Marc Lore, the e-commerce entrepreneur who counterattacked Walmart Inc. against Amazon. com Inc., is leaving the retail giant after much of the online business has been incorporated into the rest of its operations.
Mr. Lore, who founded Jet.com and joined Walmart in 2016 after buying its startup, forced the physical giant to increase its online offering, including adding more web inventory and distribution centers.
But in recent years, many of its surveillance areas had been combined in Walmart’s retail operations. Walmart closed Jet.com to focus on Walmart.com, and its e-commerce executives and teams reported to head Walmart’s US stores.
Walmart said Mr. Lore, the head of the US e-commerce director, will retire January 31 and will remain as a consultant through September. The company said it will unify its US retail and e-commerce operations in 2020. Following Mr. Lore’s departure, the company will continue to report to John Furner, the company’s US CEO.
“I think we had a five-year plan for what we wanted to achieve and I think for the most part we did exactly what we wanted to do,” said Mr Lore in an interview. “The hope was that by then we would merge e-commerce and stores into one omni organization and have one leader.”