Wise move: Amazon on right track with Doug Herrington appointment
Yesterday, we reported that Doug Herrington had been appointed as the new CEO of Amazon’s Worldwide Stores business (formerly known as Consumer).
He has been at Amazon for 17 years, joining the company in 2005 to build out the Consumables business, launching Amazon Fresh in 2007, and in 2015, taking on leading all of the North American Consumer business.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.described Herrington as “a terrific inventor for customers, who thinks big, has thoughtful vision around how category management and ops can work well together, is a unifier, is highly curious, and an avid learner.”
“I think Doug will do great things for customers and employees alike, and I look forward to working with him in this leadership role,” he added.
The e-commerce giant has made the right choice here, according to Brittain Ladd, a former Amazon exec and supply chain consultant.
In a LinkedIn post, he said: “I am very happy about this appointment following the departure of Dave Clark, who led Amazon’s warehousing and e-commerce operations.”
“Dave is becoming the co-CEO of Flexport and eventually the sole CEO. It’s a great move for Flexport, but I wanted Dave to become the CEO of Kroger, Walmart, Target, Uber, FedEx or Gopuff once his non-compete would allow him to do so. I’m not convinced Flexport is the best place for him.”
He added: “The press is reporting that Jassy didn’t try and talk Clark into staying, and now additional executives have left since Herrington has been named as the CEO of Stores.”
“So what? My advice to Jassy is disrupt Amazon as much as possible before someone else does it for him. Jassy should not feel compelled to try and keep any executives. He has a mission to complete, and what he needs are executives who believe in his vision and the mission.”
Ladd also believes that John Felton is the perfect choice to be the new Head of Operations and report to Herrington.
The latter is taking over as sales have slowed in recent quarters, the company is planning to sublease at least 10 million square feet of excess warehouse space, defer construction of new facilities, and renegotiate leases, according to reports.
Ladd concluded his post by stating that Herrington and Felton should give serious consideration to the following moves:
1. Assess if Amazon should divest Whole Foods, and focus on building Amazon Fresh stores.
2. Go big into automated micro-fulfilment for online grocery fulfilment, but also introduce automated MFCs into the Amazon ecosystem.
3. Assess mobile retail, a ‘marketplace on wheels’ model similar to what BIB Technologies is doing.
4. Assess acquiring Kohl’s and opening Amazon Go Markets inside each store. Leverage the real estate for apparel and other products.
The wild card: Acquire Target and open Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh stores inside each Target store once they’ve been remodelled.
5. How can Amazon beat Instacart? Leverage micro-fulfilment and larger customer fulfillment centres as a service with free delivery. Take over the management of the centre store for grocery retailers.
6. Accelerate selling 3PL services. Go big with Ship with Amazon.
