E-commerce shake up at Walmart, executives leave

Walmart Stores Inc, the world’s largest retailer, is transferring management of its e-commerce business to heads of stores in developed countries and said two online executives are leaving the company.

E-commerce leaders in markets such as the US, Canada and the UK, will now report directly to the heads of stores in those countries instead of global e-commerce executive Eduardo Castro-Wright, Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart said today in an internal memo provided to Bloomberg News.

Raul Vazquez, who leads the developed markets group in global e-commerce, and Steve Nave, head of Walmart.com in the US are leaving the company, Walmart said. The reorganisation comes a year after Castro-Wright took charge at the online unit to boost Internet sales and fend off competition from web retailers such Amazon.com Inc by expanding in sales of goods including groceries.

“Walmart has been lagging in e-commerce, and the loss of two executives won’t help where the company’s going,” Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners LLC, a New Canaan, Connecticut-based consulting firm, said in an interview. “It will be challenging for them to build the momentum they need.”

As more shoppers migrate to the Web and sales at US stores decline, Chief Executive Officer Mike Duke has focused on improving the company’s Internet unit by buying Kosmix, a Silicon Valley e-commerce startup, testing home delivery of fresh groceries ordered online and creating @WalmartLabs to speed up innovation.

Walmart doesn’t disclose its online sales. Analysts at Wells Fargo Securities LLC estimate that Walmart.com has revenue of about $6 billion a year, less than two per cent of total sales. Amazon.com, the world’s largest internet retailer, increased sales 40 per cent to $34.2 billion in 2010.

“Walmart has certainly been facing more competition from Amazon and their domestic business has been challenged in stores,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, a retail analyst at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc. “This was an intentional shake-up.”

Dave Tovar, a spokesman, said the two online executives are leaving for personal reasons and declined to comment further. Nave joined Walmart in 2000 and Vazquez in 2002, Tovar said. Joel Anderson will to replace Nave, and will report to Bill Simon, the president and chief executive officer of Walmart US.

Walmart rose 2 cents to $49.75 at 4.15 pm in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have declined 7.8 per cent this year.

Reuters earlier reported on the shakeup at the e-commerce unit.