샤오미 CEO Lei Jun, 포춘 차이나 표지 인물로 선정되었습니다

Fortune China에서 2014년 가장 뛰어난 경영자로 샤오미 CEO인 Lei Jun이 선정되었습니다.

중국어 원문

 《财富》（中文版）-- 2014年，小米公司又搬了一次家。

    按照四年前“开业”那天留下的传统，搬家的那天早上，雷军和创始人们又一次喝到了阿黎（黎万强）的父亲煮的小米粥。2010年4月，小米公司刚成立的时候，十来个人在中关村银谷大厦400多平米的办公区，曾经显得空空荡荡。而今无论是在华润五彩城的小米办公楼，还是往南200米的新大楼“总参”，都是人头攒动，办公区里座无虚席。两座大楼里最新的员工数是7,500余人，这个数字还在增长。

    分别来到两座小米办公大楼门外，从外观上看，让它们遥相呼应的，不仅是小米品牌的橙色标志，还有巨幅的红色双十一“战报”，上面赫然写着：“15.6亿，116万台手机，依然第一。”此次《财富》（中文版）2014年年度商人对小米CEO雷军的专访，也从双十一这一话题开始说起。然而，谈到双十一，雷军却说销量的数字并没有让他感到多么兴奋：“2014年我们全年的手机销量预计超6,000万台，几乎每个月都是五六百万的量。”他更看重的是这一战的“亮相”效果：“去年5亿，今年15亿，都是第一。在第三方平台上，我们向全球展示了小米的产品力、品牌口碑和供应链管理能力。”天猫此次双十一创造了吉尼斯世界纪录，单日销售了189万台手机，而小米占据了其中的61.3%。同时，手机、平板、电视、路由器等七个品类都是第一，展现了小米的品牌延展能力。

    在过去三年里，小米连续爆发式的增长，被雷军形容为“急行军”，他用“远超预期”来总结小米的2014年。原本当年小米手机的销售目标是4,000万台，现在预计将达到6,000多万台，超额完成50%多。去年三季度，多家市场调查机构IDC、Strategy Analytics先后宣布，小米在苹果、三星之后，位列全球智能手机市场占有率第三（在榜单公布8小时后，联想完成了收购摩托罗拉手机，市场占有率反超小米）。2014年百度品牌数字资产排行榜中，苹果、三星和小米分列手机平板品牌榜单前三。小米去年的营收约为750~800亿元，而2013年营收为330亿元，2012年为126亿元，表明小米已经持续两年翻倍增长。而雷军在创立小米时提出的估值100亿美元的公司的目标，在小米成立四年后，就已经达到了。

    对雷军的拍摄在小米“总参”的摄影棚中进行，在这里，专业的摄影器材、灯光、布景一应俱全。在官网产品照片上屡屡出现的布景—沙发、书架、米兔和其他小摆件都在这里找到了“原型”。雷军在采访时很自豪地问：“现在拥有独立摄影棚的公司不多吧？我们有专业的摄影团队，官网上的照片，都是他们在这里反复地拍摄、编辑出来的。”由此，雷军引出了小米成功学习的三家公司：“同仁堂”、“海底捞”和“沃尔玛/Costco”。同仁堂的品牌要义是真材实料：“品味虽贵必不敢减物力，炮制虽繁必不敢省人工”。雷军接着拿摄影来举例，对于很多公司来说，拍摄这样的工作是可以花钱外包出去做，但是小米希望能够拍出质量高、效果一致的照片。“品质提高10%，成本可能要翻十倍。”雷军特别强调：“光用心、认真还不够，要舍得投入、做到极致。好的品质是花钱花精力找最好的人，才有机会做出来的。”

    在进行采访的会议室当中，雷军指着一个插线板说：“这个东西太丑了，每个家庭每个公司都要买很多，怎么那么丑？不理解。”他眼中的好产品，需要质优、价廉，还要“物美”。在体验经济的时代，设计已经成为了好产品不可或缺的构成要素。而设计美感的提升，除了成本限制之外，主要的障碍就是技术限制。比如超薄的手机，电池续航时间短，对于智能手机是一个挑战。雷军说小米对设计是极度重视的，“我希望大家可以从产品上看到小米在这方面的努力和进步。”

    “海底捞”的法宝，则是“超预期的用户体验”。小米让用户参与到研发的过程中，通过快速迭代，让产品设计“集大成”，紧跟用户的需求。在小米社区，每天有300万人访问，提出产品改进建议。据此，MIUI系统每周更新，推出四年至今已经有了200多个版本。雷军提到，现在很多人买红米回去是送给父母用。很多老年人屏幕上的字看不清楚，小米开发了一个极简模式，可以让字号变大，让老年人也可以轻松地使用像微信这样的手机应用，而不再局限于接打电话和发短信。在黎万强所著的《参与感》一书中，他道出了小米用户关系的指导思想—和用户做朋友，让员工的朋友变成用户，要求所有的员工“全员客服”，和用户一起玩。这当中自然也包括了雷军本人。迄今，在雷军的手机里，仍然有100位元老级米粉的手机号，和他们保持联系。雷军的微博也是由自己亲自撰写的，时常和米粉们互动—一位米粉在考试之前晒出了自己的小米产品，并且@雷军求祝福，雷军回复道：“考雅思需要这么多小米神器加持吗？祝福你！”

    长期以来，“中国制造”打的都是廉价牌，低价的同时质量也差。货真价实和超预期的用户体验，必然导致成本的增加，而要完成“质优价廉”这一不可能的任务，除了靠口碑降低营销成本，还需要高效的管理，这正是沃尔玛和Costco最值得借鉴之处。沃尔玛依靠选址和低利润率，提供了高性价比的商品。而Costco更进一步，将销售商品的毛利率降为1%~14%，每一品类只卖两三个最好的品牌，争取更低的进货价，薄利多销。以此为启发，雷军决定小米不搞“机海战术”，从成立至今四年半的时间里只做6款手机，其他产品也是类似的策略，只做一两款最好的。从制造角度，这样可以节约成本，提高规模效益。在销售渠道，小米采用自营的官方网站，销售小米产品和授权的周边产品，在三年时间内成为排在阿里和京东之后的国内第三大电商平台。而在用人方面，雷军提倡“以一当十”，尽量少雇人，精挑细选。据雷军透露，小米2013年的运作成本是4.3%，2012年为4.1%，“我们是全球运作效率最高的公司”。

    “专注、极致、口碑、快”，这是雷军总结“互联网思维”的七字诀。在它的武装下，小米在过去三年里坐上了火箭。2015年，小米营收预计在1,200亿元到1,400亿元。如果以此增速持续下去，最快在明后两年就可以叩开《财富》世界500强的大门。雷军说：“我的目标是让小米在5~10年的时间里，成长为一家世界级的伟大公司。”在去年11月的乌镇世界互联网大会上，他表达了小米赶超苹果的愿景，而同时与会的苹果高级副总裁布鲁斯·塞维尔则给出了“说来容易做来难”的评价，雷军则看了一眼马云，半开玩笑地回应道：“梦想还是要有的，万一实现了呢？”作为小米的领航者，雷军收获小米崛起的喜悦，同时也承受着质疑和敌意，对于高增长所累积的种种问题，他一直保持着警惕。

영문

The Father of Xiaomi: We’ll Be More Than Just Top 500

After four years for miraculously-rapid growth, Xiaomi is still conquering territory after territory. At the same time, Lei Jun has initiated a global expansion plan.

Fortune China – In 2014, Xiaomi moved again
Following the tradition since the day of “opening” four years back, in the morning before the move, Lei Jun and the co-founders of Xiaomi tasted the millet congee cooked by Li WanQiang’s father. In April 2010, when Xiaomi was just founded, a handful of people stood in a bare, empty 400 square meter office in Zhongguancun. Fast forward to today, we’re seeing offices full of workers in both office buildings, with a total employee number of 7500 and the number just keeps growing.

Both office buildings are virtually indistinct, from the iconic orange logo to the banners which show the record achieved on Double Eleven event on T-mall, proudly depicting “1.56 Billion, 1.16 Million Smartphones, Still the Reigning Champion”. During the interview with Lei Jun for this issue of Fortune China, the session began on this topic. Lei Jun admits he wasn’t too excited about the numbers, quote: “Our total sales in 2014 was estimated to exceed 60 million units, with 5-6 million units sold monthly.” What he emphasizes is the effect of this victory: “500 million last year, 1.5 billion this year, we’re still number one. We showed the world the productivity, brand reputation and supply management capabilities of Xiaomi.” T-mall created a Guinness World Record with a 1.89 million phone sales daily, of which 61.3% percent is by Xiaomi. During the event, Xiaomi displayed its expansion capability with seven top selling products ranging from phones, tablets, TVs to routers.

In the past three years, Xiaomi grew at an explosive rate and Lei Jun calls it a “rapid march”. Originally targeted at 40 million units, Xiaomi achieved a 60 million smartphone sales, exceeding expectations by 50%. Last year, several market analysis by IDC and Strategy Analytics shows that Xiaomi takes the third position, just behind Samsung and Apple, in the smartphone market (this statistics was changed 8 hours after the announcement when Lenovo sealed the deal to purchase Motorola, thus achieving a total market share bigger than Xiaomi by a small margin). Xiaomi’s profit was 12.6 Billion in 2012, 33 Billion in 2013 and 75-80 Billion in 2014, showing that Xiaomi have grown two fold for two consecutive years, and the target of a total market value of 10 Billion USD was achieved in just 4 years.

Lei Jun stated three philosophy he learned from three companies that led his own start-up to success. The first aspect is “expensive pricing without cut on resources, massive quantity without sacrifice of quality”. He said that even a 10% increase in quality may cause a 1000% increase in cost, but it doesn’t matter as long as the outcome is better than competitions. Concentration and passion is never enough, only by daring to spend and to seek perfection together with a team of best talents that people stand a chance to achieve success. He sees great products as being cheap with emphasis on quality and aesthetics, all of which not only comes with financial limitations yet also includes technical limitations, for example thinner phones leads to relatively shorter battery life. It is a massive challenge to be good in all three aspects but Xiaomi strives to achieve this feat.
The second philosophy is to “user experience that exceed expectations”. Xiaomi allows the general public to join in its development process and keenly listens to users requirements. An average of 3 million people visits the Xiaomi Community Forum every day and gives their opinions and views. MIUI is going into its fifth year and weekly updates have reached 200 over versions. In order to improve usability and user experience of Redmi phones by elder people, Xiaomi developed a Simple Mode that enlarges text and allows the elderly to use apps such as WeChat and not just making phone calls or sending text messages. Xiaomi’s business motto is to be friends with users and to join in the fun with users. Lei Jun keeps the phone numbers of 100 earliest users of Mi Phones and stays in contact with them. He also writes his own Weibo and interacts with MiFans actively.

“Made in China” used to signify low quality and cheap price. Quality and user experience comes with heavy costs, cheap with quality just makes it near impossible as it requires advertisements via word-by-mouth instead of adverts across other media and highly efficient management. Lei Jun decided that Xiaomi will not manufacture multi-variants of phones, but instead focuses on offering 2-3 of the best products in the category, effectively cutting down costs and increase overall profits. Running their own online sales website, Xiaomi sells their own merchandises along with other authorized accessories, and became the third largest online sales platform just behind Alibaba and JD. Lei Jun encourages quality over quantity while employing and proudly announces that Xiaomi is the company with the highest productivity efficiency in the world with only an operation cost that takes up 4% only.

When it comes to management and working, Lei Jun prefers to take the lead and maintains a flat management. Xiaomi retains the “Founder – Team Leader – Worker” three tier organization structure. He wants the employees to be passionate and self-motivated, with the new target of 100 million smartphone sales figure, everyone is expected to work harder in improving user experience. Lei Jun acts as the head of product manager, he carries the products around and uses them whenever he’s free and gives feedback to the development team when a problem arises. Saying that all founders have the same point of view, Lei Jun states that they give full trust to one another and divides departments among all, thus progress is extremely fast. 

Currently, 97% of Xiaomi’s sales figure comes from China and Lei Jun plans for a global expansion. 2015 is an important year for Xiaomi’s global expansion plan. Xiaomi first entered Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore for a small-market sales testing, now they’ve expanded to bigger markets such as India and Indonesia and expects brilliant results in these countries. India, having the second largest population in the world, is predicted to be the world’s second largest smartphone market and the locals’ emphasis on value/price ratio makes the success of Xiaomi there a high possibility. Lei Jun also said that with MiFans all across the globe, it’s easier for Xiaomi’s expansion as the fans help to promote and translate ROMs into their native language and porting ROMs to other devices. He believes that by refining products according to the needs of users and to maintain a good relationship with users, Xiaomi will achieve total success in the global market. This year, Xiaomi will expand its markets to Brazil and Russia.

Looking into the future 10 years ahead, Lei Jun believes it’s the critical period where “Made in China” changes to “Invented in China”, similar to Japan in the 80s and South Korea in the 90s. Lei Jun hopes that Xiaomi will one day become one of the national products that represent the country of manufacture, like Sony for Japan and Samsung for South Korea, and will boost the growth of China’s industries. Aiming to clear the impression of “cheap and low end”, China’s industries might one day become global brands that are of similar status as Apple. The Dean of TsingHua University prospects China’s economy has an effect on the global market similar to Japan’s back in the 80s. Excellent companies like Xiaomi will become the models that will spread China’s industrial management and brand success throughout the globe.

It’s still a long path to go, a lot of people still doesn’t use Xiaomi’s products, but Lei Jun said: “It’s okay, some day in the future, you’ll be using it”.