Organizational Change Memo From Eduardo Castro-Wright
To: All Associates
From: Eduardo Castro-Wright, Vice Chairman
Date: Jan. 28, 2010
RE: Walmart US Organizational Changes
Over the last three years, we have made significant changes in our business to further strengthen our price leadership, improve the merchandise assortments that we offer to our customers and upgrade the shopping experience in our stores. All of these accomplishments have been made possible by the clear alignment of the entire Walmart US organization behind our powerful purpose: We help save people money so they can live better.
We have referred to this effort as Project Impact and customers have responded very favorably.
It is now time to escalate these efforts – to switch to high gear – by leveraging our size and global scale to drive greater efficiencies and lower the cost of goods to help accelerate growth.
The strategy is clear and today I am pleased to announce a series of changes within Walmart US that will move us further along in our execution while creating, at the same time, significant development and growth opportunities for many associates.
The first of these structural changes is intended to gain alignment in the critical new store decision process by integrating Walmart’s Realty Division with Store Operations and Logistics under the leadership of Bill Simon, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Walmart US. As a result of this realignment, effective Feb. 1, Eric Zorn, Executive Vice President and President, Walmart Realty, will now report to Bill Simon.
Later today, Bill will make other organizational announcements to explain how this new structure will operate. This move will help facilitate our growth as we seek to enter new markets and develop new segments across the U.S. and will drive efficiencies by allowing us to better leverage our resources. We are also building a structure that aligns the Store Planning Team with the Customer Experience Team that currently is part of merchandising. This will also support our efforts to accelerate our speed to market with new formats.
As we continue to implement our merchandising transformation initiative, we have determined the need to realign several merchandise categories to improve our ability to offer customers a clear and compelling assortment of quality products. You will be hearing more about these changes from Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer John Fleming later today.
John and Bill will also tell you about the creation of a new Merchandising Execution Organization embedded in the operating divisions that will help bring assortment decisions in the stores to a new level.
I am proud of what this organization has already accomplished and very excited about our prospect for continued success with the changes being announced today.
Eduardo
