Author |Liu Baodan.
Edit |Huang Yu.
Xiaohongshu, which has always been a Buddhist among Internet companies, has shown an enterprising attitude since last year.
Recently, Wall Street learned that Xiaohongshu has just recruited two generals from Didi, one is Wu Yingbing, the former head of Didi's supply and demand strategy, who will be responsible for part of the e-commerce business; The other is Zhang Rui, the former head of Didi's hitchhiking business, who joined the commercialization team.
The commercialization and trading departments are responsible for Xiaohongshu's profitability. Judging from the report, Wu Yingbing directly reported to Conan, COO and head of the trading department of Xiaohongshu, and Zhang Rui reported to Zhiheng, the CMO of Xiaohongshu and the head of the advertising sales business department, which shows that Wu Yingbing and Zhang Rui's ranks are not low.
This also means that Xiaohongshu's poaching is intended to strengthen profitability.
Zhang Shule, an Internet analyst, believes that Internet companies generally frequently poach people in the strategic expansion stage to fill the relevant talents that they lack in the new strategic line. And Xiaohongshu is currently in the expansion phase.
In the past year, Xiaohongshu has achieved remarkable results in the exploration of business models. In August last year, Xiaohongshu released its buyer e-commerce strategy, at which the company announced that it would invest 50 billion traffic to support the growth of more buyers, and at the same time invest 50 billion traffic to support the development of merchants.
Although later than Douyin and Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu has explored a differentiated e-commerce road.
Last year, Zhang Xiaohui and Dong Jie were out of the circle successively, and during the Double 11 period, Zhang Dong's single sales exceeded 100 million yuan one after another, setting a new record of breaking 100 million yuan in Xiaohongshu's live broadcast. According to Xiaohongshu data, the number of merchants with a transaction scale of more than 100 million increased by 500% year-on-year in the past year, and the number of merchants exceeding 10 million increased by 380% year-on-year.
The commercialization department is also making efforts. At the "Everything Can Grow Grass" business conference in December last year, Xiaohongshu released a data alliance "Grass Planting" and three product solutions, namely Grass Planting, Search Direct and Upgraded Lingxi, to help merchants achieve grass planting and conversion.
Taking "Search Direct" as an example, this tool can help merchants convert user needs in the search field, and in the search results page, users can jump to the store on the site to purchase. From planting grass to pulling weeds, Xiaohongshu's commercial products have gradually improved.
With Xiaohongshu determining the direction of profitability, the next focus is on how to improve the speed and scale of profitability, and poaching people from large factories is undoubtedly a good solution.
Zhang Shule believes that the purpose of poaching people is to drive the internal team through experienced external talents, on the one hand, it can quickly form combat effectiveness, and on the other hand, it can allow internal employees to quickly obtain external practical experience and grow.
Judging from their resumes, Wu Yingbing and Zhang Rui are both Didi elders, the former was the head of the trading market strategy department, and his work includes real-time matching decisions, supply and demand adjustment decisions, security and accountability decisions, etc.; The latter was in charge of hitchhiking, takeaways, taxis and other businesses, and was a key figure in the restart of hitchhiking.
Since Xiaohongshu and Didi have business commonalities, that is, through the Internet platform to link supply and demand, Didi provides the best transaction of services, while Xiaohongshu provides the best transaction of goods and services, to a certain extent, Didi's experience can be reused to Xiaohongshu.
With the addition of Wu Yingbing and Zhang Rui, Xiaohongshu's profitability is expected to further increase.
A month ago, a person familiar with the matter revealed that Xiaohongshu's net profit in 2023 is expected to reach $500 million, a 10-fold increase from the company's previous $50 million. Xiaohongshu did not comment on this.
After a long period of exploration, Xiaohongshu has finally entered its home moment, and 2024 will be a critical year for Xiaohongshu's business model to stand.
To regain the lost 10 years, Xiaohongshu must go all out.