A new hiring has been made by the e-commerce giant Amazon.com for running of the physical stores of the company.

The United States based company said on Friday that it has roped in a veteran of British supermarket chain Tesco – Tony Hoggett, for the position.

Currently, Hoggett is the chief strategy and innovation director at the largest supermarket chain and retailer of the United Kingdom and has been associated with Tesco for more than 31 years.  

Hoggett is set to join Amazon in in January 2022 as a senior vice president of physical stores, Amazon said, and added that he would be reporting directly to Dave Clark, the chief executive of it’s the e-commerce company’s worldwide consumer business.

“Over the next few months we’ll put together a plan for Tony’s transition to Amazon,” Clark said in a statement.

Having started his career at Tesco as a 16-year-old trolley boy, Hoggett spent more than three decades at the company and rose through the ranks to become CEO Asia and then was appointed as the group chief operating officer of the company prior to taking over his current role in the company in April this year.

“It was a big decision to move on from Tesco but after meeting members of the Amazon leadership team and hearing the ambitions for the business and physical stores, I know it’s a journey and an opportunity that I want to be part of,” said Hoggett, who will relocate to Seattle.

This is the first high profile departure from company for Tesco since Ken Murphy was appointed as the CEO of the company in October.

In April this year, the finance chief of Tesco, Alan Stewart, retired but his exit was announced by the company back in June of 2020. Similarly back in September last year, the departure of the boss of Tesco’s Booker business, Charles Wilson, was announced by the company and he stepped down only in February this year.

The latest move by Amazon comes amid speculation by investors of the American e-retailing giant potentially being interested in acquisition of Tesco’s smaller rival Morrisons which whom Amazon already holds a supplier agreement for quite some time.

An Amazon Fresh cashierless location in London, which was opened in March this year, was the first physical store of the company outside of its home market of the United States. Currently the company has   five such physical stores in the United Kingdom.

(Adapted from USNews.com)