If Gege, chairman of the 1th store, did so thoroughly, it is still not much

Although the Internet company in an equal and open atmosphere far more than the traditional industry, but such as the electric Dealer's website "No. 1th Shop" chairman of Gege do so thoroughly, still not uncommon.

To this day, Gege also shared an office with the CEO of the No. 1th store. Two desks are placed side-by, less than two meters in the middle of the distance. When Liu Bu in the company, he was interviewed in the office, otherwise he would have to find another meeting room.

Isn't that inconvenient? Gege never felt that he needed a quick, transparent decision, and that a lot of times when the two were talking, the new plan was going to go away. Gege the efficiency of this discussion and decision. If he and Liu's disagreement, the two can immediately communicate, and even the third party pulled in together to clarify the idea. "There is no gap between us," he explained, "and in internet companies, decisions are often more important than the quality of decisions." ”

Further, Gege hope that store 1th can always maintain a start-up company's innovation and vitality, rapid response to changes in the outside world, rapid decision-making. Although shop 1th has begun to move towards that all-encompassing "supermarket" in the dream, but now the Gege and team are experiencing "two startups"-the rise of the mobile internet, and the 1th stores that used to work on PC-side shopping need to "subvert themselves" to meet the challenge-his judgment is that Only two or three years left.

"One thing is for sure, we have to use mobile thinking to do mobile shopping, but not to use PC E-commerce way to do mobile shopping." We have to really give up some of the things on the PC, and re-examine the various features of mobile shopping. "he said.

The world of the Internet is fast changing, and Gege hopes to keep a clear head in the dazzling changes. In his words, first of all, he wants to make the company's physique very strong, can resist all kinds of "virus and bacteria";

Insight Mobile End

Always Gege as an entrepreneur, always reminding yourself of "Stay hunger".

In the past two years, his biggest bet in "subverting himself" is moving the end. Invested a lot of money and manpower in research and development, the team that developed the mobile product was independent, and was given a lot of autonomy. For now, the team is thirty or forty people, not including the relevant IT development team. Shop number 1th on the one hand in a large number of recruiting mobile product research and development personnel, another car, many of the company's PC shopping field developers have also turned to mobile end of the research and development.

"Basically, a lot of resources within the company are skewed toward the mobile sector. "Gege said. In his words, the company's original development idea is to develop on the PC side, and then copy the product to the mobile end, now, in contrast, developers will first consider people on the mobile side of the shopping habits, and then extend these applications to other channels.

Gege has long been aware that the potential of the mobile side is much greater than that of the PC side, whether it is an electric or other Internet domain. "At the end of last year, mobile phone users have reached 500 million, while PC users are 590 million." The penetration rate of mobile phone is much larger than that of PC. He said, "by 2017, mobile phone users will surpass PC users, that is, the future of E-commerce is not in the PC, but on mobile devices." ”

In the constant trial and error, Gege found that the mobile end of the user has a lot of unique. For example, they buy a higher frequency, more fragmented, and buy the peak is not in the daytime, but at night, weekends and holidays. At the same time, mobile devices have a natural advantage over PCs, such as its scanning features, images, speech recognition features, geographical positioning features, and the inductive characteristics of equipment. This means that store 1th to occupy the initiative in the mobile shopping tide, we must make full use of the characteristics of these mobile devices, "use mobile shopping to leather pc E-commerce life."

According to his introduction, shop number 1th has come this year to try to optimize the app, for example, the customer search for the product will be more and more simple, accurate; the company also launched a "shopping footprint" function, to help consumers quickly find the interest he has visited the goods, through a few clicks can be a single.

Even so, in this "mobile revolution", the company encountered resistance and challenges are not small. Technically, because of the small screen, the product search and display more difficult, which leads to consumers need to take a longer shopping process to complete the purchase. and complex processes often mean a reduction in the conversion rate of shopping. Second, the cell phone signal strength instability, resulting in the page can not open and other problems occur, these factors will affect the user experience.

Gege is trying to break these technical bottlenecks, "to be sure, the mobile end must be done on fast shopping." "In his ideal situation, users can always think of what to buy, through voice or text input, or on the way to see the merchandise can take a picture, this information will immediately enter the 1th store background system for image and speech recognition, into the user's real shopping needs."

In addition to the technical problems that need to be addressed, greater challenges arise from internal organizational transformation and process reengineering. Gege Frankly, the business focus shifted to the mobile end, the company will inevitably generate channel conflict. "This is why I said that I have to say, because more and more users to the mobile phone, the growth of the PC slowly not so fast, and may even fall." In this case, it is particularly important to balance the relationship between different channels.

But he believes that at least the current mobile end and the PC end is not exactly "this" relationship. After all, many customers are using PCs and mobile devices, and using different devices in different scenarios, "maybe the customers will buy fewer items each time, but the total amount of money they buy is growing." ”

On this basis, the way of thinking of employees also needs to change. "Most of the time, everyone's thinking is still in the past, focus on the PC." It will take time to get people to shift their attention to the mobile end. "Just said.

He does not deny that store 1th was too early to be influenced by PCs. But now, the rules of the game have changed. He even said, in the trend toward mobile shopping quickly, "those things PC can keep up with, not to keep up with it." ”

The argument of O2O

On the basis of moving the end of the force, Gege does not meet the number 1th shop only to do a home online supermarket.

Not long ago, the company in Shanghai, "Cosco Two Bay City" community opened the first "Community service Center", began to reach out to the line. In planning, this community service store has three functions. The first is the distribution center of the goods, the second is the customer pick-up point; As the store is located within the community, many offline activities can be carried out in the store. For example, a shop assistant can help community residents with group buying, coaching customers to surf the internet, etc.

In this O2O attempt, in just more and more emotion way, the traditional retail in the line, and the electricity business to the line down, "finally must be online under the integration, to provide customers with more channels and convenience." It is just that the future of this "Community service Center" model is not at the bottom of the mind at the moment. But at least, "Shop No. 1th found a little feeling in the groping."

He told the 21st century Economic report that the first online community service station in Shanghai, though more expensive than the average distribution site, could be covered by the value it brings. After all, this service station itself has assumed the function of logistics distribution, but also to form a customer contact point, not only convenient for customers, but also achieve marketing. "In this way, we have the confidence to do more of this kind of experiment." ”

In addition to their own attempts, shop 1th is also seeking to work with traditional ultra and convenience stores this year to get through online and offline channels. Specifically, store 1th offers systems, platforms, and traffic to traditional retailers to help them achieve sales online, where customers can buy goods from physical stores and buy them on the internet, and can go to physical stores to pick up goods, and physical stores can also be delivered to the door. Gege said that the company is working with the largest retailer in Shanxi, the United States, and several other projects are also under negotiation.

Although the concept of O2O looks beautiful and retailers are pushing ahead in full swing, there are few success stories at home. The key, Gege points out, is that retailers "have not yet found the right model and have not identified the core values of O2O".

In his view, the core value of O2O should be to make full use of the advantages of online and offline channels, so that customers realize the whole channel shopping. Online value is convenient, anywhere, and the category is rich, not limited by time, space and shelf. The value of the line is that the goods can be seen, and instantly available, that the brand can contact and communicate directly with customers, and customers can also enjoy face-to-face service. From this point of view, O2O should be two channels of value and advantages of seamless docking, so that customers feel that each channel has value.

"Of course, if we have any experience, it's still out of the way," Gege said. "We've gone a lot of detours, and we're trying. To be exact, we have not yet found the core value points in the O2O model. ”

Grow up in a mistake

In the two-time venture, Gege's most prized product is the micro-letter from Tencent, which, in the eyes of many observers, marks the success of Penguin's "two startups"--he realised that even a new app could quickly change the pattern of the entire industry.

But Gege is not afraid to face the changing technology and trends. Because of this, he attaches great importance to innovation, and in this interview repeatedly mentioned the word "revolution". "I have always believed that innovation for Internet enterprises is the lifeline, we have to dare to constantly leather their own lives." "he said.

Gege The corporate culture, is "everything to go at the forefront", all things to the extreme. In his words, he likes to lead the trend, rather than keep up with the trend, only in order to allow the company to continue to grow rapidly.

At the same time, Gege encouraged trial and error. He did not undertaking that there had been a lot of mistakes in shop number 1th. For example, in the early days of the establishment of an attempt to enter the market through directory shopping, so that it ignores other better business model, for example, early in the regional expansion is not radical enough to concentrate on the one or two-line cities, the actual should be more quickly layout three or four-line cities.

These are the "tuition fees" that are paid by Shop No. 1th in the course of growing up. In summing up their own entrepreneurial process, gege it into three stages: in 2008-2009, shop 1th is still exploring their business model, "what is called E-commerce marketing, what business model can let the company foothold" is Gege and Liu Majestic thinking the most problems. By the second stage, the business model was becoming clearer, with two founders focusing on creating a wide variety of internal systems and combing the supply chain process. He remembers that around 2011, warehouse 1th stores often exploded, and logistics and systems became the company's main bottleneck. Therefore, at that stage, the main task of store 1th is to improve the system, optimize the process, through the transformation of operations to protect the user experience, so that the company can continue to grow rapidly.

2012 Wal-Mart Strategic investment shop 1th, became the company's largest shareholder and strategic partner. In Gege's eyes, the biggest value of the investment was "global sourcing", which helped store 1th to bring in more goods and better terms of delivery. Second, Wal-Mart has more than 15 years of experience in the electrical business, the establishment of less than 6 years of shop 1th has also drawn a large number of ways to do electrical business.

At the beginning of the third phase, more and more attention is being focused on people and teams. At this time, talent has become the main bottleneck, shop number 1th needs a strong culture and a new organizational structure to adapt to large-scale development and growth. The question that Gege now often thinks about is how to make corporate architecture and incentives attractive to the industry's top talent. In the expanding organization, how can each team maintain entrepreneurial mentality and rapid decision-making mechanism?

He was a tenured professor of theoretical physics and a PhD in decision science at Cornell University and the Wharton School, and he was also a lifelong teacher at the School of Management at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a science professor special rigorous seriousness, treat people with courtesy. And this kind of education background and personality charm to bring the team undoubtedly played a subtle role.

But the ensuing management challenges and rapidly changing markets continue to test Gege management wisdom. On this basis, he needs to be trained a pair of "eyes" to see the next 35 years of industry trends. "Now in the market for a while the millet mode, and then appear yellow too auspicious mode, if always go after these trends, we are not catch." "Just so feeling.

So he tried to focus on something permanent. "This permanent thing is the customer experience, is the product richness, preferential prices and to provide customers with the convenience." "The past is unchanged, it is unchanged and will not change in the future," he said. ”

So, in the face of mobile internet, O2O brought new opportunities and challenges, will continue to lead the trend of the electricity business?

Wen/Huang