20 13 September, Xiaomi released the first Xiaomi TV. Only six years later, with its ultra-low price, Xiaomi became the first brand in China's color TV market whose annual shipment exceeded10 million.
In the past few years, when the online dividend was exhausted and the overseas market was limited to India, Xiaomi TV turned its attention to the traditional offline market. Liu, former vice president of Skyworth TV and general manager of Storm TV, who is good at exploring the offline market, came to Xiaomi TV.
On May 9 this year, Xiaomi The Avengers officially announced that Liu was "airborne" as the general manager of the TV department, while the former general manager Li was transferred to be in charge of the home appliance department.
However, shortly after Liu took office, it was reported that he was taken away by the relevant departments to assist in the investigation.
Judging from Weibo, Liu Yaoping has never appeared in public since he joined Xiaomi. His last Weibo still stays in May 13.
This is in sharp contrast to the average daily announcement rhythm of several Weibo by other Xiaomi executives. On the contrary, Li, who has been transferred to the Home Appliances Department, continues to speak for Xiaomi TV on Weibo.
At present, the whole network still can't find any reports about Liu being taken away for investigation. Industry speculation is likely to be related to the storm group case. Feng Xin, the actual controller of Storm Group 20 19, was taken compulsory measures for allegedly bribing non-state staff, and was formally sued to the court in July 2020.
For Xiaomi TV at an important juncture, Liu, the new head of the company, was caught off guard. Moreover, because Xiaomi always loves friends and business executives and likes "airborne troops", when the high-level officials in charge of specific affairs suddenly "disappear", the original deployment will inevitably be disrupted, and their own cadres will not be able to top in time. It is reported that the post of general manager of Xiaomi TV has been inappropriate until recently and has been idle for several months.
If Xiaomi had enough ability to train executives himself, things might not have developed like this.
20 19 65438+ 10 joined Xiaomi's president Lu, joined Nubian's former vice president and former Lenovo's mobile phone business director Chang Cheng at the end of the year, joined Zanthoxylum mobile phone founder in 2020 65438+ 10, and recruited Meizu's former senior vice president and Storm TV's former CEO Liu and Xiaomi on the way to airborne executives.
Without exception, these executives from Friends witnessed the fiasco of their former owners in the market, so they were nicknamed "The Avengers" by netizens.
The addition of The Avengers has really broadened Xiaomi's vision and practical ability. For example, under the leadership of Lu, the brand of Redmi successfully shouldered the burden of "extreme cost performance", which enabled Xiaomi brand to fully impact the mid-to high-end market.
The routine, called "Wan Ciwang" by netizens, has brought more topics to Xiaomi, and also made the new machine on the "hot list" for many times.
However, "airborne executives" still have great risk means, and they will explode if they are not careful.
Chang Cheng announced his resignation from Lenovo on February 3, 20 19. Lenovo China official responded that Chang Cheng left for personal and family reasons, and both sides cherished each other and broke up peacefully in a peaceful and friendly atmosphere.
However, what makes the story turn sharply is that just two days later, Chang Cheng announced to join Xiaomi as the vice president of Xiaomi Group and began to "work hard for dreams".
At that time, some people questioned that Chang Cheng, as a high-level Lenovo, must have mastered a lot of Lenovo core information. Without the restriction of non-competition agreement, how could he jump directly to a competitive company to be an executive?
Sure enough, Lenovo immediately responded that the company had signed a non-competition agreement with all senior executives and "will seek a solution within the legal framework".
At that time, Xiaomi didn't panic at all, saying: "There is no non-competition clause, and the compensation for non-competition has not been taken."
However, in June, 2020, Lenovo Group formally initiated arbitration for Chang Cheng's violation of non-competition. Non-competition agreement exists, and non-competition compensation is paid in place before Chang Cheng leaves his post.
Chang Cheng insisted that the signature on the non-competition agreement was not signed by himself, so the Arbitration Commission appointed the Institute of Science and Technology Appraisal of Fada Court to appraise the Lenovo Restriction Agreement signed by Chang Cheng on July 24, 2007, and the appraisal conclusion showed that the document was signed by Chang Cheng himself.
10 On June 9, Beijing Haidian District Labor and Personnel Dispute Arbitration Commission ruled that Great Wall had violated the non-competition agreement and needed to continue to perform its non-competition obligations, pay a penalty of RMB 5,25210,000, and return the non-competition compensation previously paid by Lenovo. It is also agreed that the Great Wall needs to continue to fulfill its non-competition obligations and leave Xiaomi Group, which is also a mobile phone industry.
On the same day, Chang Cheng refused to accept the judgment and entrusted a law firm to appeal. The above judgment was suspended according to law.
Judging from the current situation, Chang Cheng obviously hopes to prevent himself from going out of Xiaomi by delaying the execution of the judgment.
But now Chang Cheng has received compensation, refused to perform the non-competition agreement, and tried to deny that he signed the non-competition agreement by lying, which made netizens doubt Chang Cheng's character.
In addition, Chang Cheng released vulgar propaganda copy for Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition, and finally had to apologize publicly. Although the event was listed on the hot search twice in a row, it had a certain negative impact on Xiaomi's brand image. Rebuilding the brand image is an important strategy for Xiaomi to hit the high end.
Why does Xiaomi like to dig people from "next door" so much, instead of cultivating talents himself?
Similarly, as a technology giant, Huawei's domestic executives rarely have airborne troops. Even if there are a few, they are often not appointed to key management positions, but mostly take office as technical experts or management deputy. Although Huawei's overseas layout often needs space executives, it basically adopts self-cultivation in China.
Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, 1993 joined Huawei and has been promoted step by step from the grassroots level for 27 years. Undoubtedly, this not only warms the hearts of people with perseverance, but also sets an example for other young people in the company to struggle. In Xiaomi, high-end talents like Yu Chengdong seem to have little room for growth.
Of course, compared with Xiaomi, Huawei has a longer history of 33 years, sufficient talent reserves and a long-term talent training model. Xiaomi, founded on 20 10, is the fastest technology enterprise on the list of the world's top 500 companies, but it is still too young.
However, why are there almost no "own people" who have grown up from the bottom of Xiaomi? An important reason is that Xiaomi pursues "cost performance" too much in employee compensation.
According to many apps that broke the news, in the first-line technology companies, Xiaomi's employee salary is obviously "not competitive enough", and even some internal employees said that the salary is less than 70% of the industry benchmark, but the workload is "super doubled".
According to institutional statistics, among the new economic giants Xiaomi, Tencent, Ali, Baidu, JD.COM and Meituan, Xiaomi employees have the strongest income-generating ability per capita, and 1 Xiaomi employees can even beat1/Meituan employees, which is not "very cost-effective".
Perhaps, it is precisely because of the unsatisfactory salary that Xiaomi employees have difficulty in perseverance. Once there are many excellent and capable employees, they will be poached by competing for 200% and 300% of their wages. As Zhou said, the company has developed to a certain stage. . . . . . Employees with poor abilities tend to stay, and after a long time, they become middle and high-level.
Many Xiaomi employees were left behind by golden handcuffs, who "listed Xiaomi and made a fortune overnight".
It is reported that on the eve of Xiaomi's listing, there are developers and intermediaries with a keen sense of smell. A large number of real estate developers, such as Lingxiu Huigu, Shoukai China Resources City, China Resources Ideal Country and Sunshine City Tan Yue, all made internal acquisitions in Xiaomi Company in March and April last year.
Interestingly, after Xiaomi went public, good media interviewed these real estate agents and intermediaries. They said that many employees were looking at the house before Xiaomi went public, but almost none of them were sold after it went public.
Because Xiaomi's stock broke when it went public, everyone was stuck.
There is such a voice outside that Xiaomi has lost the motivation to struggle because of the bursting of the "myth of getting rich by listing" and has been breathing a sigh of relief.
Xiaomi started to form The Avengers, which started almost immediately after it went public. Lei Jun did say that the introduction of some "losers" was to activate this team that lost its motivation by virtue of its struggle.
Of course, Lei Jun likes friendly business executives, more because these executives have proved their strength in other enterprises and have mature cognition, contacts and channels in the industry.
For Xiaomi, who has positioned "second venture" as the next stage goal, the contacts and channels mastered by these airborne troops are important resources for expanding Xiaomi's business line.
Take Xiaomi TV, which should have been led by Liu, as an example. In just six years, Xiaomi TV started from scratch and achieved the feat of annual shipment exceeding10 million, which is unprecedented.
However, although Xiaomi is firmly on the throne of online sales, basically no one can shake it, but it also makes Xiaomi more eager to launch the offline market. The iron triangle of Xiaomi's "Internet plus hardware+new retail" is invincible in the e-commerce platform, but the offline market is much more complicated and the stakeholders involved are more intertwined.
Lei Jun once praised Liu's ability to tap the offline color TV market on many occasions, and said that Liu was unlucky in Storm TV, suggesting that he was very optimistic about Liu's value to Xiaomi TV.
Xiaomi TV does occupy the first place in the domestic color TV industry, but it is undeniable that the overall problems of the domestic color TV market need to be faced collectively by the industry, and the most important thing is that consumers do not recognize the value of smart TV.
Reflected in the price, the overall net profit of hardware in the smart TV market is only 2%, which is far less than the net profit rate of white electricity 9%, small household appliances 8% and kitchen appliances 15%.
Moreover, the intelligence of TV has led to the decline of the value of black electricity, on the one hand, because the price war in the TV industry is more serious, on the other hand, because the mobile Internet has squeezed the value of big screens. How to solve this problem is an urgent need in front of the industry.
It should be said that Xiaomi, which owns the whole industrial chain of mobile phones, televisions, white goods, small household appliances and even kitchen appliances, already has inherent advantages. It is precisely because of this that Lei Jun launched the dual-engine strategy of "mobile phone +AIoT", and announced that it will continue to invest over 10 billion yuan in the next five years to start a second business in an all-round way, so that the brand ecology will move towards the Internet of Things.
While the business is developing by leaps and bounds, it is more difficult for Xiaomi to deal with talents excavated internally. Xiaomi had to absorb outstanding talents from outside, and chose to hire experienced, skilled and well-connected executives from friendly businesses as airborne troops, striving to rapidly promote business transformation and development.
With the "airborne executives", management confusion and team running-in are inevitable, and Liu's daily affairs are also the pain of the process that must be endured. As for whether this "The Avengers" team can effectively help Xiaomi achieve "second venture", it will take time to verify.