As Walmart pursues more aggressive online sales growth and a stronger ecommerce agenda, at least three ecommerce executives have left the chain, according to the Wall Street Journal. The shake-up comes after Jet.com found Marc Lore assumed the help, reflecting his new agenda to make his own mark on the retail giant.
Among the recent departures are Fernando Madeira, president and CEO of , Dianne Mills, senior vice president of human resources, and Brent Beabout, who headed the retailer’s digital supply chain. According to a Walmart spokesman, Madeira and Mills’ positions will not be filled, but the team will instead be reconfigured following the $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet.com. Beabout will be replaced by Jet.com co-founder Nate Faust, CNBC reported.
“It’s a transitional time,” Walmart spokesman Dan Toporek told CNBC, as he explained that there are a number of requisite structural pieces for its ecommerce operations that have already been put into place. The successful installation of these pieces made the timing right for these execs to leave, he said, though no set departure dates for Madeira or Mills have been announced.
The Jet acquisition represents a bold move for Walmart, and the retailer will incorporate elements from Jet’s site into its operations, including Jet’s smart basket technology. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “If Walmart were starting today and we were building an ecommerce business some of the things that Jet designed in their approach would have been things we would have thought of and we would have wanted to do, and they’ve just done it from scratch.”
Walmart also recently announced that it was doubling down on its ecommerce initiatives by doubling the number of web-oriented warehouses and installing automated product sorting and item tracking technologies to rival those of Amazon, as Innovative Retail Technologies reported. “We have doubled our capacity in the last twelve months and that allows us to ship to a majority of the U.S. population in one day,” vice president of ecommerce supply chain and fulfillment Justen Traweek told Reuters.
“These additions definitely give Walmart the opportunity to compete better than other companies going head-to-head with Amazon,” explained Steve Osburn, director of supply chain with consultancy Kurt Salmon. “Having said that, choosing to race with Amazon is different than catching up with them.”
According to Innovative Retail Technologies, Walmart could benefit from the acquisition of Jet.com as a way to reproduce its offline dominance in the online world. Recently, Walmart has focused on its digital offerings and the expansion of its e-commerce business. Retail analyst Neil Saunders told the New York Times that Jet’s model of encouraging bulk buying would help Walmart boost areas that it has previously faltered. Walmart introduced its “Shipping Pass,” an invitation-only $50 per year subscription that gives members free three day shipping to directly challenge Amazon. The shakeup in the C-suite is a reflection of this shift in initiatives.
“Everyone has their own reasons for leaving, but at a high level many people felt it was a good time to transition out given we've built the core foundation for e-commerce at Wal-Mart,” a company spokesman said.
