Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

Editor | Huang Yu More than half a year ago, e-commerce giants began to follow in the footsteps of PDD to launch "refund only". However, the drawbacks of "refund only" gradually emerged, and now Taobao is correcting its course. On July 26th, Taobao announced that it would optimize the "refund only" strategy, improve the seller's after-sales autonomy based on the new version of the experience score (store experience score), the higher the experience score, the greater the seller's disposal rights, and stores with a score of 4.8 or higher will receive more autonomy. The relevant policies will be officially implemented on August 9th. It's easy to see that Taobao is trying to strike a new balance between user experience and seller rights. Over the past few years, the biggest change in the e-commerce industry has been the rise of PDD. In addition to low prices, "refund only" is also a core factor in PDD's success. Therefore, e-commerce platforms have gone from questioning and understanding PDD to learning from PDD. At the end of last year, in order to strengthen consumer rights, Taobao began to support buyers for refund only, and JD.com also revised its guidelines to add standards for user refund only. However, while "refund only" protects consumers, it is also vulnerable to abuse by "wool party" and causes harm to seller rights. For example, during this year's June 18th promotion, many clothing merchants stated that the return rate can reach 80% or even 90%. Since consumers can apply for a refund without returning the goods for quality issues, a large number of merchants are experiencing significant losses. Insiders at Taobao told Wall Street News that Taobao is taking a beneficial exploration between users and sellers by optimizing the "refund only" based on the store experience score. "By guaranteeing consumer rights, it also significantly optimizes the business environment and forms a more benign and healthy e-commerce ecology." This also conforms to the current tone of Taobao's adjustment of the business environment. Recently, Taobao launched a round of scale modification for merchants, such as clarifying that "experience score" is the core basis for traffic distribution. In addition, from September 1st, Tmall will cancel the annual software service fee for the platform. However, Taobao's relaxation of the "refund only" rights of sellers is only to a certain extent. The premise for sellers to obtain autonomy is to continue to improve their service capabilities. At the beginning of the year, Taotian announced the upgrade of the new store comprehensive experience rating standard. After the upgrade, the rating focuses more on consumer-related indicators such as "refusal rate for refund" and "platform help rate." In addition, services that affect consumer shopping decisions, such as "return insurance", will also be a bonus for merchants. In other words, if sellers want to get high scores, they really need to serve consumers well. Of course, Taobao also provides practical rewards such as traffic to high-quality merchants, and this time it has also ceded some after-sales rights. Wall Street News learned that after the optimization strategy of "refund only" is launched, Taobao will not actively intervene through Wangwang or support refund only after receiving goods for sellers whose store experience score is greater than or equal to 4.8. Instead, Taobao encourages merchants to negotiate with consumers first. In short, Taobao will reduce or cancel after-sales intervention for high-quality stores, and the platform will give different degrees of autonomy to merchants according to the experience score and industry nature. In addition to giving merchants more autonomy, Taobao will also provide multiple after-sales service solutions for merchants to choose from, guiding merchants to continuously optimize after-sales services and reduce disputes and losses caused by "refund only". It is worth mentioning that Taobao has also optimized the appeal process for "refund only". After the user initiates an appeal, the platform will invite a third-party testing agency to sample the product. If the test passes, the platform will compensate the loss to the seller. As Taobao adjusts the "refund only" policy, it is time for the industry's grand "learning from PDD" campaign to reflect. In the increasingly fierce e-commerce competition, true innovation and differentiation can bring greater competitiveness than copying and learning from others.

OEM has become the mainstream model in the retail industry, from Netease strict selection to Xiaomi Youpin, from Sam's Club to East Buy all have their own OEM products. Now, 1688 is also starting to follow suit.

Recently, 1688 has launched the OEM business '1688 Source Select', which is one of the strategic projects within 1688. The core objective is not limited to the Alibaba system and internal 1688 site, but to serve 1688 buyers across all online and offline channels.

Based on 1688 strict selection, 1688 Source Select has iterated its model. Pan Jie, the general manager of 1688 strict selection, stated that the company believes in the consumers' mindset as the source, aiming to help consumers find more innovative and valuable products from the source, which is the origin of 1688 Source Select.

This means that 1688, with its own supply chain genes, is not just an e-commerce platform but is further building a supply chain brand based on white label supply.

1688 is one of Alibaba's oldest businesses, mainly providing digital supply chain services to small and medium-sized retailers and source factories, playing a crucial role in the early development of Taobao. In November last year, 1688 was identified by the Alibaba Group as one of the first batch of strategic innovative businesses, facing the broadest market with a more independent strategy.

After undergoing positioning adjustments, alibaba has determined its strategic direction to focus on building a digital supply chain. The launch of east buy is one of the initiatives to implement this strategy. Pan Jie stated that the supply chain is the core strength of alibaba, but the company does not have a deep understanding of the consumer market, so there is a need to further penetrate the consumer market with this capability.

"As a representative of China's industrial belt, how to integrate those factories that focus on product manufacturing, so that their products can be widely recognized and purchased by consumers, is the key motivation for us to carry out OEM business," said Pan Jie.

From the perspective of division of labor, the core resource of east buy is data, mainly responsible for product research and development, packaging, promotion, and marketing, leaving at least 10% profit for the factories. Unsold commodities will be taken over.

Currently, east buy mainly focuses on the household purchasing and hoarding needs of "home managers", providing buyers with products of the same quality as big brands but priced at only one-third of the big brands.

However, engaging in OEM business does not mean that alibaba will venture into creating its own brand domain.

Pan Jie stated that alibaba's OEM business is not in the traditional sense a fully self-owned brand, but can be called a channel brand. Essentially, alibaba is not a brand entity itself, but similar to Sam's Club and MUJI, mainly endorsing channels, with the core function of accurately selecting products that meet consumer needs.

According to his statement, "to make small innovations in every segmented demand, it's not important who east buy is, but the important thing is the product innovation point."

From a positioning perspective, OEM business is not an exploratory business in alibaba's traditional concept, but rather an investment-based business. The OEM business will operate outside the entire alibaba system. Pan Jie revealed to Wall Street News that alibaba has started collaborating with Xiaohongshu (RED) and is negotiating cooperation with Douyin (TikTok) for co-branded products.

From the perspective of the business model, Pan Jie believes that 1688 Source Selection is taking its own path of development with its own characteristics, but in terms of processes or key points, it may have similarities with Netease carefully selected, Xiaomi Youpin, and Shein, but different in business model and underlying aspects.

"If we must make a comparison, our OEM model is very different from Netease carefully selected, a bit similar to Xiaomi Youpin, and more similar to Shein." Pan Jie believes that Shein's core capabilities are two: demand insight based on data, forming judgments on commodity development, and flexible production supply chain capabilities that can support personalized, fragmented, and customized demand such as fast response to small orders.

Pan Jie admitted, "The products we made in the early stage are not so-called profitable products, and in the future, we certainly hope that the products from Source Selection will become explosive products, but of course, this will take time and a process."

1688's entry into the OEM field is not focused on short-term profitability, but hopes to accelerate the deep integration and fusion of consumer internet and industrial internet from the macro perspective of China's industry chain and the source of origin, aiming to become the digital supply chain foundation in the future, with both greater commercial and social value.

This also means there will be greater challenges. Pan Jie stated that it is still unknown whether the 1688 Source Selection business can succeed and will face many difficulties.

1688 Source Selection is just a microcosm of the company starting afresh with an entrepreneurial mindset. The road of industrial internet is full of opportunities but also requires patient exploration.