Unexpected news for the retail market: three top managers left Wildberries in July. CEO Olga Naumova, hired a month ago, decided to resign, having previously demonstrated high efficiency in FMCG, in particular at X5 and Magnit. In the same month, another CEO left the market: Alexey Dukhanin, who had been making a career at Yagodki since 2020, and before that worked at the trade mission of the Russian Federation in Slovakia, and CFO Irina Matachunas, who was previously the CEO of Sbermarket. It is known from open sources that she worked in a similar position at Sbermarket.
Information about the departure of three top executives, citing a source, was published by Forbes on the morning of July 15, but in the evening the press service of Wildberries reported that Naumova was still working at the company, but did not specify whether she was working the required two weeks, or whether she had decided to stay for a long time. The company confirmed the departure of Dukhanin and Matachunas.
The main reason for Naumova’s departure, who joined the company about a month ago, was disagreements with the owner Tatyana Bakalchuk, the publication reports. Naumova was expected to improve the operational efficiency of storage and transport logistics and develop the network of pick-up points. Bakalchuk was interested in Naumova’s experience in both federal and regional retail trade.
“Naumova thought she would manage the processes, but Tatyana was not going to give up control,” one of the publication’s interlocutors said. At the same time, Bakalchuk previously stated that she considers it wrong that there is only one leader in the company. The source did not mention the reasons for the resignation of two other top executives. In 2020, when Naumova left her post as Magnit CEO, the then president of the network, Jan Dunning, told the Financial Times about “cultural inconsistencies” with her and called six months of working in the same team “difficult”.
The company has not yet specified who will replace Dukhanin and Matachunas, and possibly Naumova.
Why did the leaders leave?
According to market participants, the departure of top managers from Wildberries was expected, as the company announced a merger with the Russ Group a month ago.
“The forest is being cut down and the chips are flying, these processes are always accompanied by personnel changes, but it is still impossible to say for sure whether there is a connection in this case. In Ozon, for example, certain personnel changes are also taking place in the management and in the GR block,” RB.RU comments. Chairman of the Board of AUREK Alexander Efimov. The expert believes that the BM could have new serious interested parties in the merger with the Russ Group.
According to Efimov, the dismissed top managers were important to the company.
“The importance of Dukhanin as GR Director and Matachunas as CFO can hardly be underestimated, because these are the core sectors of activity in the market,” said the Chairman of the Board of Directors of AUREK.
Market participants had “certain hopes for creativity and freshness” from Olga Namova, although they did not expect any global changes.
“This is a person from offline retail, there are completely different rules of behavior,” Efimov added.
AUREK believes that certain changes will occur in the functioning of the market due to the departure of the executives.
“Wildberries is a company where people manage processes and rules, and not the other way around. As far as we know, key decisions will be made by the current team, whose composition has not changed,” the expert explained.
President of AKIT Artem Sokolov believes that staff turnover is a normal and natural process for any industry; in retail it happens all the time;
“We are likely to see former top managers of Wildberries in other key positions in the industry,” said Sokolov. The expert added that the success of every company is, first of all, teamwork, which allows the company to adapt to any challenge and determine a development strategy.
“In the short term, a strategy is a company’s work plan for the year, and all tasks of this plan are implemented regardless of whether the composition of the staff changes,” said Sokolov from AKIT.
Six months to search
Finding new managers to replace those who left will not be easy; the market for such specialists is tight; Sber Solutions HR director Margarita Bogdanova-Shemraeva believes that it can take large companies up to six months to fill vacancies in top management.
“The fact is that the market for specialists with the necessary skills is limited: in order to attract external candidates, it will most likely be necessary to resort to headhunting. The option of personal contacts and recommendations is not excluded, when, after “a few handshakes”, organizations are looking for a suitable employee. In addition, it is very likely that great specialists will be “taken” from other companies,” says Bogdanova-Shemrayeva.
Another solution is to reduce the requirements for the position and hire an internal employee who is as well prepared as possible for this role and responsibility, but in this case the adaptation will take more than 3 months and it will also be necessary to invest in additional training.
“It is unlikely that it will be possible to fill a position of this level in less than 3 to 6 months,” said one HR expert.
Nikita Ryabinin, head of the Luxembourg office of KRK Group, believes that there is no need to dramatize the departure of top managers or look for conspiracy theories, since the managers who left the market did not create it.
According to Riabinin, professionals could have come to the project with the hope of managing 100% of all operational activities and being accountable for the results to the owners, but it did not work out.
“In situations where such a mandate is issued verbally at the beginning of the journey and it later turns out that the founders or the board of directors are too involved in operational activities, disagreements may arise,” the expert stressed.
Efficiency of wild berries
According to estimates by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation, Wildberries’ market share in the online trading market at the beginning of 2024 was 47%, its closest competitor Ozon – 35.5%.
AUREK believes that WB, on the one hand, is showing efficiency, has conquered almost half of the market and has a high net profit, but on the other hand, it often behaves “like a bull in a china shop”, although in this respect there are also changes for the better.
“From the operational and tactical point of view, the top team of the World Bank is certainly effective and has gone through many growing pains. Now, in my opinion, the time has come for Wildberries to show not only quantitative indicators, but also strategic solutions in the field of “sustainable development”, responding to challenges in the field of social responsibility, business ethics, human rights, ecology, etc. We will see how the World Bank’s management team copes with these tasks, but this will be the main indicator of its effectiveness,” added Efimov, Chairman of the AUREK Board.
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According to Data Insight’s forecast, the Russian e-commerce market will reach 10.2 trillion rubles in 2024, an increase of 30%;
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The number of completed orders in the e-commerce market will reach 7 billion (+42%);
- E-commerce revenue growth set to slow in 2024;
- The World Bank’s turnover in 2023 exceeded 2.5 trillion rubles and is expected to grow by 60% by the end of 2024, Tatyana Bakalchuk said.
- Wildberries and Russ created a joint venture, to which WB contributed 19 subsidiaries.
