The company has never broken out its Internet revenue, though in 2011, the analyst Internet Retailer estimated it to be $4.9 billion. In e-commerce, however, Walmart is a distant challenger. That’s a key reason Walmart’s 2011 revenue of $419 billion dwarfed Amazon’s 2011 sales of $48 billion. Walmart is the world’s biggest grocer, and a central part of its strategy is that the millions of folks who visit its stores weekly to buy food will purchase a lot of other stuff. Amazon has been moving aggressively to sell Walmart staples such as diapers, soap, pet food, and cereal, even letting customers subscribe for items they want to receive regularly. Having marginalized Barnes & Noble and Best Buy, Jeff Bezos has his eyes on a bigger target. This last move is a clear signal of Walmart’s serious intent to compete in digital e-commerce–and blunt the looming threat of Amazon, which has its own same-day shipping experiments. In just over a year, it has helped revamp its search engine presciently identified the potential of the now red-hot “social gifting” market, where companies use social media cues to suggest presents and this fall launched a test that offers same-day shipping to customers. WalmartLabs is now housed in a boxy office tower in San Bruno, California, a few miles south of San Francisco. “We are playing to win.” “We are uniquely positioned to give customers anytime, anywhere access by combining the smartphone, online, and the physical stores,” says Walmart CEO Mike Duke. “We’ve hired hundreds of incredibly talented people, in Silicon Valley and around the world,” says Duke of his aggressive moves. In the summer of 2011, King signed up as CTO of. In other words, Duke wanted to inject a bit of Silicon Valley into Bentonville, Arkansas. He hoped to turn a company famous for rigid, coldly effective business processes into one that’s flexible, experimental, and entrepreneurial. One, a 65-person social media firm called Kosmix with expertise in search and analytics, was the impetus for Walmart rechristening its Valley operations Duke was looking for people who would revive the company’s sites and services, and energize its entire culture. He had made serious investments in high-tech talent, acquiring several startups. Duke had restructured the company, placing e-commerce on equal footing with Walmart’s other, much larger divisions.
After years of seeing his company lag online, Duke swore that digital was now a priority for Walmart. Over the next 45 minutes, though, Duke made what King calls an irresistible pitch. I was looking at this video, thinking, Where is this place?” “Mike’s office in Bentonville is the original one that Sam Walton had, complete with 1970s wood paneling.
The next thing King knew, Walmart arranged for him to join a videoconference with CEO Mike Duke.
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