Many friends from Zhang * Fei’s recent one month hair circle of friends marked location, just know that she has left Shanghai, went to the remote Xinjiang work. Sometimes she shares music on her moments at 1 a.m. With the time difference, it’s about 11 p.m. local time.
Around the same time on December 29, 2020, she once again shared a song from netease cloud music on her moments. Half an hour later, on her way home from work, she suddenly fell down with abdominal pain and died after emergency treatment.
Zhang Was born in 1998 and graduated from Xi ‘an University of Posts and Telecommunications majoring in communication engineering. She joined Pinduoduo through university enrollment in July 2019. Before the accident, she is a lot of spelling, “buy more vegetables ” business one of more than ten employees stationed in xinjiang market.
Issued according to spell on January 4, a lot of spelling, many colleagues Zhang Fei accident death “, the 23-year-old employee “in walking together with my colleagues on the way home suddenly over your abdomen, fell. My colleague immediately called 120 to urumqi local hospital, after nearly 6 hours of emergency treatment is still invalid, unfortunately passed away… Body was cremated on January 3rd “. The statement did not give the cause of Zhang’s death.
News of Zhang’s death first surfaced on social media platforms at work on the night of Jan. 3, and then spread on social media such as Zhihu and Weibo. Both for 996, overtime culture and a spell of squeezing employees, there are also people who believe “every industry is so ”. On January 4 in the morning, a on zhihu “how net pass spell more overtime after the sudden death of ” questions, a display for “spell of certified official account ” account remarked: you look at the bottom of the people, which one is not YongMing money… This is a desperate time. You can choose the days of ease, but you have to choose the consequences of ease…
After 28 seconds, the account deleted the comment. Spell first foreign denied a lot coming from official, then issued a “account, lax controls apologies”, said the content is a spell of marketing cooperation supplier employees personal idea forget quit the company official account and cause a “wrong operation ”.
But all the controversy and discussion has not ended – zhang * she living in its internal account on “to keep a lot frontier ”, a 23-year-old employee sudden death, exactly is who? Whether from the defects of HR management culture of domestic Internet giants, or the social significance of the current community group buying war, Pinduoduo is falling into an unprecedented crisis of public opinion.
Tuo City: A war of attrition
Spell more than in August 2020 in wuhan fresh business community group-buying model, named “buy more vegetables ”. Before it, July Meituan launched similar business in jinan “Meituan optimization ”, sharing platform of the same kind of business travel in June earlier be born in chengdu, called “orange heart optimizing ”. In November, the bytes to beat also into “selling vegetables ” business and select test the waters in chengdu.
The so-called community group, namely platform in the offline communities first recruit “colonel ”, the head is responsible for the recruiting users, and from the user to collect orders; The platform collects the demand and feeds back the order to the upstream supplier; The pre-ordered items are then promised to be delivered to the leader’s home the next day or the next — these locations are marked as pick-up points on the group purchase platform; In the last step, the user will pick up the goods by himself at the pick-up point, and there will also be a leader in place who will take the initiative to deliver the goods to the door. Shengsheng, founded in Changsha, was the first to use this model to sell fresh produce, and its orders increased threefold year-on-year during the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020.
Jiang Wei, who lives in Hongguang Yaju community in Urumqi, Xinjiang, also came into contact with community group buying for the first time during the epidemic. Hongguang Yaju is a large community with 5000 families. She started as a volunteer delivering vegetables and express to her neighbors, and gradually developed a WeChat group with nearly 500 people. Then she started a community group-buying business in the group, Posting dozens of product links every night and promising to deliver the goods to her door the next morning. The items come from a small local community group buying App called Bean Sprout.
So far, Duoduo has not managed to squeeze into mature communities like Hongguang Yaju. Before its arrival, there had been several local community group buying brands in Urumqi, such as Tianshan Group, Yuanchuang Youpin, Otter Tongcheng, Han Bean Sprout, Zhi Wei Group, Hexi Xi Life and Le Le Ma. Most of them were inspired by prosperity during the COVID-19 epidemic, and have fostered a group of bao Ma leaders with real community and neighborhood foundation. And buy a lot in a short time to make the thousands of colonel, basically some couples a store from the street, there are business washing, shoes repaired services such as forms of “small front ”, and some even express company site.
When the big Internet companies started pouring money into the business, it wasn’t the money they invested, it was the people.
At 30 km distance from urumqi in xinjiang changji district, and many buy vegetables since mid-december to recruit head (facing the consumer show “since some ”), only two weeks, then to push in a local company with the help of the recruited more than 300 to the point, announced on December 23 in changji regiment.
A manager surnamed Zhou at the third-party company told reporters that Duoduo Has been assigned to the team in Urumqi from its Shanghai headquarters and currently employs more than 10 people. Duoduo first announced the opening of its tour group in urumqi on December 1, and now manages more than 2,000 self-raised points. In addition, it has rented five or six warehouses around Urumqi, and the logistics is outsourced to third-party companies, all of which come from local suppliers — mainly wholesalers.
Responsible for the completion of the head recruitment with the ground push company, is the local Marketing Department of Duoduo Buy Vegetables. In addition to the Marketing Department, this group also has procurement, logistics, warehousing departments. Including Zhang * Fei, who died unexpectedly on December 29, these more than 10 pdd employees seem to only do management work, but the docking work between them and all partners involves many links and the work is quite heavy.
“(they) work overtime at night is very normal, because the material you want to contact suppliers, does not influence the distribution of the next day. Every day the dishes should be delivered to each pick up point before about 6 PM. to push the company chief says, “a lot of shopping in the local announced the season of kaesong, just before the winter, and significantly increased operating difficulty from weather conditions, the current head of the business communication WeChat group, is of the most complained about the quality problem of the arrival of the goods, ” deposit mainly it’s too cold, not good, a lot to the point of fruits and vegetables are not very good quality. ”
The staff who buy more vegetables are also in the WeChat group, responsible for communicating directly with the leaders and helping them solve problems at any time.
An anonymous community group buying company said to reporters, including the Internet platform pinduoduo and Meituan, regardless of the original user coverage in each city, to buy food business will be access to the flow, extension city team will go to find the food supplier, open a group to find the head, find warehouse, find logistics…… In the communication, they speak the most, with a third party or “traffic story ” – with reversed transmission flow supply chain.
“no traffic runs fast. “who have been involved in early extension of city community group-buying frontline staff said, every community group is very serious performance problems, ” often out of stock, or quality has a problem, have to work personnel to deal with, what jobs to end all became to do customer service. ”
According to the employee at the community buying company, the first three months of each new city opening are the most chaotic. Because fresh products are non-standard products, every purchase is a new product, so we need to go through the process of platform review and sales strategy formulation again. At the same time, community group buying is not allowed to stock up. At the moment, it can only communicate with the work on a weekly basis. If the supplier delivers goods that look different from the sample, the warehouse refuses to accept the goods, and the final customer does not receive the ordered goods, the platform must be ready to transfer the goods, or act as customer service to handle the complaint.
The higher the platform traffic, the better the conversion rate, and the greater the business pressure from the derivation to the operating end. Compared with the three platforms of pyeongduo, Meituan and didi, Meituan users are relatively young, didi users have the longest relationship with buying vegetables, and pyeongduo users have the highest degree of compatibility with those who are willing to wait more than one day for cheaper fresh food.
The biggest problem in sourcing, sorting and distribution is not sourcing — each platform can get goods from local wholesale markets — but sorting and logistics. The upstream supplier will generally deliver the goods to the warehouse of the platform, and the user will pick up the goods at the last kilometer. However, there is no ready-made instant delivery service provider for the intermediate logistics from the warehouse to the pick-up point or the leader’s hand.
Competition: Run long distances at the speed of sprints
In 2020 in the third quarter earnings conference call, spelling of chief strategy officer David Liu, will the above depend on local third-party resources to establish the supply chain system called “driven by demand ” system, saying it “so will have a better cost effect. ”
However, these companies use “reversed transmission flow supply chain ” approach is not just for the sake of cost, more an important factor is that – they “there’s no time to ”.
Within half a year, pinduoduo, Meituan and didi had entered almost all of China’s provincial capitals, except for Beijing and Shanghai, which were deemed unsuitable for the diurnal arrival model. The owner of a fruit and vegetable shop in urumqi’s new urban district, who is the head of the shop, told YiMagazine that Meituan is recruiting a head of the shop in urumqi and the tour is said to have been scheduled for January 8.
The above-mentioned person in charge of the local promotion company revealed that Meituan preferred has set a clear threshold for the performance of the head of the company — to complete an order of at least 150 yuan per week. However, duobuyai has not assigned such a task to the head of the company, and the head of the company’s income is currently 10% of the group purchase order income.
In the speech for the company’s 5th anniversary in October 2020, Pinduoduo founder Huang Zheng talked most about the business of buying more vegetables. The most comment he made on this business was bitter.
“shopping is a hard business, the other people go to bed when you’re picking, delivery, so customers before to cook a meal to get fresh food. People have to eat every day, we have to deliver vegetables every day, it is really difficult to do, every day without sleep, the pain here is obvious. It will be more difficult in the future, because if you do a little better, the attacks and slanders from the old forces of various industries and the new competitive situation will come, and the incomprehension of individual consumers will also come. After suffering, it is likely to be thankless, dumb to eat coptis, there is bitter, you say bitter not bitter? ”
But as Huang Zheng said, “is the touchstone of spell more than many people buy food business. ”
Unfortunately zhang * Fei did not pass this test, she fell in the first quarter of being stationed in Xinjiang.
03 by capital after level “strategic business ”
Pinduoduo’s management team believes the success or failure of its vegetable-buying business is crucial to pinduoduo.
“we are the number of users has reached 731 million, inevitable is that growth will gradually slow down. But I think we still have some room to expand our user base. Now the bigger problem is our ranking in the minds of users, which is the point we pay the most attention to, which is also the reason why we opened the business of buying vegetables. “late November 2020, spelling, many strategic vice President David Liu, in the third quarter earnings call answer questions from analysts said at the meeting.
According to “annual active users ”, together with a lot ali has very close – by the end of the third quarter of 2020, ali electricity retail market in China’s annual 757 million active consumers, and a lot of spelling the annual $731 million active users, and ali’s gap is only 26 million.
Spell, many executives to mention of the so-called “user on your ranking ”, also is to let users want to increasingly consider shopping when shopping is great, but not in alibaba’s taobao or Tmall. In short, user activity.
Pinduoduo thinks it can do this by buying vegetables. “these orders AOV (Average Order Value, Average Order Value) is low. David Liu, said, “but, ” buy more food to solve is the user’s daily fresh demand, so that the user will use its frequency is higher, and on the platform of participation will be higher. ”
The main entry point for duoduo is based on the WeChat app, but pinduoduo gives it a prominent place within its APP. Every time a city opens a Pinduoduo APP, local users will see a subsidy marketing advertisement for the new business prominently on the home page.
Pinduoduo’s share price has almost doubled since it launched its vegetable buying business in August. Understandably, every analyst question on the company’s third-quarter earnings call was about more grocery shopping.
04 who want “towards the giant ” of young people
On January 4 in the afternoon, a lot of spelling released “about spelling, many colleagues Zhang Fei description of accidental death, that in addition to the statement mentioned in the description of Zhang Fei accident process in the beginning, also labeled Zhang Fei families WeChat friends post ” beg you don’t let she got involved in public opinion is in “, and denied it aroused a lot of people on zhihu angry comments – although there are some people believe that the comments just say the truth, they are just not willing to listen to people.
In the afternoon, on social media about the spelling of “bad ” rumors of enterprise culture more and more. On the evening of the same day, the Labor security supervision department of Changning District in Shanghai intervened and started an inspection on the employment conditions such as the employment contract and employment time of Pinduoduo.
According to pinduoduo’s 2019 annual report, the company has nearly 6,000 employees and the average age of the team is 27 years old. According to the GMV achieved by the company during the period, the GMV reached RMB 1006.6 billion, which means that each employee created RMB 170 million GMV.
As of October 2020, Pinduoduo has nearly 7,000 employees, according to CEO Chen Lei. Founder Huang Zheng within the company 5 anniversary of the speech mentioned in 2020, the company is based on a lot of shopping this new business of the company: the organization structure adjustment “we so happy to see that in our thousands of people there are much more than I thought of friend can play and play, go to buy vegetables and other new business line. ”
Several spelling, many employees and close to the company sources confirmed to reporters that the boss’s mouth “to a line ” is actually the staff internal force transferred from Shanghai headquarters was in various provinces and cities. There is no prior indication of how long the stay will last, and many are ready to move on to other cities after completing one. “nobody knows when he can return to Shanghai, but can you feel this is a good chance of rapid promotion. , “a source told the reporters.
“she is a bright and cheerful disposition, the person in charge, occasionally in the circle of friends make fun to work overtime, should be to ignore the health. “a graduates told reporters at the same level with Zhang Fei met during college community YiMagazine, Zhang Fei graduation into the spell, in the eyes of students is found an enviable good job – ” Internet famous enterprises “, , “high strength ” but also “high-paying ”.
But no one knows what the cost will be until something happens.
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