According to a later report from LatePost, on the afternoon of December 22nd, on the third day after Wu Yongming succeeded Dai Shan as the CEO of Taotian Group, Taotian Group issued a letter to all employees, undergoing a major overhaul of its core management.
After the latest adjustment, the six core management members of Taotian Group have become: Wu Jia is responsible for the User Platform Business Unit and Alibaba Mama Business Unit; Chen Weiye (flower name: Chuduan) is responsible for the Taobao Business Unit, Taotian Merchant Platform Department, and Taotian Customer Satisfaction Department; Liu Bo (flower name: Jialuo) is responsible for the Tmall business unit; Liu Yiman (flower name: Yiman) is responsible for the M2C business unit; Wang Tingxiang (flower name: Shaoyou) is responsible for the Clothing Development Department; Cheng Daofang is responsible for Taobao Live and Content Business Unit.
Wu Jia and Chen Weiye were both transferred from other subsidiaries of Alibaba to Taotian Group.
Previously, the core management of Taotian Group was fully rotated, including Wang Hai (flower name: Qigong), Liu Peng (flower name: Aowen), Yu Feng (flower name: Xuande), Wang Mingqiang (flower name: Sihan), as well as Chief Talent Officer Qu Yang and Chief Financial Officer Li Bo.
Several insiders of Taotian Group have confirmed the authenticity of the above information to Time Weekly reporters. At the same time, a reporter from Time Weekly contacted relevant personnel from Taotian Group regarding management changes, and the other party replied, "There are currently no more materials available to provide."
It is reported that the designer of the above adjustments is Wu Yongming. He took office as the CEO of Taotian Group on December 20th. At that time, Cai Chongxin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba Group, issued a letter to all members stating that this would help to lead Taotian's transformation with technological innovation, ensuring the group's unified command and high-intensity continuous investment in the two strategic focuses of e-commerce and cloud.
At that time, Cai Chongxin had already announced that since Wu Yongming took over as CEO of Alibaba Group for three months, he had comprehensively promoted the reform of a younger management team. Next, Alibaba will fully utilize a young management team trained and emerging at the grassroots level to create an innovative environment for young people.
After this adjustment, almost all of Taotian Group's new teams are born in the 1980s. Among them, Wu Jia was born in 1985. It is speculated that Wu Jia's transfer to Taotian is closely related to his incubation of quarks. This product is regarded by Alibaba as one of its strategic innovative businesses, and Wu Yongming praised it as "deeply loved by the younger generation. In the era of big models, it is a revolutionary search product that has great opportunities to be created for students and young people.".
Chen Weiye (flower name: Chuduan), born in 1982, was previously the COO of Alibaba's local lifestyle group Ele.me. He led the brand value direction of Ele.me's "Rest assured and deliver on time" and created a phenomenon level marketing strategy called "Guess the answer for free". He is also the founder of Xianyu.
Liu Bo (flower name: Jialuo) was born in 1980 and has been responsible for the Taobao Marketing Department, Taobao University, Juhuasuan Business Unit, Tmall Marketing Platform Business Unit, Alibaba Mama, and others. After multiple adjustments, Liu Bo is one of the few executives who has survived to this day.
Cheng Daofang (flower name: Daofang), born in 1984, was originally a technical leader and incubated the innovative product "Vmate" in the UC business unit. His monthly active users were close to 50 million, making him the third largest video platform in the Indian market. After the product was taken down by the Indian government, Cheng Daofang was transferred to Taobao Live to be responsible for the short video platform "Diantao". Afterwards, his authority expanded to the entire Taobao Live business unit.
Wang Tingxiang (flower name: Shaoyou) was born in 1987 and is the youngest management in this adjustment. Previously, he was responsible for operations at Taoxianda and Taocaicai, and began taking over Wanda in 2022.
Many of the six new management members have technical backgrounds, which is in line with the strategic map drawn by Wu Yongming in November: facing the future, Alibaba will have three important priority directions: technology driven internet platform business, AI driven technology business, and global business network.
It is worth mentioning that this adjustment is the third major adjustment of Taotian Group in the past two years. Behind this, 24-year-old Alibaba competes against numerous competitors, and its core business of e-commerce is constantly being eroded by strong rivals.
According to a global investment research report by Goldman Sachs, the market share of Taobao and Tmall has decreased from 66% in 2019 to around 44% in 2022, a significant drop of one-third over four years. During the same period, the competitors of JD kept stable at about 20%, and Pinduoduo increased from 10% to 18%. The rapid rise of Tiktok and Kwai, the main share of the encroachment, came from Taobao and Tmall.
Wu Yongming is well aware of the current situation of Alibaba's e-commerce business, so after taking office, "re entrepreneurship" has become a high-frequency term. With the determination to start a new business and reshape user value, no matter how successful our past business models may have been, we must turn the page to zero and awaken the mindset of starting a new business.