Walmart E-commerce Boss Marc Lore to Leave
January 15 2021 - 11:05AM
Dow Jones News
By Sarah Nassauer
Marc Lore, the e-commerce entrepreneur who ran Walmart Inc.'s
counter attack against Amazon.com Inc., is leaving the retail giant
after much of the online operations had been absorbed into the rest
of its business.
Mr. Lore, who founded Jet.com and joined Walmart in 2016 after
it bought his startup, pushed the bricks-and-mortar giant to
increase its online offerings, including adding more web inventory
and distribution centers.
But in recent years many of his areas of oversight had been
combined into Walmart's store operations. Walmart shut down Jet.com
to focus on Walmart.com, and its e-commerce executives and teams
reported to the head of Walmart's U.S. stores.
Walmart said Mr. Lore, its U.S. e-commerce chief, will retire on
Jan. 31 and stay as a consultant through September. The company
said it unified its U.S. store and e-commerce operations in 2020.
Following Mr. Lore's exit, the business will continue to report to
John Furner, the company's U.S. chief executive.
"I think we had a five-year plan on what we wanted to accomplish
and I think we largely did exactly what we set out to do," said Mr.
Lore in an interview. "The hope was that by that time we would
converge the e-commerce stores and stores into one omni
organization and we would have one leader."
Mr. Lore said the high-level goal for his time at the company
was "to change the internal and external narrative about Walmart,
e-commerce, Walmart as a tech company."
Casey Carl, an executive Walmart hired last September, will take
over leadership of the e-commerce and digital responsibilities,
under Mr. Furner, Mr. Lore said in an interview. When Jet was
acquired, Mr. Lore received a compensation package that fully
vested after five years at Walmart.
E-commerce sales have risen during Mr. Lore's time at the
company, though in recent years online sales growth has been driven
by online grocery sales from stores. The company's stock has moved
higher, as more investors see the company as a sturdier competitor
to Amazon.
Many of Mr. Lore's key initiatives at the company were
dismantled in recent years, deemed too unprofitable or tangential
to Walmart's core business. In recent years Walmart has sold or
shrunk several small e-commerce startups it purchased, including
Bonobos and ModCloth. Jetblack, an unprofitable personal shopping
service that let hundreds of paying members order items for
delivery by text, shut last year.
E-commerce has become an integral part of Walmart's U.S.
business during the pandemic, when its stores stayed open and
enjoyed a surge in demand for household goods and groceries. The
company has focused on online grocery, adding more third-party
merchants to its website and rolling out services that let
customers pickup orders at its supersize stores. It also recently
rolled out a subscription service that resembles Amazon's Prime
delivery service.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 15, 2021 10:50 ET (15:50 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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