Marc Lore, the e-commerce entrepreneur who led Walmart Inc.’s counterattack on Amazon. com Inc., is leaving the retail giant after most of the online operations have been absorbed into the rest of its business.
Mr Lore, who founded Jet.com and joined Walmart in 2016 after buying his startup, pushed the brick-and-mortar giant to increase its online offerings, including adding more web inventory and centers of distribution.
But in recent years, many of his areas of surveillance had been combined into Walmart store operations. Walmart shut down Jet.com to focus on Walmart.com, and its e-commerce executives and teams report to Walmart’s U.S. Store Manager.
Walmart said Mr. Lore, its head of e-commerce in the United States, will retire on Jan.31 and remain a consultant until September. The company said it unified its store and e-commerce operations in the United States in 2020. Following Mr. Lore’s exit, the company will continue to report to John Furner, the company’s US chief executive.
“I think we had a five year plan for what we wanted to accomplish and I think we largely did exactly what we planned to do,” Lore said in an interview. “The hope was that by then we would converge e-commerce and stores into one omni-organization and that we would have a leader.”
