Incoming Walmart CEO John Furner started at the mega-retailer as an hourly employee stocking shelves. Now America’s largest company by revenue is counting on him to guide it through its next chapter.
CEO Doug McMillon announced his retirement in November after a decade at the head of the number 1 company on the market Fortune 500. His last day was January 31. Replacing him is Furner, who begins his CEO tenure Sunday after serving as chairman and CEO of Walmart’s U.S. operations.
Furner, 52, began his Walmart journey at a garden center in the company’s hometown of Bentonville, Ark., but will now take on the task of leading the company’s 2.1 million employees and operations at his immediate level. 11,000 stores in 19 countries.
After studying marketing management at the University of Arkansas, Furner rose through the ranks at Walmart, rising from store manager to district manager and buyer, then to the corporate side as division general manager and vice president of global sourcing. He even spent two years in Shenzhen at Walmart China, where he was in charge of merchandising and marketing.
Before overseeing Walmart US, Furner was CEO of Sam’s Club.
“John understands every dimension of our business, from sales floor to global strategy. He has proven he can deliver results while living our values,” Walmart Chairman Greg Penner said in a statement. statement.
On his way out, McMillon also paid tribute to Furner, with whom he said he worked closely for 20 years.
“He loves this company and his colleagues, he understands our business very well and he has the right characteristics to lead us into the future. He is a marketer, an operator, an innovator and a builder,” McMillon said Friday in a statement. job on LinkedIn.
Furner’s investment in employees
Partly because of his humble beginnings as a store associate, Furner helped, during his tenure, oversee a massive overhaul of how Walmart compensates its store managers. In an effort to improve morale and retention, Walmart offered its top-performing managers compensation packages worth between $420,000 and $620,000 per year.
Workers’ base pay was increased to between $130,000 and $160,000, more than double the median annual salary of an American worker. The rest is made up of large stock awards and annual bonuses, which Furner said were intended to “give managers a sense of ownership.”
The company also reinstated a bonus program for store employees. Some eligible employees could potentially earn up to $1,000 per year through the program based on their years of service, according to the company.
Even though AI threatens the jobs of workers across industries, Furner said the number of employees over the next five years would remain stable even if workers were more productive. Jobs that disappear will be replaced by new positions within the company, he added.
“We’re extending people’s careers and those jobs pay better. The attrition rates are really low,” Furner said at the news conference. Think about technology conference in Park City, Utah in September.
Partly as a result of these changes, the company ranked among the top 10 on FortuneIt is Best Large Workplaces list in retail for 2024.
Why Walmart chose John Furner as CEO
Part of Furner’s management philosophy may have been influenced in part by his family and early experiences. Working on the farm with his grandfather as a child, Furner learned the value of hard work.
“I learned from him that animals don’t take Sundays, Saturdays and Wednesdays off,” he said, according to Fox News. “They’re still up. We get up early in the morning. We go over the fence to make sure a cow hasn’t made its way through.”
His grandfather’s hands-on approach also applied to problem solving. When he needed something, Furner’s grandfather, who he said was a product of the Great Depression, preferred to find a solution by hand rather than buy something.
“In a business, there are so many unique situations that come your way that there may not be a clear answer, but between your team, your resources, American ingenuity and creativity, there is probably a way to resolve them,” he said.
Furner’s penchant for hard work and creative problem solving came in handy in his most recent high-profile roles as president and CEO of Sam’s Club and then Walmart US. During his tenure at the helm of Sam’s Club, Furner oversaw 11 consecutive quarters of positive growth and took on a competitor. Costco in part by streamlining the business and closing stores.
Then, when the company faced an unprecedented challenge in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, Furner helped the company strengthen its supply chain and distribution centers to deal with this situation.
As he told Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation in 2020, Walmart reshaped its business, deprioritizing optical and auto care centers while investing in its grocery business to meet demand from what he called the “inventory phase,” where customers rushed to build up their supply of everything from toilet paper to consumables.
Next, the company invested heavily in distribution centers as well as pickup and delivery services to adapt to the “work from home” era and the surge in online shopping.
As a result, net revenue increased in 2020 and 2021, despite pandemic-related disruptions. In 2021 alone, Walmart’s net sales for its U.S. operations increased by $29 billion, far outpacing the previous year’s sales growth, while its e-commerce business grew 79%.
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on November 14, 2025.
