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Walmart Replaces CEO of Struggling Jetblack Shopping Service

Walmart Replaces CEO of Struggling Jetblack Shopping Service

(Bloomberg) -- Walmart Inc. has replaced the head of Jetblack, a personal-shopping service for upscale urbanites, a widely expected move that could presage a spinoff of the unprofitable venture.

Jenny Fleiss, who has run Jetblack since its launch a year ago, is taking a new advisory role reporting to Janey Whiteside, Walmart’s chief customer officer, a spokesman said in an email. Nate Faust, a senior vice president of logistics for the company’s online arm who had been working on the Jetblack business over the past few months, will take over.

The shuffle was an open secret for weeks inside Walmart and could precede a sale or spinoff of Jetblack, which was a pet project of U.S. online chief Marc Lore and the first business to emerge from Walmart’s internal incubation arm. Jetblack promised to deliver just about anything to busy city dwellers for $50 a month, but it has proved costly to operate and never expanded beyond doormen-serviced buildings in New York City.

Jetblack loses at least $10,000 per customer annually, a person familiar with the business said. Walmart declined to comment on the site’s profitability.

Walmart has been weighing Jetblack’s future and has entertained outside offers for the business, Bloomberg News reported in September. Potential partners include Microsoft Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. as well as venture-capital firms, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

Faust is a longtime lieutenant of Lore, having worked alongside him at Diapers.com parent Quidsi, Lore’s first venture that was acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in 2011. They also worked together at Jet.com, the millennial-focused shopping site that Walmart bought for $3.3 billion in 2016.

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, Lisa Wolfson

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