This article is from the WeChat public account “Tencent Deep Web” (ID: qqshenwang) < span class = "text-remarks">, author: Hong Sun Chao, Publisher: deep web · Tencent Xiaoman studio.

In December 2018, Xu Lei, with almost all core executives of JD Mall, held a three-day, three-night long meeting in Zhaoqing, Guangdong.

Before this meeting, Xu Lei also arranged the operation analysis department to set up a project called “Darkest Hour”, which was designated as a special security level. Recalling the original intention of the project, Xu Lei said that JD Retail must change, “to let everyone know how serious the actual situation is.”

This “big courtyard brother, tattooed man” recommended by Jingdong’s early investor Xu Xin into Jingdong has become the actual operator of this super e-commerce giant in 2019. For JD.com, this is the best successor. According to media reports, in the JD. System, Xu Lei is one of the few executives who can directly argue with Liu Qiangdong. In the past ten years of Jingdong’s career, Xu Lei has performed well in a number of key positions. When the big ship of Jingdong encountered wind and waves, Xu Lei went to the front desk logically.

On the last day of 2019, JD.com’s stock price stayed at $ 35.23; on the last day of 2018, JD.com stock price remained at $ 22.27.

Few people have noticed that the word “rotation” in Xu Lei’s former CEO position has been quietly removed.

Leading JD.com back to its peak in a year is not easy, but Xu Lei remains sober. “Time is the best friend and the worst enemy.” In his view, JD.com The retail transformation takes 3 years or more. In the first year, JD.com stabilized its position, adjusted its formation, and formed a unified strategy. This is to recuperate, line up, and adjust weapons, ammunition, and grain to the most Okay, “I define myself that this is only 15% of the transformation, and the real battle has just begun.”

Being in danger

Xu Lei’s takeover is not a good time.

In January 2019, Temasek liquidated its JD stock. In the past year, JD.com’s stock price has fallen from more than 50 US dollars to less than 20 US dollars, a decline of more than 60%. More capital is watching on the edge of the ship. Once there are signs of overturning, it is difficult to imagine that they will stay on the battleship like Xu Lei.

After all the storms hit, Jingdong’s fourth quarter 2018 financial report shows that the quarterly GMV growth rate has dropped from 33.1% in the same period of the previous year to 27.52%, and has fallen below 30% for the first time. 61%, a decrease of 41%, a decrease of 33%; the growth rate of active users, from 27.6% in the same period of the previous year, decreased to 4.38%; the net loss of continuing operations, from 900 million yuan in the same period of the previous year, to 4.8 billion RMB.

Even JD.com ’s strongest supporters have to admit that 2018 is the year of JD.

Jingdong once kicked off 2018 with a wave of stock price surges that lasted for two months. Outsiders commented that JD.com was “over the limit of Baidu”.

Since then, JD.com’s stock has dived all the way. Under the background that many domestic technology companies have impacted the US stock market and the Hong Kong stock market, JD.com’s stock price has almost cut, and the final market value is less than 30 billion US dollars. Compared with the goal of hitting Baidu at the beginning of the year, the market value has not been surpassed by the upstarts and has become a more realistic goal for JD.com at the end of the year.

Unfortunately, although JD.com has held the bottom line of market capitalization, it has been surpassed in many data levels. The third quarter of last year’s financial report showed that JD.com ’s annual active users declined, down 3% from 303.8 million in the previous quarter to 305.2 million, while Pinduoduo has completely surpassed JD.com in terms of annual active users. According to Questmobile data, Jingdong also lags behind Pinduoduo in terms of user usage frequency and duration.

In fact, such data can show that the “black swan incident” was not the most important reason for JD.com’s stock price decline. Before the incident, JD.com’s stock price continued to fall.

In 2018, the external environment was not friendly to JD. The entire capital market entered a cold period this year. Many investment institutions have told Deep Web that in this environment, investment institutions prefer to have projects with faster cash returns. At the beginning of the year, JD.com ’s cornerstone investor Gao Feng Capital withdrew from JD.com ’s major shareholders. Gao Yong is one of JD.com ’s main capital sources. He invested heavily in US $ 300 million in JD. ’S early stage and played a very important role in JD ’s own logistics construction.Roles.

This is not the first time Jingdong has encountered a major crisis. When the Asian financial crisis broke out 10 years ago, Jingdong almost died because of a problem with the capital chain, but eventually Jingdong reversed the wind and eventually grew into one of the two e-commerce poles in China .

Jingdong has accelerated the pace of change after the toughest times.

Xu Jin Liu Tui

In the past year or so, Liu Qiangdong, the iconic figure of Jingdong, has rarely appeared in large-scale business meetings of the company, except for high-level management meetings.

The former founder of JD.com began to learn to decentralize, and Liu Qiangdong put more time into thinking about the way out and future of the group.

At the end of 2018, JD.com conducted a new round of organizational restructuring. This adjustment is called the largest organizational structure change in the history of JD. JD Mall is divided into three parts: the front desk, the middle desk, and the back office; the platform operation business department, the purchasing business department are newly established, and the fresh food business department is integrated into 7 Fresh; At the same time, Xu Lei was pushed to the front and served as the rotating CEO. The three major business groups within Jingdong reported from Liu Qiangdong to Xu Lei.

After this change, Liu Qiangdong, the founder, chairman and CEO of JD Group, became more like a spiritual leader within JD, and Xu Lei smoothly became a “group commander” from his original war fighter status. At the beginning of this year, Xu Lei made his first appearance as the rotating CEO of JD Mall and issued his “Inaugural Speech”: JD Mall’s future business philosophy is “credibility based on trust and customer-centric value creation.”

Xu Lei said that in the past year, it can be said that the internal and external environment has changed the most in the history of JD. After more than ten years of rapid growth, the mall has entered a period of great change, and various uncertainties The situation is sudden.

“But we must be sure that, although we have encountered many difficulties,