Douyin's Lifestyle Services Undergoes Major Organizational Restructuring: Small and Medium-sized Merchants Gain Greater Importance | Exclusive

Text by | Li Xiaoxia

Edited by | Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

36Kr exclusively learned that recently, Douyin's Lifestyle Services completed its second major organizational structure adjustment after Pu Yanzi took over.

This adjustment re - divides the departments into an online department and an offline department according to the scale of merchants.

Customers with a monthly GMV of over 50,000 are placed in the online department, which is divided into three sections: KA (with a monthly GMV of over 100,000), Self - service (with a monthly GMV between 50,000 and 100,000), and Hospitality. The first two are further subdivided into catering and in - store comprehensive by industry.

Customers with a monthly GMV of less than 50,000 are placed in the offline department. The offline department is divided into the North Region, the South Region, and the East Region by area. Compared with the previous regional division, the Shanghai Region and the Central Region were removed, and the East Region was added. Merchants related to the Central Region were diverted to the North Region and the East Region.

(Chart by 36Kr)

The specific personnel appointments are as follows:

Wang Xueqin is in charge of hospitality and KA catering. She was previously the person - in - charge of Douyin's Lifestyle Services' NKA business; Wu Jiawei is in charge of hospitality and reports to Wang Xueqin. Chang Qing is in charge of KA comprehensive. He comes from the direct - customer department of ByteDance's commercial middle - sales.

Xu Kai is in charge of the self - service business (including self - service catering and self - service in - store comprehensive) and reports to Jiao Yingying, the person - in - charge of customer and user growth for Douyin's Lifestyle Services' self - service customers.

Hao Xia, the person - in - charge of the South Region, was previously the person - in - charge of the Central Region; Shi Wenfu, the person - in - charge of the North Region, was previously the person - in - charge of Douyin's Lifestyle Services' regional service providers; Chen Ming, the person - in - charge of the East Region, was previously the person - in - charge of the Shanghai Region.

Tu Qing serves as both the person - in - charge of content and marketing and the person - in - charge of direct - sales service providers.

From the "industry - based system to the regional - based system" to the current "separate management of online and offline", the core logic of this adjustment is to stratify by merchant volume and divide labor by business scenarios, bidding farewell to the extensive management model of the previous round of "full - domain regionalization" and forming a camp of "online for in - depth brand cultivation and offline for on - the - ground penetration".

"The online team professionally serves large merchants to increase transaction volume; the offline team is responsible for the development and service of small stores to achieve market penetration." An industry insider told 36Kr.

From 2021 to 2023, relying on over 700 million users on the main Douyin platform, precise algorithm recommendations, and a large amount of low - price subsidies, Douyin's GMV rapidly climbed from 11 billion yuan to 310 billion yuan, once panicking Meituan. That was Douyin's "surprise attack period".

However, starting from the second half of 2023, the situation changed. Meituan launched active defense and counter - attacks, launched live - streaming e - commerce, and strengthened control over merchants through methods such as refunding commissions and underwriting.

Later, when the price war reached its peak, the market shares of Douyin's Lifestyle Services and Meituan's in - store services entered a stalemate, with their market shares maintaining a ratio of 1:2. Meituan was considered to have successfully defended, while Douyin needed new leaders for the next round of competition.

In November 2023, Pu Yanzi, the person - in - charge of Douyin Group's commercialization, took over the Lifestyle Services business. In March of the following year, Pu Yanzi completed her first organizational adjustment after taking office: the three parallel departments of in - store catering, in - store comprehensive, and hospitality, which were previously divided by industry, were reorganized into three major regions (North, Central, and South) by region, as well as an NKA department serving large national chain merchants.

At that time, the core task of Douyin's Lifestyle Services was to quickly expand the number of stores and increase the supply. By the end of 2023, there were only over 4.5 million partner stores of Douyin's Lifestyle Services, less than half of Meituan's. During the store - expansion period, sales efficiency took precedence over industry professionalism, and the regional - based division of labor was better than the industry - based division.

After two years of development, the scale of Douyin's Lifestyle Services has become quite considerable. According to 36Kr, in 2025, the GMV of Douyin's Lifestyle Services was approximately 860 billion yuan, a nearly 60% increase, while Meituan's in - store GMV in 2025 was less than 1.2 trillion yuan.

According to the media, the goal of Douyin's Lifestyle Services in 2026 is to surpass Meituan. 36Kr learned that Douyin's Lifestyle Services plans to achieve a growth of about 50%, which means a GMV of around 1.3 trillion yuan.

If the key advantage of Douyin's Lifestyle Services' first surprise attack on Meituan was "the opponent's negligence" — from 2022 to mid - 2023, Meituan had almost no effective response to Douyin's entry, giving Douyin a window for rapid expansion; at the same time, during the pandemic, offline stores were willing to sacrifice profits for low - price promotions on Douyin to survive, further promoting the growth of Douyin's Lifestyle Services.

Then, in the third and fourth quarters of last year, the food - delivery war between Meituan and Alibaba provided a second opportunity for Douyin's Lifestyle Services. In the fourth quarter, Douyin's Lifestyle Services increased subsidies for offline catering, especially for light meals.

At the post - earnings conference call recently, Meituan's management also said that the company had noticed Douyin's investment in in - store services. It is reported that Douyin's Lifestyle Services' total subsidies in 2025 exceeded 20 billion yuan, accounting for over 3% of the total transaction volume.

Capturing small and medium - sized merchants is the key direction for Douyin's Lifestyle Services to focus on next.

Chain brands are more adaptable to Douyin's operations, and in the early days, Douyin's Lifestyle Services tilted its traffic resources towards the top brands. Therefore, there is a high degree of overlap between Douyin and Meituan in the chain - brand segment.

However, for small and medium - sized merchants, the threshold for operating on Douyin is relatively high, and small - store merchants find it difficult to adapt. Instead, they are more willing to enter Meituan, which has a lower threshold. This has established a stable and rich ecosystem of small and medium - sized merchants for Meituan, and these small and medium - sized merchants are the basic market that Meituan has always believed is difficult to shake.

The lack of small and medium - sized merchants once made Douyin's Lifestyle Services rely on the recommendation algorithm to induce users to impulse - buy vouchers, which also led to its redemption rate being consistently lower than Meituan's. Meituan users generally search for group - buying vouchers actively after having a clear consumption plan.

For Douyin, only by attracting more small merchants to Douyin can it attract more users to make planned consumption on Douyin, thereby enhancing user stickiness and increasing the redemption rate.

In the past year, Douyin's Lifestyle Services has also been working hard in this regard.

For example, it provides various traffic tools for small and medium - sized merchants and waives commissions for them. In September last year, Douyin's Lifestyle Services also launched the "Firework Small Store Support Program". Now, under the new organizational structure, focusing on small, medium, and micro - merchants offline and deeply penetrating by region will help continue to make up for the supply shortfall.

It is worth mentioning that in this adjustment, the hospitality segment was separated and placed on an equal footing with KA and self - service, rather than being included in the industry subdivisions of KA or self - service, which shows the importance of the hospitality segment.

From an industry data perspective, the hospitality category has a high average customer price. If well - developed in the future, it may become one of the supports for Douyin's Lifestyle Services to achieve profitability.

However, without subsidies, Douyin's Lifestyle Services' hospitality business has the lowest gross profit and the smallest contribution to transaction volume among the three major segments of hospitality, catering, and in - store comprehensive. 36Kr exclusively learned that last year, the GMV of Douyin's Lifestyle Services' hospitality business was close to 200 billion yuan, accounting for about 23% of the total transaction volume; although the redemption rate has increased to about 31%, it is still significantly lower than the 57% of the catering and in - store comprehensive segments and lags behind Meituan's hospitality redemption level.

Hospitality involves off - site or planned consumption, with a relatively high average customer price and low consumption frequency. It involves full - link services such as reservation, redemption, and refund/change, and has a high degree of dependence on the supply chain (such as hotel inventory and scenic - spot tickets). It has significant differences in operation models and service requirements from catering and in - store comprehensive. Separating it may avoid resource dilution by other categories and enable targeted operation.

An industry survey shows that in 2025, Douyin's Lifestyle Services had a revenue of over 50 billion yuan, with advertising revenue of over 30 billion yuan and commission revenue of about 20 billion yuan, resulting in a slight loss.

According to 36Kr, in 2026, in addition to surpassing Meituan in transaction volume, achieving profitability is also an important goal for Douyin's Lifestyle Services.

(Ren Cairu, an author of 36Kr, also contributed to this article)