Visual China.
The new official took office with three fires, and Wu Yongming served as the CEO of Taotian Group for only 2 days, and he released the first fire: a major personnel adjustment.
At 3 p.m. on December 22, Taotian Group issued a letter to all employees, and the entire core management was replaced. The original "Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Development Center", "Brand Business Development Center" and "Supermarket Business Development Center" were renamed, and the original independent sectors such as content and product technology and the new growth apparel development department were set up in six major divisions.
Wu Yongming said in the internal letter: The board of directors of Taotian Group announced the following organizational decisions and appointments: 1. Wu Jia led the user platform division and Alimama division;2. Chen Weiye (nickname: Division) led the ** Business Division, Taotian Merchant Platform Department, and Taotian Customer Satisfaction Department3. Liu Bo (nickname: Jia Luo) led the Tmall Division;4. Liu Yiman (nickname: Yiman) leads the M2C business department;5. Wang Tingxiang (nickname: Shaoyou) led the clothing development department;6. Cheng Daofang (nickname: Daofang) leads the ** live broadcast and content division. Wu Yongming pointed out that the above responsible persons all reported to Wu Yongming.
Judging from the background of the six "generals" who were entrusted with important responsibilities, two were transferred to Taotian Group from other business groups. They are Wu Jia and Chen Weiye.
Wu Jia is now the general manager of Alibaba's intelligent information business group (including Quark Division, UC Division, Shuqi Division, Intelligent Marketing Platform and other business sections), and this time he took over the product technology line of the original Taotian Group, and added the search recommendation business and Alimama supervised by Sihan, the former head of the platform center.
Chen Weiye, the former COO of Ele.me and the head of retail in the same city, was transferred to Taotian Group. In this adjustment, he is in charge of the "Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Development Center", the * Business Department, the Taotian Merchant Platform Department, and the Taotian Customer Satisfaction Department, which were once managed by Wang Hai. Before joining Ele.me, he was active in the Tao Department for a long time, serving as the person in charge of Xianyu and the operation of ** network products. In Ele.me, the department is mainly responsible for the merchant-side business. Born in 1982, he has been with Alibaba for 16 years and is one of the few managers with product capabilities.
For Taotian Group at this time, behind the substitution, what is more important is the embodiment of Wu Yongming's work ideas.
A person close to Ali said that Wu Yongming's key words for the management team change may be two: young and able to play.
Rejuvenation is the tone set by Wu Yongming at the beginning of his tenure.
Before serving as the CEO of Taotian Group, Wu Yongming served as the CEO of Alibaba Group and the CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group. The adjustment of Taotian's move is also seen as a manifestation of Taotian Group's decision to let the younger management team take over the baton in an all-round way. Wu Yongming once called on Ali people to "reshape user value with the determination to start a business again", and emphasized: "It is necessary to let young main managers refresh the business management team, and create a mechanism and cultural environment for more young Ali people to become the core strength of Alibaba." Therefore, this adjustment is one of a series of measures he has taken to promote the rejuvenation of the management.
Among the newly adjusted management of Taotian Group, Cheng Daofang (nickname: Daofang), born in 1984. Wu Jia was born in 1985. Wang Tingxiang (nickname: Shaoyou) was born in 1987 and was the youngest management in this adjustment.
The so-called ability to play, in fact, is more important to the candidate's ability to develop in the past business.
For example, the founder of Chen Weiye Xianyu has used five years to increase the transaction volume of Xianyu from zero to 200 billion yuan and the number of users to more than 300 million. After he served as the COO of Ele.me, he facilitated the cooperation between Ele.me and Douyin, and the significance of the food delivery industry is strategically comparable to the "Shuwu Alliance" during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Wu Jia, another person who has been entrusted with important tasks, has a remarkable track record of leading the team to incubate quarks. As an independent app, the vast majority of Quark's users are young people. Cheng Daofang was originally a technical leader, and incubated the innovative product "VMate" in the UC business unit (which later became the third largest ** platform in the Indian market). After the adjustment, his business is mainly responsible for **live broadcast, clicking, short** app, shopping, etc.
And this is also in line with Wu Yongming's emphasis on regaining the entrepreneurial spirit. In September, after he became the new CEO of Alibaba Group, he called for "reshaping user value with the determination to start a business again".
Judging from the history of Alibaba, every once in a while, Alibaba will make certain organizational adjustments. But it is rare in history for adjustments like 2023 to be so frequent and magnitude.
Alibaba's latest financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 shows that Alibaba's revenue during the reporting period was about 22479 billion yuan, net profit of about 2669.6 billion yuan. Among them, Taotian Group contributed about 976 percent of revenue during the reporting period5.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4%, accounting for 43% of total revenue.
Taotian Group is divided into China retail business (including **, Tmall, etc.) and China wholesale business (referring to 1688, etc.). Customer management revenue (Taotian Group China Retail) increased by 3% year-on-year, mainly due to the increased willingness of merchants to invest in advertising, partially offset by a slight decline in online GMV (gross merchandise value) of ** and Tmall.
After the reform was initiated, from the perspective of the company's internal organizational logic, Taotian's business structure seems to be becoming more simple and flexible. The reporting relationship is also flattened as much as possible, so that Wu Yongming can see the overall situation at a glance and avoid too much internal consumption.
On the other hand, the background of this adjustment is also due to the fact that Alibaba is facing many challenges both internally and externally. In November, Alibaba Cloud, which is regarded as the "pioneer" of the spin-off and listing, halted the IPO processHema IPO plans have been put on hold. Among the businesses that were originally scheduled to hit the listing, only Cainiao applied for a Hong Kong IPO and submitted application documents. Alibaba International Digital Business Group is preparing for external financing.
The outside world is very concerned about how Alibaba will deal with the external competition represented by Pinduoduo. Previously, at this year's Q3 financial report meeting, Wu Yongming had introduced in detail the development strategies and priorities of Alibaba's various business groups: **Tmall takes "user first" and adheres to the strategy of consumption grading and strengthAlibaba Cloud will adhere to the principle of "AI-driven, public cloud first" and develop with AI + cloud computing.
When talking about specific business ideas, Wu Yongming said an intriguing remark: "Taotian Group does not position itself as a retail company, starting from the positioning of the consumer platform, we will adhere to the user-first perspective in strategy, and take improving platform stickiness and customer retention as the core goal." "In terms of specific measures, Taotian will pay more attention to the purchase frequency of users in the future, and the goal of GMV will be postponed.
This can be understood that compared with the past** and Tmall doing "trading" at different merchant levels, in the future, with the blessing of AI technology, Taotian Group will put more emphasis on content-based social operation on the user side, which is also one of the shortcomings of the entire Alibaba before.
Because of this, Wu Yongming emphasized that "* is a super app, covering three mainstream sales models, a sales model driven by live content, and a brand marketing model, including a daily sales and low price model." **APP is one of the most comprehensive e-commerce platforms in China, with the ability to accommodate multiple product tiers from brands and products to white-label products, as well as the corresponding multi-price proposition. "In the current mobile phones of ordinary people, super apps often refer to the existence of WeChat.
In other words, Taotian Group attaches great importance to the best power, and is unwilling to be led by the nose by low prices. Whether Wu Yongming's series of value propositions and troop arrangements can achieve initial results will be given in the coming 2024.
This article was first published by Liu Dafang and edited by Fang Yu).