Marc Lore, the e-commerce entrepreneur who led the Walmart Inc. counterattack. against Amazon. com Inc., is leaving the retail giant after much of its online operations were absorbed into the rest of its business.
Mr. Lore, who founded Jet.com and joined Walmart in 2016 after buying the startup, pushed the bricks and mortar giant to expand its online offerings, including adding more web inventory and distribution centers.
But in recent years, many of its areas of oversight have been combined with Walmart store operations. Walmart shut down Jet.com to focus on Walmart.com, and its directors and e-commerce teams reported to the head of US Walmart stores.
Walmart said Mr Lore, its head of US e-commerce, would retire on January 31 and remain a consultant until September. The company said it would unify its operations in the US store and e-commerce in 2020. Following Mr Lore’s departure, the business will continue to report to John Furner, the company’s chief executive officer.
“I think we had a five-year plan for what we wanted to achieve, and I think we’ve largely done exactly what we set out to do,” Mr Lore said in an interview. “The hope was that by then we would convert e-commerce and stores into a single omni organization and have a single leader.”