Marc Lore is an entrepreneur with an ecommerce pedigree. He’s now at Walmart because they acquired his ecommerce start up Jet.com. Now at Walmart, he’s heading up the Walmart ecommerce business. And that’s a big deal in the US as both retailer and marketplace.
He’s of particular interest because he is both likeable and candid and has been around the block a few times. And taking on Walmart’s online business is a huge task. In the video he explores the scale of the challenge.
In this video Lore addresses the buy out, the philosophy behind Jet.com and how he’s working that into Walmart’s DNA. And he also addresses the challenges that Walmart is facing online when taking on the ever insurgent Amazon. In particular he’s keen to explore the fulfilment possibilities of leveraging Walmart’s infrastructure and the possibilities of click & collect.
As he notes Walmart has has 6700 strong fleet of trucks and that offers advantages: “Our cost to ship to the store is 75 cents a box, but to ship it to your home, it’s $5.” He aims to make collection in store a more attractive option.
And he does also examine that Amazon is going great guns and he’s sometimes on the back foot. He says “there are certainly areas where we are playing defense, and we’re behind and need to catch up. One example is the long-tail categories that we’re going after with acquisitions.” It looks like Walmart is aware that it doesn’t have the Amazon choice and breadth of inventory. Seldom does a senior executive anywhere acknowledge the completion is doing it better than they are.
