Wal-Mart Stores Inc., escalating its war against Amazon for online shoppers, has hired Denise Incandela, a veteran of upscale digital businesses, WWD has learned.
Incandela will become senior vice president of fashion for Wal-Mart’s U.S. e-commerce sites, which include Walmart.com, Jet.com and Shoes.com.
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She will join Wal-Mart on Oct. 2 and be based at the Hoboken, N.J. headquarters of Jet.com. She will report to Scott Hilton, chief revenue officer for Wal-Mart’s U.S. e-commerce business.
“Fashion is a critical category for our e-commerce business given its importance to our customers,” said Hilton. “She brings incredible leadership that will significantly enhance our efforts to create a specialty shopping experience for our millions of shoppers.”
Incandela is serving as interim chief executive officer of Aerosoles, which went bankrupt last week. Incandela has only been with Aerosoles since April.
Before Aerosoles, Incandela served as president of Ralph Lauren Global Digital, leading the $700 million global consumer direct business. She stayed three years at Ralph Lauren until leaving reportedly due to some differences with management.
Before joining Ralph Lauren in February 2014, Incandela spent more than 14 years at Saks Fifth Avenue in senior roles including executive vice president and president of Saks Direct. She is credited with building Saks’ digital business from the ground up. Earlier at Saks, she served as chief marketing officer. She helped the company integrate marketing initiatives across its channels of business.
Incandela, who lives in Manhattan, is considered a strategic thinker, numbers-oriented and said to be big on utilizing customer insights and data analytics for building businesses. She joined Saks Fifth Avenue in 1999, where she also held the titles of senior vice president of business development and group senior vice president.
Prior to joining Saks, she was a consultant at McKinsey & Co., working in the retail practice.
A year ago, Marc Lore, founder of Jet.com, sold the site to Wal-Mart for $3.3 billion and subsequently was named president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart’s e-commerce arm. Walmart.com sees up to 100 million unique visitors a month according to comScore.
Wal-Mart also owns men’s wear retailer Bonobos; home goods retailer Hayneedle; shoe retailer ShoeBuy; Modcloth, a vintage apparel-inspired retailer, and multichannel outerwear retailer Moosejaw. Wal-Mart operates e-commerce in 10 countries including the U.S.
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