Walmart said its e-commerce guru Marc Lore – whom many analysts believe has helped the retail giant compete more effectively with Amazon over the past few years – is leaving the company in late January.
The executive vice president and chief executive of the United States e-commerce division notified Walmart of “its intention to retire” on January 31, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
According to Chuck Grom, an analyst at Gordon Haskett, Lore is leaving Walmart to focus on Remarkable Foods, one of six startups he created last year, and “whose mantra is decentralized life”. Several executives who helped Lore found Quidsi – the parent of Diapers.com, which he sold to Amazon in 2010 for $ 500 million.
“Given his entrepreneurial training. . . it was more a question of ‘when’ he decided to leave than ‘if’ and based on our contacts in the digital space he is not leaving it to a competitor, ”said Grom in a Friday note to customers.
In a blog post, Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon noted that Lore is moving into a consulting role nine months before his employment contract expires.
“Marc has been committed to a minimum of five years with us, which I know has seemed a long time for a businessman like him,” said McMillon. “With our structural changes behind us, we concluded that it is time for Marc to transition from his daily role … Marc’s experience and aggression have changed the game. We learned a lot from him. I personally learned a lot from him. “
In a LinkedIn post on Friday, Lore said he hopes to “provide advice and ideas in the future … I’m going to take a break and plan to continue working with several startups. I’m excited to keep you updated on what’s next. “
Lore joined Walmart after the retailer in 2016 bought Jet.com, the hip e-commerce company that Lore founded in 2014, for $ 3.3 billion – an impressive figure at the time that signaled Walmart’s plans for face Amazon more aggressively.
But Jet.com, which sold everything from clothes to groceries and was aimed at urban residents, was closed last year after Walmart incorporated it into its e-commerce division, so it was no longer an independent company. .
“In the past two years, we have unified our store and e-commerce teams, which allows us to create a brand experience for our customers,” said Walmart in a statement. “This was completed in 2020 and therefore our Walmart segment in the US has been operating and continues to operate as an omni-channel business.”
When Jet.com began to falter and was included in Walmart’s e-commerce division, industry experts speculated that Lore would not remain at Walmart.
An entrepreneur at heart who founded several companies before Jet.com, including Diapers.com’s parent company, Quidsi, Lore was not seen as a cultural combination with Walmart.
Walmart said Lore will continue to act as a consultant to the company’s strategic consultant until September 2021.
“Under the leadership of Mr. Lore, Walmart pursued an aggressive and ultimately successful e-commerce strategy, consisting of several acquisitions, mainly food collection,” wrote retail analyst John Zolidis of Quo Vadis Capital. “We see Mr. Lore’s departure as an additional negative factor, as he removes a visionary and entrepreneurial executive from the company.”