It can be seen that Liu Qiangdong wants to make the organizational structure flatter and let the front-line grassroots managers have more power, so as to make the business more flexible, more flexible and efficient to respond to market changes, and "more able to fight". On the other hand, after the unified leadership of POP and self-operated business, the change of assessment standards can also make the competition between POP and self-operated more fair and activate the vitality of POP merchants.
The second knife was swung to the CEO's position. On May 11, 2023, Xu Lei resigned as CEO of JD.com Group and was replaced by Xu Ran, the former CFO. For this sudden decision, both inside and outside JD.com were very surprised, after all, it was only a year since he took over as JD.com's CEO from Liu Qiangdong.
Xu Lei
Moreover, when Xu Lei entered JD.com, it was the most anxious stage of competition between JD.com and Tmall. In the past ten years, Xu Lei has created killer features such as JD 618 and JD PLUS membership system, and gradually established the brand awareness of "high-end", "quality" and "guaranteed", and successfully resisted the offensive of Tmall, which can be described as a major contributor to JD.
However, the times have changed, consumption upgrading and rapid expansion have become a thing of the past, and Xu Lei's style of playing with big opening and closing may no longer be suitable for the current cautious stock era. Ali Daniel Zhang's exit may be the same reason.
In contrast, Xu Ran, who was born as a CFO, is more "money-saving", has more experience in risk management and resource allocation, and has a "financial perspective" that is more suitable for the current low-price era, so Liu Qiangdong chose Xu Ran to lead JD.com.
Xu Ran
As for the third knife, it fell towards the number one leader of the business line. On June 26, 2023, there were changes in the heads of several businesses of JD.com:
Yu Rui, CEO and executive director of JD Logistics, stepped down and was replaced by Hu Wei, the former CEO of JD Industrial Development, while Cao Dong, former CFO of JD Health, took over as CEO of JD Industrial Development. Yan Weipeng, the former head of JD's retail technology R&D and data center and vice president of the group, stepped down and was replaced by Shang Xin, head of its transaction service R&D department.
The high-level adjustment reflects the synergy with the CEO change and the adjustment of the organizational structure, and also shows that the focus of JD.com's attention is changing.
Through three major adjustments, Liu Qiangdong quickly cut through the chaos and prepared for the change in wind direction.
Embracing users with low prices, Liu Qiangdong is by no means ambiguous
In the past year, almost all e-commerce platforms have emphasized user first, and JD.com is no exception.
In December 2023, Liu Qiangdong spoke on the Jingdong intranet: "We say that customers come first every day, but we think about ourselves everywhere in our work......!
Liu Qiangdong of Jingdong intranet spoke
From Liu Qiangdong's words, it can be seen that he is determined to put users first. So what do users need? Liu Qiangdong, who was born in the countryside and lived a hard life, knows very well that only a real low price is what users want most. As Liu Qiangdong said before: "Low price is the most important weapon for JD.com's success in the past, and it will also be the only basic weapon in the future."
And low prices have always been a tough battle, which needs to be done with real knives and guns, and there is no room for ambiguity. Therefore, Liu Qiangdong chose to take the lead with the hardest "10 billion subsidy".
In March 2023, JD.com officially launched a 10 billion subsidy channel. According to statistics conducted by a third-party organization, POP goods account for more than 60% of the tens of billions of subsidized goods. However, in terms of the proportion of sales, self-operated sales accounted for 75%, which is almost three times that of POP sales. This means that the tens of billions of subsidies at that time were really realized by Jingdong "out of pocket".
It turns out that Liu Qiangdong's low-price strategy is correct. According to the financial report for the third quarter of 2023, JD.com beat Ali with a revenue of 247.7 billion, far exceeding Pinduoduo, and its profits have not fallen. In the face of menacing attacks, it is not easy to maintain this data.
Source: Net Economic Society
Of course, subsidies alone are not enough, so Liu Qiangdong opened up a second battlefield - the live broadcast room. When it came to live e-commerce in the past, the public seemed to only have Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou in the eyes of the public, and they had no impression of JD.com.
But to everyone's surprise, JD really did the live broadcast. During last year's Double 11, Jingdong's live broadcast room was really popular and frequently appeared on hot searches. According to incomplete statistics, more than 140 million consumers poured into the live broadcast room in the first week of the live broadcast, and the highest audience of the live broadcast of home appliances reached more than 10 million people.
Even though the live broadcast room is quite simple, even if there are no big-name anchors, Jingdong procurement and marketing still relies on "sao operations" such as shouting Li Jiaqi and shouting Pinduoduo to gain momentum, and find its place in the crowded live broadcast track.
Taking advantage of the popularity of Jingdong's procurement and sales, Liu Qiangdong sent another "surprise soldier" - party sponsorship. Jingdong first sponsored Satellite TV's New Year's Eve party and "sent" more than 100 cars, and even Liu Qiangdong gave away his own car, which made the attention unprecedentedly higher.
Source: Jingdong intranet
Later, Liu Qiangdong directly released a big move and became the exclusive interactive cooperation platform for the 2024 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, giving away 100 million physical gifts and 3 billion red envelopes, and 10 lucky viewers won the "Huawei All-Scene Flagship Product and Wenjie M9 Car" award with a total value of 600,000.
We all know that the Spring Festival Gala is an excellent opportunity for publicity. JD.com's appearance on the Spring Festival Gala can get as close to users as possible, so that thousands of households can feel the sincerity of JD.com; at the same time, the red envelopes in the sky can also quickly establish a low-price mentality and reach users in the sinking market.
Decisive killing, pursuit of victory, and the real style is vividly reflected in the low-price strategy.
Knowing the destiny of heaven at fifty is a kind of open-mindedness for Liu Qiangdong
Zi said, "Thirty and stand, forty and not confused, fifty and know the destiny of heaven", many people understand "knowing the destiny of heaven" as a compromise of fate. However, a more reasonable explanation is that although the Mandate of Heaven refers to the fact that after 50 years, he is still angry and forgets his food and worries, but he has become indifferent to personal honor and disgrace and has an open-minded attitude.
And Liu Qiangdong's "open-mindedness" is reflected in his attitude towards others. Looking back on several speeches by Liu Qiangdong in the past year, they all reveal his concern for "brothers" and respect for users. What's more, Liu Qiangdong will not only speak, but also fulfill his promises with practical actions.
Treating employees, Liu Qiangdong gives high-level treatment in the industry and affirms their labor with salary. At the end of last year, JD.com announced a 100% salary increase for JD.com's front-line business personnel, and the average salary increase for all JD retail employees will not be less than 20%. On February 5 this year, JD.com announced a 30% salary increase for more than 20,000 JD.com front-line customer service.
Source: Jingdong Blackboard News public account
"Let the employees who work hard for the enterprise live a more dignified work and life, as long as the conditions allow, we must give them the best treatment, so that they have no worries", Liu Qiangdong's promise a year ago has been fulfilled at this moment.
treats fellow villagers, Liu Qiangdong regards them as his family members and gives good gifts from time to time. During this year's Spring Festival, Liu Qiangdong sent a super New Year's gift to Lailong Town, Suqian, Jiangsu, including more than 1,300 Bosideng down jackets and more than 1,300 Jingdong supermarket nut gift boxes. It is said that the large gift box prepared by Liu Qiangdong weighs 11 catties, which can be described as full of sincerity.
Source: Weibo
Although Liu Qiangdong's move is suspected of building momentum for the Jingdong New Year's Festival, as soon as there is a good thing, he thinks of his father and fellow villagers, and this kind of blessed quality is really valuable among entrepreneurs.
Treating ordinary people who don't know each other, Liu Qiangdong is also willing to do his best to give a helping hand to those in need. In the recent earthquake in Gansu, Jingdong Group immediately set up an emergency response team, quickly activated the emergency rescue plan, and urgently allocated drinking water, food, warm clothes and other materials from a number of nearby warehouses and transported them to the disaster area by special personnel and vehicles.
In addition, Liu Qiangdong also launched the JD public welfare "Starlight Passes on Children's Hearts to Read" program, inviting JD caring users to recommend high-quality books and donate books to rural children, so that children between urban and rural areas can share the joy of reading with each other.
It is the open-mindedness that does not forget to fulfill social responsibilities in this crisis, as well as the never-say-die optimism, that gives people reason to believe that Liu Qiangdong can lead JD.com out of the haze and back to the top.
The unremitting struggle to realize business ideals is the best birthday gift given to him by 50-year-old Liu Qiangdong.
Author | The wind is clear