The rich and the newly rich

Most of the qualified financial journalists will not forget the thrilling incident that took place in mid-November 2008.

On the 17th, 1300 Gome stores across the country were business as usual, full of customers and crowded with people. Hundreds of thousands of employees operate like sophisticated machine parts to prop up this huge offline home appliance retail "factory". On the other side, outside a building in Beijing, a police car suddenly ordered Huang Guangyu, then chairman of Gome's board of directors, to be handcuffed by raiding police.

The next day, the news spread on the Internet, but no one could tell whether it was true or not. Some reporters even received text messages from Gome employees on their mobile phones.

A week later, the prison of the richest man was finally confirmed. Huang Guangyu was arrested in accordance with the law on suspicion of bribery and misappropriation of funds.

This is the tenth year of the Hurun Rich list, and Huang Guangyu is in the C position for the third time after winning the title from 2004 to 2005. Such a list, as Hong Huang said in "Miss Zhang", "that foreigner's business should not be too easy. On the one hand, those who are not on the list give him money, and on the other hand, those who want to be on the list are also giving him money." "

Some people say that Huang Guangyu is spending money to buy rankings, but he is dismissive: I am sick of Hoogewerf. This list is a "wanted order". Whoever is on the list is unlucky.

One word becomes a curse.

In the first half of this year, Huang Guangyu lived in highlight. Two days before the countdown to the Beijing Olympic Games, in front of lampposts 20 and 21 in Tiananmen Square, the mother of torchbearer Huang Guangyu took the torch from Lu Xiangdong (former deputy general manager China Mobile Limited) in a wheelchair and passed it to her son Huang Guangyu.

In the images of the major media, Huang Guangyu laughed with delight.

The teenager who has been working with his brother since the age of 17 is finally not the "lower ninth class" who is looked down upon by others. At the age of 24, he is a billionaire and at the age of 35, he becomes the richest man in China. And his wealth and glory come because of Gome.

Huang Guangyu, who has only a college degree and no skills in rural Chaoshan, is known as a business wizard. his humble origins set Phnom Penh for his success. however, all the myths about him came to an end on that night in November 2008. It was only three months after he became an Olympic torch bearer, and even more dramatically, in February 2012, Lu Xiangdong was jailed for taking bribes.

The Pengrun Building, the labyrinth-like office on the 18th floor of Gome's stronghold, has been empty ever since, leaving only the legend of him circulating in the rivers and lakes. The myth of Gome also fell.

The change of old and new forces has always been an immutable theme in the business world.

Old Huang falls and Xiao Huang rises.

Huang Zheng left Google in 2007 to start a "spelling" empire, and he would not have thought that he would become the potential new aristocrat on the wealth list 12 years later.

Shopping malls are like a battlefield, and now three points of e-commerce, the return of the old owner, the new savings move, this is a critical autumn of survival.

Front wave and back wave

The story lines of Huang Guangyu and Huang Zheng intersect in 2020.

The former overlord of offline retailing of large household appliances, and the new e-commerce upstart, have completed hand in hand in a complementary way. Gome with the advantage of online users and traffic of Pinduoduo, seize an opportunity of Internet transformation, the latter can share Gome logistics, after-sales service and other resources, boost the platform reputation and momentum.

It is rumored that Huang Guangyu completed this strategic deployment in prison.

After the ferocious waves-in the storyline is still parallel period, the two entrepreneurs surnamed Huang, I am afraid did not think about this fate in 2020.

Huang Zheng came to prominence in 2006, when he was taken to Buffett's sky-high luncheon by his mentor Duan Yongping. The 26-year-old is seriously learning from the experience of mentors Duan Yongping and Buffett.

This year, Huang Guangyu already enjoys the glory of China's richest man.

He returned to his hometown of Shantou, received star-like treatment, and was known as "hipster pride". A report in Sanlian Life Weekly about a visit to Huang when he was growing up also mentioned that a parent called him a "Bill Gates-style" Chinese idol, hoping that the entrepreneur would give their children some advice on reading.

Huang Guangyu said that his success was the result of hard work and luck, and that if he had studied, Gome's achievements would have been even greater.

Huang Guangyu bears a strong imprint of an early entrepreneur. Born in poverty, started from scratch, with the opportunity of the change of times, with keen vision, and unusual courage to break through the world. Such as Wang Shi, from the beginning, he has become a real estate giant at present.

Huang Zheng's path is just the opposite: he was born as an elite, but he became rich by doing grassroots business outside the Fifth Ring Road.

Today, the computer science graduate from Zhejiang University has firmly established himself in the duopoly e-commerce market separated by BABA and JD.com. Although the early platforms were flooded with knockoffs and low-quality products, such as Blue Moon Shell detergent, Qifeng, Li Ri detergent, and vivl smartphones, with strategies such as "tens of billions of subsidies", Pinduoduo was finally able to stand up and say that he was engaged in "consumption upgrading", that is, "giving Anqing people in Anhui Province kitchen paper and good fruit to eat." "

These stories are too far away from Huang Guangyu in prison.

Even in prison, the self-made entrepreneur has a firm grip on the company. In 2010, he commanded remotely and pushed his wife, cuckoo, to the stage, driving away Chen Xiao, a professional manager who coveted power in 2010.

If you go to prison immediately, the dispute will arise. It is like a sign that Gome is going to decline.

The cuckoo once said affectionately that there would be a better Gome when he came back. But in the years since Huang Guangyu left, the tide has surged everywhere with the changes of the times, and the story about retail has changed a long time ago.

The online e-commerce platform headed by BABA and JD.com has revolutionized the traditional large household appliance retail industry, and has also made inroads in the traditional retail field: BABA acquired large-scale department store chain Yintai Business, and JD.com acquired offline merchants everywhere to create a closed-loop service ecology.

SUNING, who was once on a par with Gome, seized the opportunity of transformation, greatly pushed SUNING, laid out the whole industry chain of entertainment and finance, and attached to Internet giant BABA. What's more, with the debut of Zhang Kangyang, the second generation of SUNING, people and capital markets are obviously more interested in the story of the young upstart.

Review the achievements of these forces in 2019. Among the Fortune 500s in 2019, JD.com ranked 139th with $69.8 billion, BABA Group ranked 182nd with $56.1 billion, and even old rival SUNING ranked 333rd with $37 billion.

Gome's sales revenue was 59.4 billion yuan, or about $8.5 billion. Compared with the previous ones, the difference is not of the same order of magnitude.

It is hard to imagine how Huang Guangyu weighed the pros and cons in prison and finally decided to change the direction of Gome's chess game and get close to Huang Zheng. Or because of the courage of this younger generation with the same surname, he landed on Nasdaq in just three years and ranked second on China's rich list in just five years.

Human beings are always willing to favor their own kind. In Huang Zheng, Huang Guangyu may have caught a glimpse of himself.

Intergenerational and replacement

On June 24, Huang Guangyu, who has been rumored to be "about to get out of prison" many times in recent years, was finally paroled on this day.

Some people expect China's former richest man to ride the wind and waves, while others lament that the tide is over. The former shouted "the return of the king", while the latter lamented that "the pattern has changed." This discussion is full of waves, such as Jin Yong's characters "Let me go". The bottom of Xihu prison has been suffering for more than ten years, waiting to return to the rivers and lakes, indicating that a fight will be staged.

However, the vengeance drama that allowed our bank to regain the position of patriarch is a fun drama, and Huang Guangyu, who has been in prison for 12 years, is not a wanton master in martial arts novels. in the modern society of not advancing or falling behind, he has few choices.

After all, commercial jianghu will not slow down its pace because of the retirement of a high-ranking person. Business itself is, and so is people.

Among today's rivers and lakes, Huang Zheng's scenery is like that of Huang Guangyu more than a decade ago.

He is a repeater.

After the e-commerce innovation in the offline traditional retail industry, BABA and JD.com shared this cake for many years, and Pinduoduo rose against the trend, causing BABA to restart the bargain and push the Taobao special version, while forcing JD.com to incubate Jingxi and fight passively.

It is the achievement of Hou Lang Huang Zheng to build a listed company in three years. In the year when Pinduoduo rang the bell, the entrepreneur, who had not yet been fully accepted by the "people in the five rings", was worth more than $13.8 billion and overnight ranked 13th on China's richest list, behind Geely Group Li Shufu.

According to the Forbes Real-time Rich list, Huang Zheng now ranks third with a fortune of $43.8 billion, with Ma Huateng at the top of the list with a fortune of 55.3 billion and Jack Ma at 44.5 billion-a few days ago, Huang Zheng even surpassed Jack Ma to become the second-largest man after Ma Huateng.

Pinduoduo's campaign has entered the second phase, and Huang Zheng's next destination is the broader e-commerce ecosystem. Whether it is the continued subsidy of 10 billion yuan, or the construction of brand pavilions, the introduction of luxury officials, online train tickets and other measures, Pinduoduo is getting rid of the "five rings." Huang Zheng said that when the users of the platform are close to 1 billion, it is no longer meaningful to distinguish between low-tier cities and first-and second-tier cities.

With the rise of the new forces represented by Huang Zheng, an old topic is that Gome is declining in this master-like rivalry between rivers and lakes.

According to a variety of sources, in fact, Huang Guangyu has been remotely controlling Gome in prison. If true, he didn't miss the years when Gome grew up.

But it is not as decisive as those when he started. Gome's growth always seems to lag behind and lack courage.

In recent years, in addition to offline retail, real estate and other traditional business sectors, Gome has also set foot in smartphones, Internet finance, social e-commerce and other emerging territory, but it is difficult to do much.

A typical example is the release of Gome's independently developed smartphone U7 in 2017, which invites Zhang Ruoyun to endorse the phone, which is positioned as the "smart family ecosystem" and is expected to achieve a new transformation of Gome. But before the U7, Gome's own-brand mobile phones K1 and U1 had failed one after another.

According to science and technology media statistics, two months after the release of the two products, the K1 sold 54 units in Gome and 40 units in U1. Now, who still remembers U7?

For ordinary people, twelve years can evolve from recklessness to dignitaries and dignitaries. As far as Huang Guangyu is concerned, he can only watch time repeat itself, such as fleeting.

He may also be anxious and panicked, fearing that he will degenerate from a dragon and Phoenix among people into a great hero.

But he missed it after all. From the Internet to the mobile Internet, from 2G to 5G, he looks at the outside world through high walls, but outsiders, such as Huang Zheng, are creating the world.

After the news of Huang Guangyu's release from prison, some netizens commented that if he had not been in prison, Huang Guangyu would have been Jack Ma today. This kind of logic cannot stand deliberation. The establishment and consolidation of BABA's empire and Jack Ma's own courage and charm obviously cannot simply be measured by "being replaced". Let's just say that it only refers to the halo of the "richest man".

So, once the richest people, such as Wang Jianlin, Ding Lei, Xu Jiayin, and now the "two horses" Ma Huateng and Jack Ma, their wealth figures also have ups and downs like life, so who can tell, who will always be the first?

The first is not often, and the new rich often have, business competition never sleeps, there will always be successive waves, pounce on the front waves, and then be patted on the beach by the next wave, generation after generation, alternately.

This is the case with Huang Guangyu, and Huang Zheng cannot escape.