Walmart Fuses Buying Teams to Cut Down on Cross-Company Red Tape
Walmart is deepening the integration of its online and brick-and-mortar units by merging the merchandising teams.
(Bloomberg) -- Walmart Inc. is deepening the integration of its online and brick-and-mortar units by merging the merchandising teams that choose what products are carried by the world’s largest retailer.
All of the company’s merchants will now report jointly to U.S. Chief Executive Officer John Furner and U.S. e-commerce chief Marc Lore, the executives said in a joint internal memo Tuesday. The group will span six product categories, such as apparel, food and home, and will eventually “buy every item sold by Walmart,” the memo said.
The company also named Chandra Holt to the new role of chief merchandising and integration officer for e-commerce. She’ll be tasked with heading up the combination alongside Chief Merchandising Officer Scott McCall.
The move was expected following the integration of Walmart’s supply chain and finance teams last summer. As Walmart’s e-commerce unit has grown and matured -- it will approach global revenues of $50 billion this year -- it became overly complex and inefficient to have two distinct merchandising teams housed in separate offices across the country. Product manufacturers often grumbled that selling their wares to Walmart meant talking to two different buyers, whose interests were not always aligned.
The integration will begin immediately with the food and consumables teams, according to the memo, and then move on to other areas like apparel, entertainment and toys, electronics and home.
Separately, Walmart said senior vice president Daniel Eckert is leaving the company next month. Eckert was a rising star and had led various teams including financial services, but last year was told to report to Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside, whose influence across Walmart has grown over the past year.
In a separate memo, Whiteside said she’s creating three separate groups under her so-called “product team,” which aims to unify the company’s approach to attracting and keeping customers across all platforms.
To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Boyle in New York at mboyle20@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net, Jonathan Roeder, Sally Bakewell
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