Yoox Group, the online luxury retailer poised to merge with Net-a-Porter, has named Walmart’s Alex Alexander as chief information officer.

Alexander has been multichannel technology director at Walmart for the past three years, working in the US retailer’s labs division in Silicon Valley in California and at Asda’s headquarters in Leeds. He led the rollout of Asda’s click-and-collect offer, enabling customers to pick up from locker boxes and London Underground stations. He also helped launch the George Home website.

Before joining Walmart, Alexander held senior IT and multichannel roles including senior IT director of multichannel systems at Barclays and multichannel IT director at Sainsbury’s.

Alexander has been replaced internally with multichannel product director Robert Mitchell.

Yoox Group founder and chief executive Federico Marchetti said: “As CIO, Alex will play a pivotal role in ensuring technology continues to be a key pillar of our competitive advantage by supporting and driving future growth as well as enhancing our cross-channel offering for our brand partners globally.” 

Earlier this year the Italian etailer agreed to merge with London-based luxury fashion etailer Net-a-Porter in a deal valuing the combined company as more than $2.5bn (£1.6bn). Following the deal, expected to be complete by September, the new company will be called Yoox Net-a-Porter Group.