After the "struggle for hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union" and the "battle between the two easts", Zhang Jindong is still old and ambitious.Author: RBF Content Group Editor: Hexiang.
Producer: Retail-Finance ID: Retail-Finance
Suning Tesco wants to meet the start with a running attitude, time does not wait, seize the day, and open a new breakthrough. On January 2, Zhang Jindong returned to the public eye as the chairman of Suning Holding Group after resigning as chairman of Suning Tesco for two and a half years. With the return of Zhang Jindong,Suning.com has also set a goal for 2024 - to achieve full profitability.
Specific to the business level, Zhang Jindong pointed out two major directions: online and offline
First, more than 3,000 new stores will be opened throughout the year, and the market coverage will be improved by combining urban and rural areas and multiple tracks, opening large stores, opening good stores and forming a three-dimensional store networkThe second is to transform the e-commerce business development model, fully open up cooperation, deep link and take root in major traffic platforms, give full play to the advantages of retail capabilities such as first-class chain and logistics after-sales, and achieve rapid expansion.
Source: Suning Tesco.
In the past month, Zhang Jindong chose to return to the front of the stage from Suning Tesco, although Suning has released more positive signals, or can promote a new round of changes in Suning Tesco, but it is difficult to return, and the market The high-quality author list is not optimistic. Whether it is a businessman, an internal employee or a consumer, there are many voices of "not buying". As in "Have you paid back the money you owe to the ** businessman?"."The rent is due, and a new store is opened, and the person is the first element" "Carrefour employee severance compensation has been given!".Another example, "No one around uses the Suning Tesco app, there were more salespeople than customers in Suning's physical stores, and now even the salesmen can hardly see a few" "Suning Tesco's self-operated things are less and more expensive, and the quality is second-high." Confidently coming?”…
If you want to achieve "breaking" and "stabilizing" in the new year, what are the chances of winning this "all-staff entrepreneurship" belonging to Suning Tesco?
Back in 1990, 27-year-old Zhang Jindong did a good job in state-owned enterprises, and he could foresee his future development from his own leadership, which was not what Zhang Jindong wanted to be.
That winter, the daring Zhang Jindong gave up the iron rice bowl that made others blush, and everyone around him thought "he was crazy". With 100,000 yuan of belongings, he rented a 200-square-meter façade room on Ninghai Road in Nanjing, named "Suning Jiaodian", specializing in air conditioning.
Suning Jiaodian's earliest store Source: Internet.
At that time, although the air conditioner was easy to sell, the major merchants had already been divided, and it was not as simple as imagined.
As a result, Zhang Jindong used the "three-plate axe" to spell out a bloody road.
The first is to optimize services. It has not completely got rid of the shadow of the planned economy, and the major shopping malls have relied on their own advantages, waiting for customers to come to the door, and are only responsible for selling products. Zhang Jindong proposed a one-stop service of delivery, installation, maintenance and repair for the first time, which attracted praise from customers and consumers.
The second is off-season ordering. As a product with obvious seasonal differences, air conditioners are out of stock in minutes in peak seasons, but they can't pay employees in off-seasons. Zhang Jindong chose to place low-cost orders in the off-season to support manufacturers through the cold winter, and at the same time ensure their own supply of goods, and ultimately achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.
When Suning was first founded, Zhang Jindong was promoted in the store Source: Internet.
The third is to fight a first-class war. In that era, it was opaque, and users could only shop around offline to find the most cost-effective storefront. Zhang Jindong openly displayed the ex-factory prices of major manufacturers in the "Yangtze Evening News", and released his lowest price.
There is an end to war, and there is no end to business wars.
Once upon a time, the Suning model, which did not follow the routine, directly disrupted the entire Nanjing air conditioning market. Nowadays, from the "factory era", "market era" to the "mental age", the changes in the retail business environment in the past 40 years, the relationship between supply and demand has already undergone earth-shaking changes.
Standing at the starting point of 2024, Zhang Jindong, who is old and old, tried to use a new "three-board axe" to save Suning Tesco from danger. He knows very well: "The era of gold rush has passed, the future is the era of alchemy, the era of intensive cultivation, the competition is management, is the operation, is the core of the enterprise, the most basic business ability." ”
As a result, the new "three-plate axe" is mainly focused on:
The first is to improve user service and experience, and realize the transformation of consumer mentality.
The specific work includes accelerating the improvement of logistics, after-sales and other terminal network construction, strengthening the basic management of stores, improving the store image and service quality, etc., by strengthening the construction of core stores such as Suning E-home, full-link home appliances and home decoration sales and fulfillment services, and accelerating the transformation and upgrading of the brand mentality from "buying appliances to Suning Tesco" to "customizing home scenes to Suning Tesco".
Source: Suning Tesco.
The second is to create more cost-effective products, and regard rich categories, good quality, and preferential treatment as the core KPIs.
The third is to let young people take up positions and promote the youth and professionalism of team cadres.
Last year, Suning Tesco had a total of 32 post-85 post-85 positions as general managers and above, and said in 2024 that it would continue to increase the introduction and training of 1,200 management trainees. The "1200 Project" is a talent training mechanism adopted by Suning for many years, and many Suning executives have come from this project in the past.
Judging from the 2022 annual report and the first quarter report of 2023 released by Suning Tesco, at present, its core home appliance 3C, the "hematopoietic" business, has achieved quarterly profitability, and the loss is gradually narrowing. After all, its previous capital and debt problems have not been completely resolved, and it also needs to face the market "bidding" of e-commerce giants such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, and it is even more difficult to "break the establishment".
As the helmsman of Suning, industry insiders evaluate Zhang Jindong and admire him for his excellent leadership and excellent foresight. In particular, he led Suning from a "small sampan" to a "big aircraft carrier", and some of the entrepreneurial characteristics shown in this are worth learning.
The period from 1990 to 1999 was the first ten years of Zhang Jindong's business.
In the cold winter wind in January 1993, the streets and alleys of Jinling City were full of anti-seasonal leaflets issued by Suning: "If you want to have a good summer, go to Suning to buy air conditioners." At that time, a "United Fleet" and "Little Sampan" head-to-head exchange released by ** pushed the ** battle set off by Suning to the forefront.
Yangtze Evening News reported at the time Source: Internet.
Even if it encounters the comprehensive "** Suning of the eight state-owned shopping malls in Nanjing, it has also handed over an amazing report card with annual sales of 300 million yuan by relying on previous orders, and a big war ended in a comprehensive victory of "small sampan".
A year later, Suning's sales in the field of air conditioning reached the first place in the country.
From 2000 to 2009, it was a decade of Suning's chain development.
At that time, Suning, which was a big tree and a prosperous company, was targeted by Gome.
And Huang Guangyu, the head of Gome, has already pocketed Yongle Electric Appliances and Dazhong Electric Appliances, waiting to eat Suning to achieve a monopoly.
In 2004, Gome and Suning went public one after another. With the blessing of capital, the competition between the two sides is more fearless, and there is no room for two tigers on one mountain, and the "Soviet-US struggle for hegemony" officially kicked off.
Hold summits, open forums, fight services, do logistics, fight battles, and buy exclusive authorized ......Suning and Gome are crazy about grabbing the right to speak for the industry boss in a life-and-death situation.
In fact, judging from the market data at the time, Suning lost one after another on the battlefield, and Zhang Jindong's hard words "You don't want to buy Suning, I can't do it, so you will give it to you." Buy, you can't afford it" is more like a momentary mood, in order to defend Suning's dignity.
Thirty years in Hedong, thirty years in Hexi, where can we wait for 30 years for the disruption of the market?
In 2008, Huang Guangyu was imprisoned for economic crimes, and the "United States and the Soviet Union" fought for hegemony so far, Zhang Jindong surrendered without a fight, and Suning won the throne of the e-commerce leader.
In 2009, Suning became China's largest home appliance chain, and Zhang Jindong, who has 28 billion yuan, ranked 10th on the Hurun Report. How beautiful is Zhang Jindong?You must know that Ma Yun, who was also on the list at this time, ranked 88th.
sent Huang Guangyu away, Zhang Jindong was not happy for two years, and he ushered in Liu Qiangdong again. After the battle of the "Two Easts", since 2010, Suning has launched a new round of Internet transformation, also known as Zhang Jindong's third venture.
Zhang Jindong and Liu Qiangdong Source: Internet.
In Zhang Jindong's eyes, only overseas Wal-Mart is Suning's enemy that needs hard steel, just when he is immersed in "resisting foreign enemies" and wants to make domestic products shine, as everyone knows, Jingdong has launched a full-scale war against Suning.
Zhang Jindong is very familiar with Liu Qiangdong's style of play, and in the early years, Suning won the initial market share by relying on the ** battle launched against the eight major shopping malls.
Jingdong's internal "Fight Suning Command" Source: Liu Qiangdong Weibo.
Even if this time is different from the past, stepping on the "child Jingdong", Suning is still full of confidence.
That year, Zhang Jindong borrowed 8 billion yuan to gamble on the ** war, and giants such as Gome, Alibaba, and Dangdang couldn't sit still, and participated in the war one after another, and the battle was very fierce.
The impact of this battle of "burning investors' money and inviting customers of netizens across the country" on Jingdong and Suning is far more far-reaching than what we see.
Looking at the volume, Jingdong is far from Suning;Talking about traffic, Jingdong became famous in a fight;Looking at the essence, the advantages and disadvantages of the model are initially clear.
Jingdong, as a platform, is a consignment model, and the products will be sold before the manufacturers will settle the bill, and there is no financial pressure in the whole processSuning, on the other hand, is a procurement model, where all electrical appliances need to be paid in advance, and the backlog of inventory in the store is the capital that Suning needs to spend a long time returning.
Both seem to sell electrical appliances to consumers, but the logic behind them is very different. JD.com, as a representative of Internet e-commerce, has risen strongly;And Suning is still a traditional home appliance operation model, stubbornly guarding the city that has been eliminated by the times.
JD.com burns investors' money, while Suning can only issue bonds to make ends meet.
After this huge war, Zhang Jindong, who once claimed that the Internet was against the essence of business, also made up his mind to fully "Internetize".
Looking back on Zhang Jindong's entrepreneurial history, being dissatisfied with the status quo and having the courage to open up has always been Zhang Jindong's character background, which made him dare to abandon the iron rice bowl and go to the sea to do business, and also made him dare to compete with the eight major shopping malls in a desperate situation, and finally achieved fame.
The final victory of the "US-Soviet Union" hegemony also benefited from Zhang Jindong's stubborn temper after being unwilling. Although Huang Guangyu's imprisonment is only Zhang Jindong's luck, opportunities are often reserved only for those who are prepared.
Ironically, the era often has an ending written at the very beginning.
Innovate and transform to rebuild Suning.
On February 21, 2013, Zhang Jindong announced that the company's name was officially changed to Suning Cloud Business, in Zhang Jindong's words: "A cloud business road that covers online and offline and retail services." ”
Recreating Suning's glory with the model of "Amazon + Wal-Mart", Zhang Jindong thought this was a prelude to a higher level, but he didn't expect it to become the final chapter of Suning's glory.
Settled in e-commerce, Suning missed the time, and failed to go north in the embryonic stage of the Internet;At this time, it also missed the geographical advantage, the huge market of e-commerce has already been divided by **, Jingdong, in 2015, Pinduoduo was born, the growth rate is amazing, the track that is not spacious is more crowded, and then the world is divided into three.
Suning was forced from a chaser to a chaperone.
In order to attract traffic to Suning and enrich the industrial model, Zhang Jindong took the lead and led Suning to expand wildly in various fields.
Facts have proved that the money Suning earned by luck at the beginning will eventually be lost by strength.
In 2012, Zhang Jindong spent $66 million to wholly acquire the maternal and infant platform "Red Child", making the maternal and infant vertical e-commerce No1. It has become a third-line product today, and many stores have closed their doors.
Source: Internet.
In 2013, Zhang Jindong won with 2$500 million acquisition of PPTV to enter the ** field. PPTV has always been in a relatively embarrassing position, compared with iQiyi, Youku and other first echelons, it lacks excellent content, and compared with Douyin, Kuaishou, it has less gimmicks and concepts, the main sports sector just burns money, and does not bring profits, and almost no one cares about it today.
In 2014, Zhang Jindong wholly acquired Manzao for $10 million and merged it into his local life division. At that time, the tragedy of "four or five bankruptcies in one day" continued, and more than 90% of the *** had died, leaving only Meituan and Ele.me to dominate. There is no suspense, less than two years after Suning took over, Manzao collapsed.
At the end of 2015, Suning won 19300 million yuan invested in Nubia and squeezed into the smartphone track. The results can be imagined. Today's post-80s, post-90s, and post-00s, who has ever heard of the name of Nubia?
Source: Suning Tesco's official Weibo.
Zhang Jindong, who keeps pace with the times, is unwilling to continue to acquire Dragon Ball Live in 2016, but because of the leakage of personal information and the anchor's dissemination of pornographic and vulgar content, multiple departments jointly interviewed the relevant person in charge, and Dragon Ball Live is almost cool.
In 2017, Suning 42500 million yuan to complete the acquisition of Tiantian Express, "e-commerce" + "logistics" is very optimistic about the outside world, once known as "beautiful marriage". However, the actual situation is that since Zhang Jindong acquired Tiantian Express, Tiantian Express has been losing money for three consecutive years and the amount of losses has been expanding.
In the same year, Suning Tesco used "Suning Store" as a super entrance to leverage the FMCG field and link Suning's entire business format. However, Suning's small stores, which opened all over the city overnight, closed nearly 80% of them overnight three years later.
If you don't do a good job, it is possible to concentrate on doing it, but Suning Xiaodian always wants to use a pit to fill a pit in front, and if you can't fill these pits in the back, you can only give up this business. Suning shop related people commented.
Suning's ecological layout Source: Citics Commercial Retail.
In 2019, Suning acquired 37 Wanda stores for 2.7 billion yuan and spent another 4.8 billion yuan to buy 80% of Carrefour China's shares. After two years of running-in, Carrefour's China business has not improved under the leadership of Suning. Bloomberg recently reported that Suning.com is considering its controlling stake in Carrefour China to raise money to save itself.
The above areas can still be fought in terms of strength, but Zhang Jindong's ambition is far more than that, just like Julius Caesar's belief, I came, i saw, i conquered!
Suning Hotel, Suning Reading, Suning Tourism, Suning Lottery, Suning Weather, Suning App Store and a large number of apps have become cannon fodder, plus the acquisition of Jiangsu Football Club and Inter Milan Club, Suning has invested more than 70 billion yuan in various fields over the years.
When the times abandon you, they will never say goodbye to you. With failed investment, high debts, and difficult operations, Suning has not come out of the dark historical moment.
In hindsight, it is not wise to question Zhang Jindong's decision, and re-examine Suning's M&A expansion in recent years, it is not difficult for us to find: seize the outlet, Zhang Jindong entered the **, live broadcast, convenience stores and other emerging formats;Sticking to the territory, Zhang Jindong also joined traditional industries such as express delivery and supermarkets;Competing for traffic, Zhang Jindong has not spent much effort in the fields of ** and football, ......
The problem is that after the completion of the merger and acquisition, different fields are separated, although they are all named "Suning", but the lack of collaboration between the various businesses, just burning money and little revenue, greatly dragging down the company's main business.
Suning in the cold winter Source: Internet.
In the past ten years, Suning has always followed the trend and rarely innovated.
Even if they miss the best opportunity to follow the trend, they plunge headlong into the Red Sea market to compete for the scraps, and the result is naturally that the debt ratio is rising.
Within the company, although Suning Tesco has undergone several power changes, and even Zhang Jindong, who has lost his equity, only has the position of honorary chairman, Zhang Jindong seems to be returning to the helm in the past period. Zhang Jindong can be seen at the cooperation meetings between Suning and many home appliance brands, and now the direct deployment of related work, Zhang Jindong's full return indicates that Suning Tesco gritted its teeth and wanted to fight a turnaround.
In the tide of the progress of the times, we see only the time of the times, not the era of "children". If an enterprise wants to ride the wind and waves to the future, it must have a clear strategic positioning and continue to cultivate internal skills. When the opportunity comes, have the ability to seize it, and when the wind passes, it will last forever with strength.