Amazon has named Doug Herrington CEO of its Worldwide Amazon Stores business, formerly known as Worldwide Consumer, as it makes an organizational change.
The announcement comes just about two weeks after the company revealed that Dave Clark, CEO of Worldwide Consumer and a critical player in the company’s operational expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, would leave Amazon.
In a message to the company, Andrew Jassy, Amazon CEO, characterized Herrington as a builder of great teams who brings substantial retail, grocery, demand generation, product development and Amazon experience to bear. He pointed out that Herrington has been with Amazon for 17 years, joining the company in 2005 to build out the company’s consumables business. He launched AmazonFresh in 2007 and, in 2015, took on leading all of the North American Consumer business.
In the organizational change, the Amazon operations organization will be united under John Felton, Jassy noted, an executive who has been at Amazon for almost 18 years, spending 12 years in retail and operations finance leadership roles. In 2018, he moved to Worldwide Operations as vp of global customer fulfillment. In 2019, he took over the newly formed Global Delivery Services group, encompassing global import/export, Amazon Logistics and last-mile delivery services. Jassy added that Felton has strong end-to-end knowledge of the Amazon fulfillment network, operates with a mix of strategic thinking and a command of the details that matter most in the company network and is a strong team builder. Felton reports to Herrington.
Jassy stated:
This is a very strong and experienced leadership team. I remain very optimistic about our Stores business, and believe we’re still in the early days of what’s possible. It’s worth remembering that Amazon currently only represents about 1% of the worldwide retail market segment share, and 85% of that worldwide market segment share still resides in physical stores. If you believe that equation will change over time, which I do, there’s a lot of potential for us as we continue to be laser-focused on providing the best customer experience — broadest selection, low prices, fast and convenient delivery — while working on our cost structure to have the right long-term business.
