360buy CEO Internal Talk: 60B Sales in 2012, Profitable This Q4

Liu Qiangdong, founder and CEO of 360buy, delivered an internal talk at the giant etailer’s annual meeting, defining the new year of 2013 as a year of revitalization and rehabilitation and point out self-operated ecommerce, open service and financing as its new directions to be headed for. According to him, the online virtual shopping mall pulled in RMB 60 billion in sales in 2012. He also said that he personally believed the company would be turning a profit by the fourth quarter of this year.

We did a synopsis of his talk below:

Revitalization

The keywords for 360buy in 2013, would be Revitalization and Rehabilitation, to right the wrongs, to invest into future, to expand rationaly and to cease inappropriate businesses.

1. Right the wrongs. Deep-rooted problems inevitably occurred along with 360buy’s fast-paced growth over the past almost 10 years. In 2013, 360buy plans to solve these problems and paves way for a smooth development in the future.

2. Invest into future. 360buy would be keeping investing into businesses of strategic importance though they’re not churning out real money in the near future. Even though these businesses are in red. 360buy invests into future growth.

3. Expand rationally. 360buy intends to incubate new business in the field of data and finance, and more business representing future trend would be touched in 2013.

4. Cease inappropriate businesses. Businesses without future would be shut down, be it profitable for the time being or not.

360buy, aka Jingdong Mall launched ebook effort last year in an aim to diversify offerings and revenue sources

Three New Directions

In addition to the thoughts for the past, Liu also demonstrated new directions that the company would be heading towards.

1. Self-operated e-commerce business. 360buy’s operating model differs from Taobao in that it not only providing information but also serving supply chain service, right from the gate of factories to the door of consumers. So the company would keep investing in technologies and its logistics arms as well as establishing a modern warehousing system. 360buy would bring value to our customers and partners by scaling up our supply chain services across the board.

1. Open service. By upgrading its warehousing system, 360buy has sufficient capacity to provide warehouse and delivery service to partnerts. It is expected that by 2015 20% of the platform’s core partners would be accounting for a combined 80% of total sales on the website, while most of merchants reside on the platform would use 360buy’s warehousing service. It’s cheaper and more efficient. Afterwards, 360buy would also be opening other services like after-sale, call center, data and payment solutions to 3^rd parties to grow a comprehensive open platform.

2. Data-driven financing service. In 2012, 36obuy bought ChinaBank Payments. Payment currently is just a small portion of 360buy’s financing service in the planning. In 2014, 360buy would set up a dedicated financing company, offering up various products to clients in need. The transaction data generated on the website could be well leveraged to guide its financing services.