In the past two days, I wonder if everyone has read Liu Qiangdong’s short essays written on the intranet? Brother Dong typed out trembling words with his trembling hands. In the essay, he took the initiative to take the blame, saying that because of his "poor management", JD.com at this stage has a "large, bloated and inefficient organization." In the end, Brother Dong did not forget to cheer up the brothers and said, "No matter what, I will not lie flat... I believe we will definitely get out of the bottom."
Brother Dong has said before that he has two main ways to relieve stress, walking through the desert or drinking a lot of wine.
Judging from the above paragraph, Brother Dong may have had two drinks and was "typing with shaking" in the car in the desert.
In fact, similar to the last time Jack Ma appeared on the intranet, this time Liu Qiangdong was also replying to a post from an internal employee. Brother Dong sent this employee a thousand-word long article in three consecutive clicks:Every sentence mentioned the company's pain points.
We also searched online. According to previous reports from Sanyan Technology and LatePost, the issues pointed out by this employee include:
The promotion mechanism is too complex; the platform's ability to plan major promotions is weak; the platform ecosystem needs to give more support to pop merchants, and the low-price mentality needs to be implemented and implemented by everyone.
The employee also compared “Duoduo” and “Maomao” and felt that if JD.com just followed, catching up would only be a long way off.
To be honest, as a big fan of JD.com, after reading the above, I actually feel the same way.
After all, when we buy some home appliances and digital products for many years, we have always chosen JD.com’s self-operated products without any thought, in order to have fast logistics and worry-free after-sales service.
However, in the past two years, the numerous "tens of billions of subsidies" and the rise of Tmall and Douyin live streaming have indeed diverted the attention of many negative reviewers from JD.com.
There seems to be less discussion about JD.com on the Internet.
In Dong Ge’s reply, Jingdong has even reached the “rock bottom” and reached the point where “if there is no change, there will be no way out”. . .
So Jingdong, what happened?
You may not believe it, but in the past two years, JD.com has not been flat. On the contrary, it has made considerable moves.
Probably since last year’s Double Eleven, Dong Ge, who has been rumored to have retired to the mountains and forests, has resurfaced and denounced executives for cheating him with PPTs.
I still remember that during that “rage”, Liu Qiangdong also planned JD.com’s next strategy: emphasizing the advantage of low prices and saying “Low price was the most important weapon for our success in the past, and it will also be the only basic weapon in the future.".
Just a few days later, Liu Qiangdong began to "rectify the workplace", such as splitting business groups and shuffling the executives of each business group.
Until the first half of this year, changes continued. Xu Lei, the former CEO of JD.com Group, retired due to personal reasons, and the original CFO Xu Ran took over.
What followed was another permutation and combination of the core management of JD Logistics, JD Production, JD Health and other companies.
But this is not over yet. After JD.com released its third quarter financial report last month, it made another change. Xin Lijun, CEO of JD Retail, its largest business pillar, gave way to Xu Ranlai. . .
At the same time as the personnel changes, JD.com has also made continuous strategic adjustments. For example, this year it restarted Jingxi Pinpin to get involved in community group buying, and launched tens of billions of subsidies in an attempt to compete with Pinduoduo. . .
But after constantly changing generals and making various moves, what is the result?
It can only be said that there are no obvious results yet.
It can be seen from the recent third quarter financial report that JD.com is not having an easy time.
Overall revenue and JD.com’s retail revenue have only grown slightly, but according to our understanding, JD.com’s performance in the fourth quarter may have a good recovery.
However, the slowdown in growth and the backlash from peers have made internal employees a little anxious, which is why Dong Ge wrote a short essay to reply to employees' opinions.
As for those questions that were solved by Dong Ge three times with one click, we found Cao, an old store manager in the e-commerce industry.
The small home electronics store he runs was started by Pinduoduo and has been developed on JD.com for more than three years.
In Lao Cao's eyes, the market situation of JD.com this year is really a bit worrying.
In previous years, JD.com would invest a lot of traffic on WeChat and other platforms, but this year this part of the traffic is significantly less: "The traffic in the entire industry is declining, and this year the promotion fee ratio (promotion fee to sales) has almost doubled."
Not only that, merchants often feel bored when participating in JD.com’s activities.
For example, the tens of billions of subsidy activities launched by JD.com this year were mentioned earlier. According to Lao Cao, there are many tricks in this.
Because except for the top single products of various categories, other merchants participating in the tens of billions of subsidy activities basically need to bear the cost of the merchants themselves. The most is to reduce the "basic deduction point from 2% to 0.6%", which is still a bit weak.
What’s even more serious is thatBalancing self-operated and third-party merchants has always been a headache for JD.com, JD.com has also been promoting preferential treatment to third-party merchants in the past two years.
But when we mentioned this, Lao Cao couldn't help complaining that there were profits, but not much, and the traffic tilt that merchants needed more was not there.
Moreover, during the major promotion period, JD.com will also require merchants to keep prices low compared to other platforms. If they do not comply, they will be forced to follow the price or have their products removed from the shelves.
This also caused the "Hai's Oven" controversy before Double Eleven, which once again made people sigh. In the eyes of some merchants, the bargaining power of a large platform like JD.com is not even as good as that of a goods-carrying anchor. . .
Not only that, Lao Cao said that JD.com is obviously saving money this year. In the past, JD.com would pay out of its own pocket to issue a lot of subsidy coupons to merchants to help merchants sell goods during the big promotion period. But this year, the platform and merchants each need to pay half of the subsidy coupons.
"What happened to Jingdong?" Lao Cao was also conveying his doubts to us.
And all I can say is: "Sir, times have changed.".
Judging from the historical performance, Brother Dong returned to JD.com twice before, and he did indeed achieve the return of the king twice and brought JD.com out of despair.
However, that was all based on the rising period of the domestic e-commerce market. At that time, domestic e-commerce was like a land full of oil. As long as you were willing to dig, there would always be oil.
Therefore, with Dong Ge’s vigorous and resolute playing style, it is not difficult to find two pots of gold in the incremental market.
Moreover, at that time, JD.com also had self-built logistics, top-notch after-sales service, and a golden brand name of self-operated products without fakes.
However, with the onslaught of tens of billions of subsidies from Pinduoduo, the rise of Taobao live streaming, Douyin live streaming, and even Xiaohongshu live streaming. . .
Jingdong seems to be less prominent and even slightly invisible.
Falling behind happens so unconsciously.
It was after encountering so many difficulties that Brother Dong, who returned, thought of picking up the magic weapon he relied on for survival: low prices.
During last year’s Double Eleven, Dongzi sent a message in an internal email: Low prices are our only basic weapon in the future.
But paradoxically, so far,JD.com shouted the low-price slogan, but let merchants help pay for it., just like the tens of billions of subsidies mentioned earlier, businesses need to cut prices and reduce prices, and businesses that issue coupons have to bear half of the amount.
If Pinduoduo were to do this, merchants might just put up with it. After all, the goal is small profits but quick turnover.
But nowadays, many merchants enter JD.com to obtain high premiums, so merchants are reluctant to cooperate.
And for us consumers, you say the price is low, but the various coupon discount mechanisms are complicated and difficult to understand, far less simple and clear than next door.
Not only that, as Brother Dong said of JD.com “The organization is large, bloated and inefficient”, reform is also quite laborious.
As early as 618 this year, there were media reports that JD.com was pushing “promotion simplification”.
But the result is that in addition to following Taobao and Tmall in canceling the full discount on orders, the price is reduced directly. .
We also ran to ask the relevant personnel within JD.com, and the other party responded "Currently in the process of landing, unable to answer".
More than half a year has passed since we co-authored it, and we still can’t finish optimizing the promotion plan?
Having said that, this is not the first time that JD.com has encountered such a so-called "crisis". The first two times, they all landed safely.
In the opinion of negative reviewers, on the surface it is Dongge who is turning the tide, but in essence, JD.com’s foundation is stable enough.
There are not a few merchants like Lao Cao who have expanded from Pinduoduo to open stores on JD.com. He told us that JD.com still has many advantages:
“JD’s logistics after-sales service still has great advantages; the Plus membership system has also gathered quite a lot of loyal customers; there are many users who pursue quality and are less sensitive to consumer discounts, and the decision-making time of ordering is short, giving merchants room to earn high profits. “
It can be said that in JD.com’s e-commerce story, buyers are happy, sellers are happy, and the platform makes a lot of money.
Moreover, focusing on user experience and low prices are the magic weapons for JD.com to get started.
Looking back, the brother who spoke passionately on the intranet did list JD.com’s pain points.
If we can simplify promotions, keep up with the trend of the times, provide more snacks and support to third-party merchants in addition to self-operation, and truly provide discounts to us ordinary consumers, then JD.com will definitely be able to continue to support itself.
As Brother Dong said, "The foundation of JD.com is still there."