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Amazon’s new retail chief, Dave Clark, has an unusual nickname: the Sniper.
Underlings gave Clark, who has worked at Amazon during almost all of his career, that moniker after he told them that early in his tenure he would hide in the shadows at warehouses seeking to catch lazy workers slacking off who he could fire.
Clark, 47, has come a long way since those days as a lurker. Amazon announced on Friday that he will replace Jeff Wilke, one of the most trusted lieutenants of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, when he retires early next year. The news surprised some analysts, who thought Wilke might be in line to run the whole company if Bezos ever left. Now it will be Clark, who helped build Amazon’s massive warehouse and delivery network, who is one step away from the top job.
Shares of Amazon, which had been up 78% this year, lost less than 1% on Friday.
“Those of you who have worked with Dave know his incredible passion for serving customers and supporting our employees,” Bezos said in an email to employees announcing the change. “I am excited for him to lead our teams and continue innovating for customers.”
Amazon said no executives were available for an interview on Friday.
Clark grew up in Georgia and Florida and got early exposure to life in the retail business working in his parents’ carpet store (where he liked to drive the forklift) as well as at a Publix Supermarket and a Service Merchandise store during high school.
But in college at Auburn University, he studied music and played the tuba and baritone sax. After graduating, he spent a year as a junior high music teacher before heading to business school at the University of Tennessee where he studied logistics and transportation.
The experience as a music teacher still comes in handy, Clark has said. “I often tell people I learned everything there is to learn about leading people from 250 seventh graders,” Clark said in an interview with Auburn’s alumni association in 2017. “Once you’ve taught 250 seventh graders to play instruments in unison, everything else is pretty straightforward.”
While Clark was going to business school in Tennessee, then scrappy startup online book seller Amazon was exploring the state for the location of one of its first warehouses. The company’s head of operations visited Clark’s class and the MBA student impressed the exec as part of a team presenting on improving warehouse schematics.