EBay taps longtime Walmart retail tech innovator to be its new CEO

Jamie Iannone, an e-commerce veteran with Walmart and Sam's Club is rejoining eBay to become the struggling marketplace's next CEO.

The long search for a new CEO at eBay is over.

The online marketplace said Monday that it had hired Walmart e-commerce operations chief Jamie Iannone to take the reins on April 27. The appointment fills a position that had been empty since September, when its former CEO abruptly left eBay after disagreements over how to renew the struggling company.

A well regarded e-commerce executive, Iannone had taken the No. 2 job at Walmart’s $32 billion online business just three months ago. At eBay, he will take over a company facing pressure from activist investors to streamline its business at a time when there is increasing competition from other online marketplaces.

In Iannone, whose February Walmart appointment had put him in a prime position to eventually become head of its e-commerce business, eBay is getting an executive who has known how to push through innovation at traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. He is also familiar with the business, having previously worked for eBay between 2001 and 2009, including as a vice president.

“Jamie has consistently delivered high growth during rapid periods of industry disruption, consumer change and technological advancement,” says eBay’s chairman, Thomas Tierney.

Before joining Walmart, Iannone had spent years at its sister warehouse chain Sam’s Club, where he turned a once-tired retailer into a dynamic developer of new technology. Innovations such as a Scan-and-go, which allows shoppers to use their smart phones to scan items as they make their way through to store and check out, were developed under his aegis. Sam’s Club served as something of a tech incubator for the Walmart chain, by developing innovations like drive-up pick-up of online orders, something that’s now central to Walmart’s e-commerce firepower.

In December, Sam’s Club opened a lab store in Dallas, a location that’s just a fraction of the size of a regular Sam’s Club, but one teeming with new tech. The store, dubbed Sam’s Club Now, has no checkout lanes. It’s also where Sam’s Club has tested out the Ask Sam platform, which helps managers improve work scheduling and better locate products on sale as well as inventory available other stores within the region.

Before working at Sam’s Club from 2013 to 2019, Iannone oversaw Barnes & Noble’s Nook digital books and e-reader business, at a time when it was a serious competitor to Amazon’s Kindle product and platform.

And at eBay, Iannone will have his hands full. Best known for its online auctions, the nearly 25-year-old Internet company is the third largest e-commerce retail site in the U.S., accounting for 4.7% of industry sales after Amazon (38.7%) and Walmart (5.3%), according to eMarketer. But eBay is contending with intensifying competition, ranging from Walmart’s consumer-to-consumer offerings, to growing re-commerce sites like Poshmark and ThredUp, to retailers like Target gingerly wading into the marketplace waters.

This year, eMarketer has forecast eBay will see the gross merchandise value sold on its U.S. site fall 5% to $31.66 billion, continuing a sharp drop in 2019, hurt by higher seller fees, penalties, and lower marketing spending.

EBay has been under pressure from activist investor Elliott Management and Starboard Value to consider breaking itself up. Two months ago. it sold its StubHub ticker-sales business for $4 billion, and has reportedly considered selling its classified-advertising business, which analysts think could also be worth billions.

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