Old Reflection: Regret Not Listening To Lei Jun's Admonition

In 2011, when the customers were the most busy, there were more than 13000 people in the company, and thirty or forty leaders at the president level. Now, there are fewer than 300 people, and only 7 people are the core team of shirts, but the business is running smoothly. I can't help thinking, so many people in the past are doing what?

Now, in retrospect, the more lively the company is, the more people burn the money to fool around. In order to achieve the annual sales target of 10 billion, fan has pushed down the number of products and how many SKU (inventory units) needed to expand, and how many people need to undertake such a business volume. According to the principle of one person managing seven people, the company must have dozens of deputy directors and two hundred or three hundred directors.

At that time, I also reveled in this bustle, and put all my energy on how to manage these more than 10000 people, but I didn't know that the company should really manage the value.

At the most prosperous time, I began to feel vaguely wrong, but I didn't know where it was wrong. The first time I really wake up and let me thoroughly reflect on the fan mode is my good brother Lei Jun for many years. Lei Jun and I were born in 1969. He was 8 months younger than me. Over the past 17 years, we have been working together and communicating a lot. Because of the relationship between our peers, we have many similarities in our understanding of life and soul.

I met Lei Jun for the first time in 1998. He and I are both 29 years old. I just started the book review weekly. He has just been the general manager of Jinshan software. Two years later, Lei Jun invited me to set up an excellent network. After the excellent network was sold to Amazon, Lei Jun also gave me the investment and advice of my network and fan.

2007 is very important to me and Lei Jun. This year Lei Jun left Jinshan, and I began to prepare for the launch of everyone. Lei Jun has a deep affection for Jinshan. He left behind many years of hard work. The pain he brought to him was self-evident. For many reasons, outside comments were not true. This pain made Lei Jun reborn and restarted, but after that he started off so beautifully that no one else thought of it.

From 2007 to 2010, Lei Jun's process of brewing millet brought great improvement to his career and soul. Lei Jun therefore wants to see a lot of things, such as how to make a product's brand, and stick to the idea of concentration, extreme and word-of-mouth. In the time of Lei Jun's thorough understanding, I was lost in the fierce growth and impetuous expansion of the people. At that time Lei Jun was full of a bag full of dozens of cell phones, excitedly chatting with me about the difference between these phones, I do not think so. And when the customer crashed, I discussed with him the future of everyone in depth, as well as his own personal experience of painful process, I realized how profound his change is.

In June 2013, I had drunk a drink with Lei Jun at everyone, and I had a very unhappy conversation. Lei Jun bluntly pointed out that the blind expansion of all customers is the practice of the last generation. The future enterprises will be like millet, with user needs as the guidance, and products will be used to mold the brand. His words are very stimulating to me. I think it is also true that we can predict the growth of the business from the growth of users, so as to set up the idea of SKU. I thought to myself that you did not need to rush to me when you developed millet.

The conversation broke up and I really believed in Lei Jun after two months. In August 29, 2013, I visited him for the sake of gambling. I emptied the half floor and hung out all the samples of all the guests. I was embarrassed when I walked with Lei Jun among hundreds of hangers, because it was the first time I saw so many real products. I failed to find that none of them was available. Lei Jun said he felt that he was not standing in a brand store, but in the department store.

This matter was completely recognized by me. After that, Lei Jun and I had seven or eight, seven or eight hours long talks. Lei Jun said: "lack of concentration and lack of perfection is the reason why customers are having problems." He gave my customers the three transformation directions of "gross profit margin, organizational structure and KPI". Lei Jun asked me, can you concentrate on one of the most basic products first? I think the shirt is the most basic and can also reflect the technical content, and the most basic shirt is the white shirt.

At first I didn't think it would be difficult to make a white shirt. Everyone had made 14 million shirts. But once you start to focus and examine carefully, the problem is coming.

In 2007, I was also involved in product discussions. After the second half of 2009, people said, "if you don't know your clothes, don't mention your opinions." I really don't understand, so I recruited many people in the traditional clothing industry to check and let go.

When I want to seriously do a white shirt, I ask these professionals what fabric, what type and how to make it, no one can tell the way. Designer What do white shirts have to do? Why not design more patterns? - now they have basically left everyone.

In the past year, I have not been in Beijing for 3/4 of the time. In order to make a white shirt, I began to arrange business trips to meet suppliers and find factories. When I saw the supplier, I realized how much mistakes I made in the past. They told me that they had visited me in Beijing in the past, but I was too lazy to see PPT and had no time to meet them. They can only deal with the staff at the grass-roots level, and in order to get orders, they should be treated to bathe and sing.

These things make my hair stand on end. It can be imagined that all the guests were already crowded with people. How to get these people out of the field as soon as possible? I have made a tough move, no longer maintaining the false prosperity of the customers, moving the headquarters from the upscale office building of Yonggui center in West Second Ring to the remote South Fifth Ring of Yizhuang, who can not adapt to leave at any time.

Most people quickly felt the drop and psychological impact of moving. Before moving, there were more than 5000 people. After moving, I thought it would be good to reduce it to more than 1000. I didn't expect it to be reduced to more than 300 at last. When all the guests were on the dedicated and extreme route, I realized that there were so few people in need. The process is like stripping the onion. The more it peels away, the harder it gets. The more stripped it is, the more cruelty it becomes, and the more stripped it is, we find out how much fun we have done before and how to join the crowd.

Once there were more than 200 people in the shirt department. Now there are only 7 people in the shirt team. Their main jobs are design, print, fabric and merchandiser, and the product manager of the shirt is actually me. We first identified the Xinjiang quality long staple cotton as the fabric, then we fell into the design problem of the bitter white shirt, no matter how to do it, even copying, it can not reproduce the temperament of the big white shirt.

Before and after the Spring Festival of 2014, the team members were in despair. I once wanted to give up. I was advised to visit Ji Guowu, a Japanese shirt master, in Nam Dinh, Vietnam. Before seeing him, it happened that we were in the lowest mood. Because I was disappointed too much, I didn't have much hope for this trip. Because of my gloom, everyone on the plane didn't want to talk. In the guesthouse in Hanoi, I asked the team members to go to Nam Dinh to see Ji Guowu first. I was ready to fly back to Beijing at that time.

　　 team With such a gloomy mood, he came to Nam Dinh, and all the way he had gone through a lot of anchorages and lost routes. Then, the lost mood suddenly became clear on the second day. Ji Guowu is a real master. He has made shirts in Japan for more than thirty years, and the company has been in service for 120 years. He told us the secrets of many design details. For example, add a half lining under the collar, let the neckline be crisp; pinch 6 folds on the cuffs to fit the arms; and how to design shirts with different inserts to conform to the European and American version of shirts or slim or loose style.

The improvement of Japanese masters in making handicrafts has made us admirable and admirable. For example, we have studied why clothes float in water and produce buoyant hair. Japanese master let us first study the speed of the machine when the clothes are dyed. If the speed is too fast, it will produce Mao Yu. The speed is too slow and the luster is not enough. The master retraced with our first gear until we decided the best result.

These seemingly simple problems are all the fundamental impetuosity in China. In the past, we questioned the products, and partners gave me various quality inspection reports. They said that manufacturing was in line with national standards, European standards and Japanese standards, but meeting standards and user experience were two different things. These things made me realize that all the clothes I made were rubbish.

I just started to do it. Van guest At that time, I said with great embarrassed that the future international brands in China are only luxury goods, and the consumer goods market will be dominated by Chinese brands. UNIQLO will surely fail in China. 7 years later, UNIQLO and Gap have been driven directly into China. This is the biggest punishment for China.

During the year when I was making a white shirt, I wanted to give up many times, and almost everyone around me had wavered. But as a leader, I give up before I die. Fortunately, running helped me to keep up. I am running more than 10 kilometers a day, and the dopamine release from running is very helpful to my emotions. Once you start running, you will find that you can either continue to run or die, or sit there and sigh or stick to it and become healthy.

Lei Jun gave me decisive support in spirit. When I was in a fog of future, he stood up to me in front of shareholders and reinvested everyone in crisis. One evening, he said on the phone, "old age, I dream that you can do well. The two men were more than 40 years old and fell in love at midnight. Everyone in the family said that we could not find the right words to describe our feelings.

Lei Jun said that a good product must have a firm belief. Good products will grow slowly with the accumulation of word of mouth, and usher in an outbreak in the future. Lei Jun once asked me, do you think NOKIA bosses will be used by their owners? When the customers were in their prime, I wore Prada and Zegna. Now, Lei Jun and I are all wearing a T-shirt and jeans for the whole summer. I think it's incredible.

There is no further financing plan for anyone, and some people have asked me when I will make hot spots like "any object". I said, I am good at marketing brand, but I do not want to deliberately create any events, followed by the accumulation of word-of-mouth process.

I hope that in the future, when you change your season, you need to buy a shirt or super light down jacket, and you can think of all guests. That's enough. UNIQLO is such a step by step towards success. I don't want to go any further. I've been together, and I've seen many companies that are busy.