"depth" and "catfish" have nowhere to go: it is difficult for Xiaomi ecological chain to explode again

in the past two years or so, the explosive products in Xiaomi ecological chain have decreased.

At the end of 22, in the conference room of a hotel in Beijing, Qu Heng, general manager of the eco-chain department, talked about this difficult topic. The people below look different and have different ideas. Among them, some directly caused this phenomenon, and some realized it long ago, but they were helpless. At this time, the only knowledge they can achieve may be that Qu Heng is telling the truth.

This meeting is a sharing meeting held twice a year between Xiaomi Eco-chain Department and Eco-chain Company. In front of Qu Heng, it is the CEO or other senior executives of various Xiaomi eco-chain companies. He will talk about the same topic once in Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta-with the number of eco-chain companies approaching 2, bosses can no longer easily gather in one city.

Xiaomi Eco-chain is an important decision made by Lei Jun in 213: Xiaomi, which started fairly smoothly in the smart phone business, will incubate hardware companies that produce intelligent hardware by way of investment. This task was entrusted to Liu De, who was in the ID department at that time, and as the biggest pusher behind it, Lei Jun also started his own platform tour for Xiaomi ecological chain.

the ecological chain is fierce. Since 214, Zimi's charging treasure, Huami's smart bracelet, Yeelight's desk lamp, Roborock's sweeping robot, Chuangmi's smart plug, Zhimi's air purifier, Qingmi's patch panel, and the balance car of No.9 robot have all aroused great splash just after they were put into the market, and the reputation of Xiaomi's ecological chain as "good at making explosives" has also officially started in the market.

this state will continue until 218. After that, the scene that Xiaomi smashed the market became less and less common.

"The sense of ceremony is not so strong." Yang Ping, who works as a middle-level in an eco-chain company, said, "For rice noodles, their expectations are not so strong."

218 is a special year for Xiaomi. On July 9th in the hot summer, Xiaomi was officially listed as a Hong Kong-listed company-and this is roughly consistent with Qu Heng's point in time when explosive products become less. An interviewed eco-chain executive also said that the Xiaomi eco-chain has changed somewhat after the company went public.

listing is not the clearest critical line, but it shows at least one problem: after that, Xiaomi ecological chain entered a new stage, in which it encountered new problems and adopted new ways of playing, but these changes failed to make it continue the "myth".

a product scheme that Wang Chenran was very proud of was taken away.

He works as a product manager in an eco-chain company, so it is not easy to push a new project into Xiaomi's internal review process. "But the cost of another eco-chain company is much better than ours. In the end, they will do this plan." The other party is a company with a larger number of categories and sales scale, and obviously has stronger bargaining power in the supply chain.

he didn't complain at first, but the product didn't sell well, which led to the other party's decision to stop production and the plan returned to his own company. This seemingly good ending made him feel that "bad money drives out good money".

"This kind of cooperation process makes people feel that even if the head company does it conveniently, the scheme is cheaper than yours and the project can be taken away." He said, "but we are so willing to do in-depth research and development that we are not interested."

This is a "big fish eat small fish". Strangely, the story of "shrimp eat big fish" is also happening.

Yang Ping's eco-chain company belongs to a "veteran", but it has had similar experiences for no less than four or five times. It was not veteran players who stole the scheme, but some new members who had entered the market for a year or two, and their scale and products were not as good as theirs.

these companies have no strong bargaining power, and the only thing they can do is to keep prices and costs down. "No matter how low the price is, they are willing to take this order, even if they lose a little money." Yang Ping said. Because of the commonality of design elements such as UI, the other party can take the design drawings and use them directly, but the difference lies in the simplification of materials and the lower price of materials.

"But this will destroy the whole ecological chain and affect Xiaomi's reputation." Yang Ping said, "On the one hand, everyone doesn't make money, on the other hand, these projects are in a state of substandard and abnormal quality."

There are quite a few similar stories in the office, and Xu Fan, who has been working in Xiaomi Ecological Chain Department for a long time, is not surprised. "No way, rice noodles support Xiaomi's cost performance. If you want to be an ecological chain, you have to lose money first."

executives are not unaware of this. Qu Heng mentioned in the previous meeting that a very important reason for the decrease of explosives is "excessive internal competition". Obviously, one of the "excesses" is that the focus of competition is placed on the cost structure.

the story didn't start like this.

"Xiaomi hopes that we can rest assured and concentrate on research and development." He speculated on Xiaomi's psychology, "but at the same time they made it very clear that moderate competition will be introduced in two years."

This kind of competition quickly changed from "moderate" to fierce. Although it is not obvious from the outside, it is actually surging.

the development of competition is also divided into active and passive. Passivity refers to some larger companies. When the category is expanded to a certain extent, some short stories are "conveniently done", just like the story that Wang Chenran experienced earlier. On the initiative, Xiaomi released the pit of a certain track and consciously introduced competition.

Among them, Xunmi, Yunmi and Roborock are relatively well-known Xiaomi eco-chain enterprises, while Shenzhen Yinxing Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. is an old-fashioned domestic sweeping robot manufacturer established in 25. It is known that Shanchuan Technology was once a manufacturer entrusted by Yunmi, and then directly supplied to Xiaomi.

In the well-known story, the earliest supplier of Mijia sweeping robot is Roborock, which has also successfully developed into a listed company in science and technology innovation board with the help of Xiaomi's order and its own brand. However, in the past few years, Xiaomi has introduced different competitors in sweeping robots in various price segments, and even there is no lack of pure OEM mode-this phenomenon is not uncommon in other categories.

more commonly, after the eco-chain company develops and grows, it will be closer to a pure business cooperation relationship with Xiaomi. Chang Jing, the founder and CEO of Roborock, once said in a media interview this year that the current relationship with Xiaomi is a B-side business that "mainly depends on whether the order can win"-which is regarded by the outside world as the relationship between the two has turned from a joint force to a certain degree of centrifugal force.

from a commercial point of view, this idea is understandable, but it deviates from the original intention of Xiaomi ecological chain.

Anyone familiar with this ecology knows the famous "bamboo forest effect" theory-in January 217, Liu De used it in an internal sharing class to refer to the relationship between Xiaomi and the ecological chain, as well as between ecological chain companies.

"Today's Internet companies are more like bamboo. As long as the time is right, a spring rain can grow overnight." He said.

The problem with bamboo is that its life cycle is short, but as long as it becomes a bamboo forest, it is difficult to die. Xiaomi should become a "bamboo forest": through investment, Xiaomi eco-chain enterprises will become a bamboo forest around Xiaomi, and the roots under it will spread constantly, cultivating bamboo shoots and then growing into bamboo, realizing self-iteration and internal metabolism.

"The roots of bamboos are connected underground, and they need each other." This moral is beautiful, and it really worked at the beginning, but with the increasing number of "bamboo", some once mutual feeding behaviors have turned into internal friction.

Both Yang Ping and Wang Chenran agree that with the mobilization of a group of talents after listing, the team ability of Xiaomi Eco-chain has changed-exactly, their code of conduct has deviated.

"Some standards and quality requirements will be abandoned." Yang Ping said, "For example, some enterprises that do low-end imitation but have no core competence have been introduced." The top management of the aforementioned eco-chain company also has the same view. In addition, the pursuit of category expansion has also led to the emergence of some mediocre products.

as for the reasons behind it, they speculated that it was caused by the revenue growth and profit pressure after Xiaomi went public.

"The Group will give Eco-chain this year's sales task, then split it into various product lines and categories, and finally fall into specific SKUs, and this figure will be adjusted every month or even every week." A Xiaomi employee said.

"Our goal is to double the annual sales and ensure profits, but there is no mandatory profit target." At the departmental meeting at the end of the year, he can always hear such instructions, but this will not make him anxious, because it will not be linked to salary and performance.

even if it is not mandatory, the employees at the executive level will still strive to achieve their goals.

In February and March last year, the epidemic was rampant everywhere, and the supply of eco-chain products had been affected by the shutdown. But in the blink of an eye, it is the April rice noodle festival, and the three major positions of the department's planning, procurement and sales are beginning to make trouble with the market demand.

Xu Fan still remembers the argument among colleagues about a certain category. The person in charge of forecasting said "there is no need to place so many orders", but the sales insisted on maintaining growth, and finally even the sales of the same period last year failed to reach.

in fact, such persistence has not brought obvious effect.

there is no exact figure for the revenue generated by Xiaomi's eco-chain department, but it is included in the revenue of Xiaomi's financial report "IoT and eco-consumer products". However, the financial report will indicate the income of Xiaomi's smart TV and notebook, and the figures obtained after deduction can probably reflect the income of the ecological chain department (including Xiaoai speakers, etc.).

Among them, the year-on-year growth rate of smart TV and notebook revenue decreased more obviously, with 119.3%, 33.% and -7.% respectively. Compared with this, although the year-on-year growth rate of the deducted part is also decreasing, the range is relatively small, which is 69.5%, 48.1% and 18.5% in turn. This means that the latter must perform better in order to drive the income growth of the whole sector.

if it is broken down into quarters, this situation is even more obvious.

although the impact of the epidemic can't be ignored, it can't be ignored that the eco-chain department is under performance pressure.

compared with the annual growth rate of Xiaomi's total revenue of 52.6%, 17.7% and 19.4% in the same period from 218 to 22, the revenue growth rate of IoT and eco-consumer products has changed from "surpassing" in that year to "lagging behind". This is not a good signal for the department, and even a wake-up call-why does the IoT business seem to repeat the same mistakes when Xiaomi makes up lessons in the mobile phone business?

At the same time, more than one internal employee said that with the growth of Xiaomi, the eco-chain department will also worry about how to keep its position in the group. To put it more bluntly, "there are more and more business divisions. How can they (middle level) keep Lei always paying attention to themselves?"

to outsiders, this change can be regarded as the epitome of the professional pains experienced by Xiaomi after its listing.

Yang Ping recalled that in the "careless" period, some problems could be solved by just calling "Liu De, De Ge" and sending a WeChat, but after the professionalization of the team, the two sides had to re-establish this connection.

Now, they often go to Xiaomi headquarters and sit on the sofa in the meeting room for interviews. "The leaders talk with great atmosphere, but it is impossible to find him for everything." Yang Ping said.

this change is inevitable. When Liu De was in charge of the ecological chain department, he said, "If 8 companies come to me to make decisions, they will collapse in an instant. So we made a middle-level decision-making system, and many things were solved at the middle level. "

he believes that only role systematization can break through the bottleneck of decision-making efficiency, even if it will reduce efficiency at first. "Finally should be to a what state? All the actions of the company are caused by this system, not by your judgment. "

The top management of the above-mentioned eco-chain company also feels this kind of procedural communication, and thinks that this system will solidify the creativity of some people. In addition, he also said, "The first wave of talented brothers either retired or changed jobs. Personally, I think this wave of people (ability) has declined slightly."

Yan Chao, an early member of the eco-chain department who has left his post, did not refute the view that explosives have decreased in the past two years, but only said that he was "too deeply involved to answer". However, he implicitly said that the decline in product polishing quality was related to the "human ability problem".

"You can't gather so many strong people anymore." Yan Chao said.

"In fact, the interior has always attached great importance to explosives, but the disappearance of rare species may be due to hunting and more likely to environmental changes." Yan Chao said frankly.

The environment of Xiaomi ecological chain is really different.

In May, 217, a book called Notes on the Battlefield of Xiaomi Ecological Chain was officially published, which recorded the growth process of 77 Xiaomi ecological chains at that time and the essence of Xiaomi's explosive play.

Lei Jun personally prefaces this book-"Millet is to be a catfish in China's manufacturing industry": "Millet mode is to enter an industry like a catfish, stir an industry, and then promote an industry revolution."

the catfish effect is not a new word in the internet industry, and the market that "catfish" millet will enter is not random, but those ponds called "ant market".

The ant market is a metaphor put forward by Liu De, which means that all players in a certain industry are like little ants, and the market share does not exceed 1%. * * * shares this market together. "Among them, maybe we can find the first place, and even catch a glimpse of the second place, but who is the third place? No one knows and can't choose. "

The ant market has no standard, no cognition, no brand, no innovation motivation, and no high-quality products with high cost performance. Several eco-chain products that broke the market in the early days all meet these characteristics: charging treasure, desk lamp, smart bracelet, sweeping robot and air purifier.

but after seven years, are there still many such markets?

Boss Ma, who has owned a Xiaomi eco-chain store in Changde, Hunan since 217, believes that there are fewer and fewer kinds of explosive products that Xiaomi can make. Now the best-selling eco-chain products in his store are Xiaoai speaker and Xiaomi smart cameras, and then the Xiaomi smart door lock that appeared at the end of 218.

as for other categories, "unless people who have bought millet are not too entangled, it is already difficult for new customers to impress them." Ma boss said.

in addition, facing the impact of Xiaomi, the market has already learned to defend itself.

Xiaomi once wanted to rely on green rice to make a cost-effective "revolution" in the bull's monopoly patch panel market, but the bull responded quickly to Xiaomi's attack, and within a few months, it launched a product called "pixel-level" standard "Bull Xiaobai": pure white, minimalist design, with three jacks and three USB ports, priced only in 48 yuan and postage.

At that time, it was once called the "awakening work" of the bull, but many comments were sober, saying that the "high-cold" bull wouldn't make this change if Xiaomi didn't spoil it, and it was also a typical industry defense action against Xiaomi.

After subverting so many industries, Xiaomi is not only an "ant market".