Walmart said its e-commerce guru Marc Lore, who many analysts credit for helping the retail giant compete more effectively against Amazon in recent years, is leaving the company in late January.
The executive vice president and chief executive of the U.S. e-commerce division notified Walmart of “its intention to step down” on Jan. 31, the company said in a regulatory filing Friday.
According to Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom, Lore leaves Walmart to focus on Remarkable Foods, one of six companies he created last year and “whose mantra is decentralized life.” Several executives who helped Lore found Quidsi, the father of Diapers.com, which he sold to Amazon in 2010 for $ 500 million.
“Given his business career. . . it was more a matter of “when” he decided to leave than of “yes” and, based on our contacts in the digital space, he is not leaving a competitor, ”Grom said in a note to customers on Friday.
In a blog post, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon noted that Lore is stepping down as a consultant nine months before her employment contract expires.
“Marc committed to a minimum of five years with us, which I know felt like a long time for an entrepreneur like him,” McMillon said. “With our structural changes behind us, we have concluded that it is time for Marc to get out of his daily role … Marc’s experience and aggression have changed the game. We learned a lot from him. Personally, I have learned a lot from him.
On Friday, in a post on LinkedIn, Lore said she hopes “to be able to offer advice and ideas in the future … I’ll take some free time and plan to continue working with several startups. will come “.
Lore joined Walmart after the retailer in 2016 bought Jet.com, the trendy e-commerce company Lore founded in 2014, for $ 3.3 billion, a figure that caught the eye at the time he pointed out Walmart plans to take over Amazon more aggressively.
But Jet.com, which sold everything from clothing to groceries and was aimed at urban residents, was shut down last year after Walmart included it in its e-commerce division, so it was no longer a independent company.
“Over the past two years, we’ve unified our store and e-commerce teams, allowing us to better create a brand experience for our customers,” Walmart said in a statement. “This was completed in 2020 and therefore our US segment of Walmart has been operating and continues to operate as an omnichannel business.”
When Jet.com began to falter and was subsumed by Walmart’s e-commerce division, industry experts speculated that Lore would not stay at Walmart.
A fund entrepreneur who founded several companies before Jet.com, including Diapers.com’s mother, Quidsi, Lore was not seen as a cultural fit with Walmart.
Walmart said Lore will continue to play a consulting role as the company’s strategic advisor until September 2021.
“Under Mr. Lore’s leadership, Walmart pursued an aggressive and ultimately successful e-commerce strategy that consisted of multiple acquisitions, most notably food collection,” wrote John Zolidis, a retail analyst at Quo Vadis Capital. “We see Mr Lore’s departure as an incremental negative as he removes a visionary and enterprising executive from the company.”