Wang Jianlin, Ma Huateng and Robin Li joined forces to do e-commerce and failed; Wanda did it itself, but also failed. Is it because Wanda doesn't have internet genes?
Comprehensive Editor| Wu Zhaohan
Photography | Deng Pan
Wang Jianlin's e-commerce dream shattered.
On June 9, according to Interface News, Wanda's e-commerce platform Shanghai XinfeiFei E-commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xinfeifan") is planning to cancel and is doing the final debt liquidation.
There are people, money, and resources, but the new Feifan has not ushered in good results.
In 2012, the prototype of Wanda's e-commerce platform "Teng Million" came out. On August 29, 2014, at the InterContinental Shenzhen Oct Hotel, Wang Jianlin, Ma Huateng and Robin Li smiled at the camera, and their hands clasped together. This is the highlight of Wanda e-commerce, and nothing has been more brilliant before and after.
In 2015, Feifan Network officially debuted, Wang Jianlin, Ma Huateng and Li Yanhong had high hopes for it, but they quickly fell apart. In 2016, the three parties dismantled the partnership, Baidu, Tencent and Wang Jianlin three entities withdrew their shares, and Feifan was also changed to a new Feifan, becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wanda Wangke.
But Xinfeifan still failed to realize Wang Jianlin's e-commerce dream.
At the 2017 annual meeting of Wanda Group, Wang Jianlin admitted that Feifan failed, and he concluded, "In the past, I always wanted to do scale, if I had only developed for Wanda Plaza and tourist resorts from the beginning, I might have become famous a long time ago." "He also said he made a mistake and gave Qu Dejun too much money." If you had given less money, it would have been nice to set an investment cap."
At that time, Wang Jianlin was still optimistic about the prospects of e-commerce, and he re-set the tone for Xinfeifan and asked for solid application software development.
Unfortunately, this adjustment ended in failure.
Feifan collapsed, and Wang Jianlin's e-commerce dream became history. The ups and downs of Wanda e-commerce are a typical sample of the business world that is being deconstructed.
"Chinese Entrepreneur" deeply dissected the reasons for the failure of Wanda e-commerce two years ago, and now the old article is re-promoted to see what lessons are worth learning from Wanda's failure to do e-commerce.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" > the mystery of Wanda's e-commerce failure</h1>
Drawing a parabola with an opening downward, Wanda E-commerce seems to be back to square one. Mr. Wang plans to set up a new network technology company with allies. He claimed that the other side is a world-class network giant, and this plan will surface in the coming months, and the specific business goals will depend on who works with them.
On January 29, 2018, Tencent, as the main sponsor, signed a strategic investment agreement with Suning, JD.com, Sunac and Wanda Commercial in Beijing, planning to invest about RMB34 billion to acquire about 14% of the shares held by investors introduced by Wanda Commercial Hong Kong H-share delisting. At the same time, Tencent will promote strategic cooperation with Wanda's network technology group, and Wanda will maintain its dominance over the integration of online and offline development. Therefore, Tencent is most likely what Wang Jianlin calls a world-class network giant.
Before the old is broken, there are still troubles that need to be solved. The existing Wanda Network Technology Group (hereinafter referred to as Wangke) is in a large-scale layoff storm, with reports that nearly 70% of people are leaving.
Wang Jianlin, who heard the news, was furious. On January 20, 2018, he said at the 2017 annual meeting of Wanda Group, "The online network section lays off 6,000 people, and the net department has a total of 3,000 people, how can it lay off 6,000 people!" Qu Dejun, why don't you come out to refute the rumors? Qu Dejun, as the chairman of the network technology, once said in the WeChat circle of friends that Wanda network technology has not fallen, and the local adjustment is for faster and better development.
The storm is mainly involved in the feifan company under wangke, which carries Wanda's e-commerce dream.
On December 12, 2012, Wang Jianlin and Ma Yun made a bet that in 2020, if e-commerce accounts for more than 50% of China's retail market, Wang will give Ma 100 million, otherwise Ma will give Wang 100 million. The voice is not gone. Wang Jianlin turned around and set out to lay out e-commerce. The next year, the bet was just a joke, and it was constantly increasing in Wanda e-commerce.
But Wanda's embrace online is not a smooth one. In the past five years, Wanda e-commerce has stumbled, the CEO has changed three stubbles, and if you count other Wanda executives who have actually been responsible, there are five or six people at the helm. According to this calculation, there is almost one person in charge a year.
Wanda has not announced the scale of e-commerce's burning money, but it will not be a small amount.
"One of the mistakes I once made was to give Qu Dejun too much money, and I discussed it with some entrepreneurs, who said that when Netco gave less money, it would be good to set an investment ceiling." It seems that the money cannot be given too much. Wang Jianlin reflected.
There are people, there are people, there are resources, but the good results are far away. Wanda's obsession with e-commerce is the anxiety, panic and expectation of a traditional enterprise facing the Internet. The ups and downs of Wanda e-commerce are a typical sample of the business world that is being deconstructed.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" >1</h1>
August 29, 2014, InterContinental Shenzhen. Wang Jianlin, Ma Huateng, and Robin Li smiled at the camera, and their hands were tightly clasped together. This is the highlight of Wanda e-commerce, and nothing has been more brilliant before and after.
The three parties announced that they jointly invested in the registration and establishment of an e-commerce company in Hong Kong, with a total investment of 5 billion yuan in the first phase, of which Wanda held 70% of the shares, Tencent and Baidu each held 15%, and planned to invest 20 billion yuan in five years. The company is Feifan, which the outside world is accustomed to calling "Teng million". Different from Taobao and JD.com, it is Feifan's mission to build a smart life O2O platform. Ma Huateng explained at the time that e-commerce is not completely accurate, and it is more about using the mobile Internet to make the offline real economy more intelligent.
In fact, Wang Jianlin was more interested in cooperating with Ma Yun. "Boss Wang personally found Boss Ma, and Boss Ma was very cold about this matter and did not catch a cold." Han Wenbao (pseudonym), a former executive of Wanda E-commerce, told China Entrepreneur.
Wanda also has internal resistance to Ali. In 2014, Ali negotiated with Wanda to conduct a large-scale online and offline event during the Girls' Day in March of that year. At that time, Ali COO Daniel Zhang came forward to negotiate, and Wanda's senior management promised. Later, due to internal opposition from Wanda, it was abandoned.
The logic of the opponents is that the business essence of the two sides is the same, both attract people through the explosion, and the unit price of the high customer is realized, the difference is only that one party is an entity and the other is virtual. Therefore, Wanda and Ali are competitive and should not cooperate.
What Wanda lacks in e-commerce is traffic and platform experience, and Internet giants are ideal partners. Ali can't, Wang Jianlin turned his head and turned to Tencent and Baidu. At that time, Tencent was vigorously promoting WeChat Pay, Baidu All in O2O, and the offline resources of more than 100 Wanda Plazas were rare rich mines for both.
Dong Ce, former CEO of Wanda E-commerce, told China Entrepreneur that after he entered Wanda E-commerce in February 2014, he began to be responsible for promoting the cooperation of Teng Million, about 7 months ago. All three companies have set up special groups with about 30 people participating. It was very difficult for Wang Jianlin, Ma Huateng and Robin Li to get together, Ma Huateng had an injury to his waist, and after difficult coordination, the three parties chose to hold a press conference in Shenzhen.
A departing executive of Wanda E-commerce gave another version of the statement: Before Dong Ce joined the company, the Teng Million negotiation had begun. At that time, Ma Haiping, COO of Wanda E-commerce, was firmly opposed to cooperation with Ali, he had more than five years of Baidu work experience, and was the director of Baidu's business development department. However, the three parties are based on strategic complementarity, and there are not many details of negotiations.
For Wanda, it doesn't matter who makes the million, what matters is what the million can bring.
On March 3, 2015, Feifan was put into trial operation and officially launched four months later. With the mobile terminal as the main entrance, online and offline integration, providing smart parking, smart catering, smart shopping, etc. It has been more than half a year since the release of Teng Million, and the voice of concern has weakened, and since then, there has been less and less news about Teng Million.
"At the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, for a period of time everyone was still quite close, but slowly they stopped coming and going. Too many things become, walking and walking people are missing, walking and walking things are gone. Zhang Ningyuan (pseudonym), a former middle-level manager of Wanda E-commerce, sighed. He took over with the business departments of Tencent and Baidu, and the direction of cooperation was recognized, usually the technical level was developed, the operation did not follow, and the leader no longer appeared.
At that time, the badges of Zhang Ningyuan and others said Wanda E-commerce, but the labor contract was Wanda Information Technology Co., Ltd. Feifan, registered in 2015, is a brand mascot that has not been widely disseminated, and the outside world still often uses the four words of Wanda e-commerce to refer to Feifan.
"I don't think it's clear enough about the speed of advancement and the rules for mutual cooperation." Wanda e-commerce former and middle-level Liu Liping (pseudonym) to Wanda and Baidu member joint login as an example, there is a top-level design, down still need layers of approval, are from their own interests, great resistance, difficult to implement. Finally, only half done, Baidu account can log in to Feifan, Feifan account can not log in to Baidu.
In the impression of several departing employees of Wanda E-commerce, in 2016, Teng Million was basically not mentioned. Wanda also admitted that Ten million failed.
On August 4, 2016, Feifan said in a statement: Due to the impact of comprehensive factors, the three parties have not realized investment cooperation, Shanghai Xinfeifan E-commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Feifan") is fully funded by Wanda, and Tencent and Baidu have not actually invested any funds.
Ma Yun was right, the three monks had no water to drink. But the correctness of this cooperation cannot be denied because it has not been accomplished; it is a strategic complementarity. Han Wenbao added.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" >2. E-commerce is not special either</h1>
Wanda e-commerce started before Teng million. It's just that since then, the strategy has continued to change, and under the strong goal result orientation, the person in charge has been replaced like a marquee, and there is not even a long enough time and opportunity to prove right and wrong, and many projects do not have a clear result.
In 2012, Gong Yitao became the first CEO of Wanda E-commerce, where he previously worked for Google and Alibaba. At that time, the purpose of Wanda e-commerce was very simple, in the face of the menacing Internet, to achieve the preservation and appreciation of Wanda's offline commercial real estate. After a long period of brewing, in 2013, Wanda E-commerce launched Wanhui Network, mainly to serve Wanda Plaza and do membership system through points.
Wang Jianlin was not satisfied with the effect, Gong was gradually marginalized, and Zhu Zhanbei, CIO of Wanda Group, managed Wanda e-commerce. In Han Wenbao's impression, Gong Yitao went to work and left after work, no one would go to him, and he would not look for anyone else. In early 2014, Gong Yitao officially left his post.
During the period of Zhu escrow, Wanda E-commerce mainly did smart squares, that is, the informatization of Wanda Plaza. He has proposed some tactical directions, such as helping merchants improve their systems, doing membership marketing and precipitation, and data integration, but they have not been well implemented.
In the first half of 2014, Wanda e-commerce entered the era of Dong Ce, Wanhui Network was abandoned, and the strategic direction changed from empowering Wanda Plaza to empowering all formats of Wanda Group. While promoting Teng million, Wanda E-commerce has organized many teams to investigate and discuss various business departments of Wanda and form a plan. Later Feifan, including all of Wanda's offline business scenes.
Dong Ce's deepest impression on employees is that he is diligent, appearing in the company very early every day and leaving at eleven or twelve o'clock in the evening. In June of the following year, Dong Ce suddenly left his post. In a letter to employees, he said, "I had to go back to Australia to take care of my family's illness. According to media reports, in May of that year, many senior executives of Wanda Group went to Beijing Tongzhou Wanda Plaza to assess the progress of the layout of Wanda E-commerce Smart Plaza, and the on-site experience was very poor and there were many problems. Wang Jianlin was very disappointed, and Dong Ce lightning left. In this regard, Dong Ce did not comment.
After Dong Ce left, ren Wei, COO of Wanda e-commerce, temporarily acted as CEO, and then Li Jinling served as CEO for about a year.
At this time, according to Wang Jianlin's requirements, Wanda E-commerce began to expand externally and do platform-level e-commerce. In less than three months, Feifan signed contracts with 470 large commercial centers, while Wanda Plaza only had more than 130 in the country. At the beginning of 2017, Wang Jianlin proposed that 2,000 large shopping malls, 150,000 small and medium-sized businesses, and 70 new small and medium-sized cities should be newly signed that year.
In fact, neither Ren Wei nor Li Jinling has much decision-making power. In 2015, Wanda established a financial group, the next year set up a network technology, Feifan has been subordinate to these two groups, Qu Dejun has also served as the president of these two groups, he is a real voice of the person.
"Ren Wei basically doesn't care about anything when he is an agent, and when he goes through the process, he can see him and approve it." Li Jinling's new official took office with three fires, three or five months, and there was no sound. Tian Chao (pseudonym) said. He was previously a mid-level member of Wanda E-commerce.
At the beginning, Li Jinling hoped to use the smart parking lot view as the entrance to create a flagship plaza, and then replicate it on a large scale. The specific landing plan is to cut into the parking lot scene, analyze the user's consumption habits in the commercial center, profile the user, and then provide a marketing plan. In August 2016, Feifan invested 1.55 billion yuan in smart parking platform ETCP. However, Li Jinling's plan did not continue, his authority became smaller and smaller, and his enthusiasm was lost. It is said that on a business trip, a subordinate reported to him the next day in the car, but he responded, "Are you tired?" I'll talk about it tomorrow. ”
Tian Chao remembered that Qu Dejun used PPT at the meeting of senior executives to talk about some goals and playing styles, but they were too vain to be implemented on the ground, and everyone generally had no sense of direction and did not know why they fought.
In December 2017, Wang Jianlin gave a new direction for the integration of online and offline in Wanda Plaza, artificial intelligence. "We are studying this aspect, for example, you enter the door this system automatically recognizes you, then you go to the store to consume, the system in addition to crawling your data, but also no longer need the payment system, which for the middle-aged and elderly customers who do not play mobile phones to solve the problem." In the future, the main direction of online and offline integration is the large-scale use of artificial intelligence. ”
Recently, Wang Jianlin reflected at the 2017 annual meeting of Wanda Group: we must start from practical results, do not play with concepts, and do not burn big money. The original direction also has a deviation, and I always want to do it on a large scale. If it is developed for Wanda Plaza and tourist resorts, it may have become famous long ago.
According to media reports, Zhu Zhanbei may replace Qu Dejun as the president of the network. But the news has not yet been confirmed by Wanda.
"Wanda e-commerce is not a special place, such as the Wanda Hanxiu I know, which has changed several general managers, and finally went online." Exactly who did it is not necessarily, the company's determination to do this is very firm. Not in the middle, there may be various substitutions, and other formats in Wanda also have. Liu Liping said.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" >3</h1>
All the people at the helm of Wanda E-commerce have encountered the same fatal but difficult to solve problem - wanda group other formats are not supportive enough, or even cooperative.
"To visit the bosses of various formats, the reception is very good, the conversation is very speculative, but after the talks, it is gone, it will always be like this." Han Wenbao shrugged and spread his hands.
Dong Ce led the team to sort out Wanda's various formats, hoping to empower it, relatively speaking, Wanda has the highest degree of commercial cooperation, Wanda cinema line is low, the latter has a layout in terms of membership, online ticketing, etc., and does a good job. The most critical thing is that "each department is saddled with its own KPIs and has to control its own life and death." This is also one of the reasons why Teng Million cannot cooperate deeply.
Wang Jianlin's words also revealed hints.
In August 2014, before TengMillion announced the cooperation, he said at the internal seminar of Wanda E-commerce that he hoped that all leaders above the vice president of the group must have Internet marketing thinking, think about how their business uses the Internet to develop, and how to achieve O2O. Since then, he has often reminded Wanda's leaders at or above the vice president level to have Internet thinking. Until recently, he was still repeatedly persuading that all the system leaders of Wanda, the key is to sit in the first row of these people, to recognize that integrated development is the trend, and if it is not integrated, it will be eliminated.
Ironically, even in the Internet sector of Wanda E-commerce, Internet thinking is precious, especially after the Qude monarchy.
The atmosphere and culture of Fei Fan were completely different from what Tian Chao imagined. He thought that colleagues would talk more about business models, products and entrepreneurship when they got together, but it was office politics, who was fighting with whom. In fact, there are indeed many such infighting.
In February 2017, Yang Xiaosong, who served as the CTO of Wangke Group, intended to replace Cao Dajun, the CTO of Feifan, and Cao once had nothing to do, but finally landed safely. Cao is not the first time this has happened, and employees have said privately, "They can't beat him."
In addition, KPI assessment is not based on projects, but on the performance of individuals within the framework of the department. When Feifan laid out the smart parking system, someone talked about the parking system and charging pile manufacturers, completed the pilot, and could be free offline layout. The head of the department felt that it had little to do with himself, and doing a good job was also to add color to others, and the project was stopped.
Zhang Ningyuan said that basically what the boss wants to do, the bottom is a rush to do it, pointing to the east to the east, pointing to the west to the west. This has led some people to correct their mistakes as a result, and to talk about success or failure based on hard work.
But for Wanda, e-commerce, although difficult, has to be done.
In 2015, Wanda began its fourth transformation. Wang Jianlin hopes that by 2020, four major sectors of commerce, cultural tourism, finance, and e-commerce will be formed, and the transformation will be completely realized.
Later, Wang Jianlin admitted that Wanda O2O had taken a detour and reached an internal consensus to start online finance first. As a result, Feifan was included in the financial group. In October 2016, NetCo was established, which, in addition to Feifan, also includes fast money payment, online credit, credit, Haiding information, etc. Wang Jianlin demanded that Feifan strive to achieve overall profits in 2018, and profits of more than 10 billion yuan in 2020, and the overall listing.
"Every time I see Qu Dejun, I tell you this, anyone can fool you, don't fool me." They say that revenue and profit targets are precisely calculated. I said yes, I will evaluate your goals, and on the basis of your report, I will cut you in half as an assessment goal. Therefore, we must ensure that this year's task is completed, as long as this year's task is completed, the overall profitability of next year will be reliable. This is a passage from Wang Jianlin in early 2017.
According to Wanda's latest disclosed figures, in 2017, netcom's revenue was 5.86 billion yuan, completing 90.1% of the annual plan, and did not complete the task. Compared to the other three business groups, the gap is significant. In 2017, Wanda's commercial real estate income was 112.54 billion yuan, completing 104.1% of the annual plan; Wanda's cultural income was 63.78 billion yuan, completing 100.1% of the annual plan; Wanda's financial income was 32.12 billion yuan, completing 125.5% of the annual plan.
On this basis, it will be extremely difficult for Wanda to achieve the transformation of the four major sectors of commerce, cultural tourism, finance and e-commerce in 2020. It is no wonder that Wang Jianlin wants to set up a new network technology company, and does not forget to add a sentence, "After the strategic partners are determined, the business objectives are determined." This sentence is for the comrades of the Internet Section. ”
Ten million is not OK, can a world-class network giant?
Now, with Fei Fan's announcement of cancellation, this answer is becoming clearer and clearer.
Originally published in China Entrepreneur Magazine, No. 3, 2018, by Guo Chaofei and by Zhai Wenting, editor.