Recent media reports said that Alibaba spent HK$28 billion to acquire approximately 70.94% of Gao Xin's parent company Jixin Holdings Co., Ltd. from the " Auchan Retail". After the transaction is completed, Alibaba and its affiliates will directly or indirectly hold approximately 72% of the shares of Gaoxin Retail .
Speaking of Gaoxin Retail, you may not know. Speaking of , RT-Mart , it should be a household name.
Gao Xin Retail is the listing entity of the Taiwanese supermarket chain brand RT-Mart.
On November 20, 2017, Alibaba invested HK$22.4 billion to acquire a stake in Gaoxin Retail, and acquired 36.16% of the shares. After three years, Alibaba has not only made drastic reforms to RT-Mart, but now it has directly turned its shares. For RT-Mart, it may be able to go further, but for RT-Mart founder Huang Mingrui, it is a pain of giving up.
Last week, at the RT-Mart annual meeting, the head of Huang Mingrui officially announced his resignation. There was also news of Huang Mingrui's retirement in 2018, and then the news was rumored to be self-defeating, but this time it was serious.
Huang Mingrui, who has been in charge of RT-Mart for 23 years, is really leaving. He is replaced by Lin Xiaohai of Alibaba Group .
Attacking "little gangster"
Huang Mingrui was born in a small fishing village in Taiwan. He is not only from a poor family, but also a "little gangster" who loves fighting if he doesn't like to study.
His mother borrowed money everywhere for Huang Mingrui's tuition, but she repeatedly attracted people to be despised. A relative even said: What else can a gangster study?
In the end, my mother sold her only silver ring to get the tuition fee. Huang Mingrui's kindness deeply touched her. From then on, she changed her appearance and worked hard to do her best. She studied business at National Taiwan University and received scholarships every year.
When he was studying for graduate school, Huang Mingrui met Yin Yanliang, the young boss of Runtai Group, . The two had similar interests and soon became good friends.
graduating from a master's degree in 1985, and Huang Mingrui joined Runtai Textile with a sentence of "Fuck me".
is well read business books, plus business acumen, and with the support of friends, in just ten years, Huang Mingrui has gone from a bottom employee to a general manager, turning Runtai Textile into the world's largest plaid fabric manufacturer with annual sales of more than US$1 billion.
(Huang Mingrui and Yin Yanliang)
switched to hypermarkets, the top retailer in China
Back then, if Runtai continued to maintain profitability, there might be no RT-Mart.
1996, the Southeast Asian financial crisis, Taiwan's textile market plummeted, and Runtai could not escape the misfortune. Huang Mingrui suffered from insomnia at night and was confused during the day, and didn't know how to deal with it.
Until he wandered around aimlessly to a supermarket, the novel form and the hot business made Huang Mingrui have the idea of entering a hypermarket.
As an action-oriented Huang Mingrui wears sandals and carry a cloth bag every day, shuttles through major stores in Taipei to inquire about military information, and quickly finds out the routines of major stores. Immediately afterwards, Runtai headquarters announced its transition to the hypermarket, and RT-Mart was established and appointed Huang Mingrui as general manager.
In just one year, RT-Mart successfully ranked among the top three in Taiwan's mass-trading stores;
1997, RT-Mart entered the mainland market;
2010, RT-Mart achieved revenue of 40.4 billion yuan, defeating Carrefour .
In 2011, after RT-Mart and Auchan merged, Gao Xin Retail was listed in Hong Kong, surpassing Walmart and becoming the largest retailer in China.
In 2016, Auchan and RT-Mart two brands operated 446 hypermarkets in 29 provinces, cities and autonomous regions across the country, with revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan. RT-Mart set a record of not closing stores for 19 consecutive years.
Undoubtedly, in 20 years, Huang Mingrui created a miracle in retail hypermarkets.
Feiniu Flying Wings, Alibaba entered
The development speed of the domestic Internet market exceeded expectations. In 2009, Tmall launched Double Eleven, 2011 Weibo WeChat started social e-commerce, which made the retail industry worse and difficult.
In 2013, retail giants such as Walmart and Carrefour closed their stores and contracted. Huang Mingduan, who has a keen insight, took the lead in proposing: go online and offline at the same time.
His strong execution ability has been verified again. In January 2014, Feiniu.com was officially launched.Unfortunately, the saying "only fast martial arts in the world cannot be broken" cannot be confirmed by Feiniu. The relatively independent Feiniu has never been able to achieve operational unity with the traditional retail RT-Mart.
, which has invested 2 billion yuan in Feiniu.com, has been developing slowly for many years of losses and has been overtaken by Suning.com.
Some people say that the development history of Huang Mingrui and RT-Mart can mark the end of an offline retail era.
Feiniu Folding Wings is undoubtedly a tragic pain for Huang Mingrui and Gao Xin Retail. So, Huang Mingrui, who was seeking change, found Alibaba's Zhang Yong .
In November 2017, Alibaba and Gao Xin Retail reached a strategic cooperation, investing approximately HK$22.4 billion, and directly and indirectly hold 36.16% of Gao Xin Retail's shares.
At the RT-Mart annual meeting that year, Zhang Yong said: There is only one reason why both parties come together, that is, we both truly believe in new retail. There will be no online and offline division in the future, and there will be no physical retail, traditional retail and Internet retail in the future... We hope to make good use of all Alibaba's resources (users, merchants, clouds) and combine them with RT-Mart's powerful supply chain system and offline resources to jointly create surprises that exceed everyone's expectations.
RT-Mart's all-Ali era has arrived
Alibaba has always been strong, and this strength is reflected in personnel changes and business reforms.
In January 2018, Gao Xin Retail issued an announcement that Huang Mingrui had resigned as Gao Xin's executive director and appointed Zhang Yong as a non-executive director.
Ali acquired Gao Xin Retail for less than a month, and another knife hit Feiniu.com: stop Feiniu.com's mall business, clear out all third-party cooperation, and retain and develop 2B business (sent to home).
It is not easy for RT-Mart to leave Huang Mingrui.
Gaoxin Retail's performance in 2018 was poor, with revenue falling by 2.9% year-on-year and operating profit falling by 6.5% year-on-year. This is the first time since 2016 that there has been a double decline. Alibaba was not very satisfied with the decline in
, so the board of directors decided to let Huang Mingrui come back and serve as CEO of RT-Mart CEO.
This move has undoubtedly extended the handover time of Huang Mingrui and maintained the stability of RT-Mart.
htmlOn December 2, 2002, Huang Mingrui officially resigned from RT-Mart and handed over to Lin Xiaohai, vice president of Alibaba and general manager of Retail Connect, which also means that RT-Mart will fully enter the Alibaba era.23, RT-Mart will usher in the next era without Huang Mingrui.
Lin Xiaohai, who is also
It is reported that at present, 484 stores of RT-Mart and Auchan Supermarket under Gaoxin Retail have been fully online, and are connected to Ele.me , Taoxianda and Tmall Supermarket shared inventory business. All stores provide 1-hour delivery within 5 kilometers, of which 180 stores support half-day delivery within 20 kilometers.
In the first half of 2020, Gao Xin Retail achieved revenue of 53.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%.
After three years of exploration, the Gaoxin retail model created by Alibaba has been verified by the market, and RT-Mart has become the industry's new retail benchmark.
Lin Xiaohai takes over at this time, and it is undoubtedly stable.
Lin Xiaohai, vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager of the retail business department, joined Alibaba in 2016. His colleagues' evaluation of him is: handsome and talented.
Before entering Alibaba, Lin Xiaohai stayed at P&G for many years. It was this experience that allowed him to quickly integrate into it after entering the retail team, launched the Tmall store plan, and built an intelligent distribution network, which became an extremely important part of Alibaba Group's new retail layout.
In fact, in June this year, some media reported that Lin Xiaohai will be the CEO of RT-Mart and report directly to Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong. Huang Mingrui still serves as CEO of Gao Xin Retail and Chairman of RT-Mart China.
In the past six months, Huang Mingrui has been assisting Lin Xiaohai in quickly familiarizing himself with all aspects and processes of RT-Mart.
Now, Lin Xiaohai, who has officially taken office, said that as long as he sticks to his original aspiration, craftsmanship and innovation, RT-Mart will definitely return to the track of rapid growth in the future.
In the next 10 years, we will create three more RT-Mart.
Conclusion
Huang Mingrui once said: I am very strong, I will not lose, and I will never lose! You ask me if I have ever encountered any difficulties? No! Because there are difficulties, just solve it.
Now, the solution to the RT-Mart dilemma and allow RT-Mart to have a way to get the next 20 or even 100 years. Huang Mingrui found it, but this cost is very high.
