Suppose one day Taobao declines
During this period, too many things have happened around Taobao. Seeing all the complaints everywhere, personally, I still believe that Jack Ma has faith. I still believe that most of the employees at Taobao are excellent. I still believe that Taobao can get better and better. But if, just if, there comes a day when Taobao declines, where will the problem lie? If we could travel to the future and look back on Taobao's decline, perhaps the problems would stem from the following aspects:
1. Taobao has become too big and expanded too fast. In recent years, the establishment of talent, rules, and civilization hasn't kept up with the scale of expansion. This is Taobao's biggest concern. The post by Qigege now is worth re-reading by Taobao and every one of us laypeople. Walk slower, wait for our souls to catch up. Personally, I always think that for those very excellent companies, the probability of dying by their own hands is much higher than dying at the hands of competitors. And the greatest possibility of dying by their own hands is taking too big steps and tripping over themselves.
2. Over the years, Taobao (including Alibaba) has been too focused on performance. Although Mr. Ma and senior executives may not agree with this, regardless of whether they think or act this way, customers really feel this way. As people who indirectly understand their employees, we can clearly sense that Taobao's grassroots and middle management work under clear performance orientation. Whether it's due to company pressure or the pursuit of self-fulfillment, both are possible. Personally, I know that as such a huge enterprise, it's hard to manage effectively with goals other than performance. When our impression differs significantly from what Taobao's senior management emphasizes in terms of service, value, and ideals, there are definitely some things that need to be reviewed.
3. Many years ago, I read a book about Jack Ma. It talked about how when Ma first established Alibaba in the Hupan Garden, he couldn't explain clearly to the people around him what they were doing. So the group kept to themselves, spending all their time on work and rarely interacting with people outside of work. This story left a deep impression on me. Whenever I encountered a similar situation later, I often used this story to encourage myself. However, the current Jack Ma seems to have changed. There are too many grand plans and lofty ideals. Once these words are spoken, he and his company are lifted very high. But if they fall one day, it will be very bad. Appropriate modesty and pragmatism are what Taobao needs now, whether viewed from an economic or political perspective.
4. There is another large private enterprise in Hangzhou called Wahaha. Compared to Zong Qinghou's family-style management, Ma is doing much better. However, there is one thing worthy of admiration about Zong Qinghou: for a long time, Zong spent most of his time running around on the front lines of the market, understanding the thoughts of customers and distributors. This is one of the important reasons why Wahaha can continuously renew itself and maintain a relatively high success rate. Nowadays, how many days does Mr. Ma and Taobao's senior management spend understanding frontline customers and small sellers? Regarding the introduction of policies like this one, if they had conducted some market research, they wouldn't have come up with such an incomplete plan.
5. After years of development, as an e-commerce company, Taobao has been relatively successful in the 'electronic' aspect. In the future, the more important part will be commerce. Looking at Taobao's culture and employee background, it bears more marks of an internet company. Quite a few well-known offline enterprises feel that while Taobao employees are not lacking in excellence and diligence, their understanding of traditional commerce falls far short. The label of low price and low quality attached to Taobao is half due to the market and half due to itself. If in the future, Taobao cannot build a team from top to bottom that deeply understands the retail industry, then Taobao's dream of building an e-commerce empire will only remain a dream. A one-stop shopping platform is getting better and better, even more glorious! Home goods.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, I have always hoped and believed that Taobao can continue to improve. Hopefully, the above are just unnecessary worries and warnings during prosperous times. Taobao has made enormous contributions to changing China's retail business landscape, paved a valuable path for many ordinary people's entrepreneurship, and provided a meaningful choice for countless consumers. Sincerely hoping that Taobao can go further, and wishing Jupinshi all the best.
