Economic conditions impacting the country’s lower to middle income market continued to weigh on Lewis Group’s performance for the six months to September 2017 as headline earnings declined from R173 million to R144 million with headline earnings per share 15.8% lower at 163.9 cents. However, the group’s results show an improving sales growth trend, stronger
The partnership commences with a focus on the development of stores in Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi. SPAR multi-format stores, ranging from small convenience to large supermarket will expand over time across the country. By opening these stores, Pakistan becomes part of SPAR’s international network which now extends to 46 countries across the globe. Established 50
Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solution provider, has announced the launch of its New Retail solution together with partners Century, Ontme, Keonn and CipherLab at Huawei Eco-Connect Europe 2017 in Berlin. Developed in conjunction with Huawei eco-system partners, the New Retail solution builds on Huawei’s IoT and Cloud solution portfolio. The New
As it approaches its first anniversary in the South African market, Google Shopping is making its mark, with some retailers showing a return on investment percentages measured in the thousands. However, as more businesses enter the fray, companies who try go it alone will find it increasingly difficult to ensure their products stand out. Google
TFG has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Hobbs, a contemporary British womenswear brand, through its United Kingdom subsidiary, TFG Brands (London) Limited. The agreement is subject to the fulfilment of certain conditions precedent normal for a transaction of this nature. Hobbs currently has 140 outlets comprising standalone stores and concessions
Changes in customer preferences and the path to purchase are driving the need for Canadian retailers to respond and future proof their business to ensure they do not become another Canadian casualty in the retail industry. Today, Deloitte released a report – Future-proofing your retail business: Balancing the art and science of advanced analytics in
PayPal has announced the launch of its Seller Protection Programme in some Sub-Saharan Africa countries, in an effort to empower local businesses to trade online, both locally and globally with confidence and peace of mind. PayPal’s Seller Protection Programme is designed to help protect merchants from buyer’s claims, chargeback, and reversals, so that they are
Jumia Nigeria has announced the dates and partners for its biggest sales event of the year, Jumia Black Friday 2017. This year’s event is billed as the Jumia Black Friday Festival and will run for 31 days from November 13th to December 13th 2017 on www.Jumia.com.ng. It will be the largest shopping event in Nigeria
Of the 33 participants in the Massmart Supplier Development Programme 13 are private label projects, eight are import substitution projects and six are exporting products as far as New Zealand. Massmart today hosted an event to celebrate local manufacturers who are participants in their Supplier Development Programme. At the event, the Economic Development Department, and
Pick n Pay, the largest online grocery business in Africa, has unveiled its new online shopping website. Designed to work alongside the recently relaunched mobile app, the website has been built to offer greater convenience, wider choice, more promotions and lower prices to its fast-growing base of online shoppers. The website is geared towards customers
Clicks Group increased operating profit by 15.4% to R1.8 billion in the year to August 2017, driven by strong retail health and beauty sales which grew by 14.7%. Group turnover increased by 10.9% to R26.8 billion and diluted headline earnings per share by 14.5% to 502 cents. The group increased its operating margin by 30
Investec Asset Management, through its Africa Private Equity capability, in a consortium with RMB Ventures, local partners, and senior management have completed a buy-out of Kamoso, a Botswana-based retailer and consumer goods company. The transaction is believed to be Botswana’s largest ever private-equity investment. Kamoso is a leading manufacturer and supplier of consumer goods and
Lewis Group has announced the acquisition of United Furniture Outlets (UFO), a cash retailer of luxury household furniture to the higher income market, for R320 million. UFO was established in 2004 and has a retail footprint of 30 stores. More than half the outlets are located in Gauteng, including its flagship 5 000 m² mega-store in
Despite Cote d’Ivoire still being dominated by a traditional trade retail base, the Nielsen Shopper World Conference held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, has found that the country’s modern trade arena has seen the greatest evolution in the last two years and therefore holds the most potential for growth. This has been spurred on by the
Despite Nigeria’s retail sector being dominated by independent formats like open markets and kiosks in terms of absolute store numbers, the Nielsen Shopper & Retail World Conference held in Lagos, Nigeria, has revealed that modern trade formats like supermarkets and hypermarkets are stepping up to fulfill the needs of consumers. Speaking at the event, Nielsen
Smartphones are the new hub from which tech-savvy consumers run their financial lives. In the developed world, bank branches are closing at an accelerated rate due to a decline in the use of cash and the huge uptake of digital payment systems. In the UK, the number of physical branches has more than halved since
Over the past four years the franchising sector has displayed resilience, consistently growing its contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 9.7% in 2014 to its present contribution of 13.3% – an upward trend that is most likely to continue despite the lackluster economy. The current growth of 13.3% is broken down by
Amazon introduced a convenient way for teens 13 through 17 years old to shop on Amazon with their own login. For the first time, teens can independently use the Amazon App, allowing them to shop or stream content while still keeping their parents informed. Parents can approve all orders or set pre-approved spending limits per
Nominal retail sales for August 2017 grew a substantial 8.1 percent versus the same month last year, marking the quickest pace of growth the retail industry has seen in the past three months. This is according to the Mastercard SpendingPulse August 2017 report, which provides a macroeconomic analysis of retail spending trends in South Africa.
Shoppers are demanding that every aspect of their experience be quick, easy and free of friction. That’s why Walmart is transforming retail with unique, technology-powered offerings like Online Grocery Pickup, Pickup Towers, Mobile Express Money Services and free two-day shipping without a membership fee. Walmart is now focusing its attention on returns, with the introduction
DHL Express, the world’s leading international express services provider recently announced its partnership with MallforAfrica, the award-winning global e-commerce company, which will facilitate selling of made-in-Africa products to customers in the United States. Businesses can do so via the eBay platform powered by MallforAfrica. Through this partnership, DHL locations will serve as drop-off points for
MEC for KwaZulu-Natal Human Settlements and Public Works, Ravi Pillay, together with Darryl Mayers, Head of Investec Property South Africa and EThekwini Municipality, have officially opened the 65 000m² brand new Cornubia Mall near Mount Edgecombe. The Mall opened its doors amid much fanfare and excitement from shoppers and retailers alike on the, 28 September,
Bjorn Rencken, co-owner of the family-run Ladysmith Spar, says he has implemented Pricer electronic shelf labels (ESL) to support perpetual stocktaking and a view to centralised pricing, consistently correct prices and updates, stock management, and shrinkage control for all nine of his family’s stores. XON Retail deployed 12,000 Pricer labels at his Ladysmith Spar store
Steinhoff has announced that Steinhoff African Retail Limited (STAR) listed on the JSE on 20 September 2017 and issued 750 million new STAR shares under a private placement in a book that was 4.8 times oversubscribed, raising an aggregate amount of R15.4 billion. The proceeds from the Private Placement were distributed by STAR to subsidiaries of Steinhoff.
Ackermans recently relocated, and re-opened its doors in one of Africa’s leading retail, leisure and entertainment destinations, Canal Walk shopping centre. The 1618m2 store will supply all the quality clothing, footwear, and more, its customers have come to expect from the value retailer – only this time, it will have a new, refreshed look. Annemarie
This week the Shoprite Group created more than 820 new job opportunities with the opening of 14 new stores across 6 different provinces in South Africa. The Group is South Africa’s largest private sector employer and created 6 027 new jobs in the 2017 financial year. This trend is set to continue with a total
Walmart is strengthening its sustainable chemistry policy for consumable products, reaffirming the company’s work to increase transparency, advance improved product formulations, and offer a larger sustainable product selection for customers. As part of the policy expansion, Walmart aims to reduce its consumables chemical footprint for Walmart and Sam’s Clubs U.S. stores by 10 percent by
Mastercard and Swarovski have launched a virtual reality (VR) shopping app for the Atelier Swarovski home décor line, a collection of functional and decorative crystal home accessories designed in collaboration with world-renowned architects and designers. The app immerses consumers in a tastefully decorated home where they can browse and purchase the pieces with Masterpass, Mastercard’s
Over the past 20 years, disruptive digital companies have upended consumers’ expectations of the shopping and payments experience. It started in 1999 when Amazon patented one-click shopping and has evolved over the years into the invisible, instant payments offered on mobile apps such as Uber. To keep up with the pace of innovation among digital
IBM has announced a new agreement with Walgreens, one of the country’s largest drugstore chains, to deploy IBM retail analytics at more than 8,100 locations nationwide to help improve the efficiency of field service support for these locations. With IBM’s support of IT systems at Walgreens stores, IBM’s unique capabilities to integrate hardware and software from
Despite the rapid growth in online retail, the vast majority of sales still happen in a brick and mortar setting. The physical store environment continues to be an invaluable part of the retailer playbook to help drive a great shopping experience. From a consumer perspective, the lines between digital and physical are being removed and
Customer-facing digital technology is driving digital transformation in retail, supported by lower-key, enabling and function-specific technologies and solutions that provide the foundation for the retail system to function and live up to customer-facing technologies’ promise. Retailers that fail to engage with the technologies that are reshaping and upending their industry will fall behind and become
Financial technology and online sales are rapidly changing the retail space, sparking debate on what lies ahead for physical shopping environments. Retail is not suffering from a lack of data — in fact, we’re drowning in it. Rather than continuing to speculate on what’s noise and what’s useful, I founded Movvo to help businesses make
Electrum, one of South Africa’s most successful fintech companies which specialises in payments technology, has been selected to participate in the Gartner Aspiring Innovators Programme. The aim of this prestigious programme is to highlight innovative providers of enterprise technology to attendees of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Africa 2017, which is being held in Cape Town from
Marie Claire magazine is partnering with Mastercard to launch The Next Big Thing Concept Shop, a first-to-market, hands-on retail pop-up experience bringing to life the newest innovations in fashion, beauty, entertainment, technology and wellness. Open to the public from September 23-October 12, The Next Big Thing Concept Shop will offer consumers the opportunity to experience
LOGiQ Asset Management Inc. and Purpose Investments Inc. are pleased to announce today that they have entered into a purchase and sale agreement providing for the acquisition by Purpose of substantially all of the retail asset management agreements owned by LOGIQ and its affiliates. Under the terms of the Purchase and Sale Agreement, the purchase
Mother and daughter duo, Patricia and Samantha Taylor of Life Retreat, have combined their love for all things health and wellness to bring the Cape an experience unlike anything else. Situated at Lourensford Wine Estate in what has been referred to as one of the most beautiful places on earth, the duo have created a
Unilever has once again ranked first in the Personal Products sector of the 2017 Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) – one of the most credible and high-profile markers of corporate sustainability leadership. DJSI assesses and ranks the economic, environmental and social performance of over 3,000 publicly traded companies. Unilever has participated in the benchmark since
A new study from Juniper Research has found that Visa and Mastercard’s distinct evolutionary strategies in digital payments will underpin the success of a market expected to increase from $3.8 trillion globally this year to more than $5 trillion by 2020. The new report, Strategies for Payment Providers: Opportunities, Risks & Competition 2017-2021, pinpointed Mastercard’s
Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) has released the latest consumer inflation data, as well as a report on poverty trends. The inflation data indicated a continued downward move in price pressures, which will be welcomed by consumers. The poverty report was significantly less positive, showing that poverty is on the rise in South Africa. In
Small domestic appliance (SDA) sales in South Africa declined 17% to US$228m (about R3bn) in 2016, with kettles and irons accounting for 43% of market value. Newly released data from GfK South Africa shows that is the first time the SDA market has shrunk in five years, reflecting tight economic conditions in South Africa. Electrical
Pick n Pay Coachmans Crossing has deployed more than 11,000 refurbished Pricer electronic shelf labels (ESL) from XON Retail. The labels will support an upcoming just-in-time stock keeping process that speeds up and improves the accuracy of regular daily and weekly price updates, cuts labour costs of price updates, costs of paper labels, and costs
Lidl has overtaken Waitrose to become the seventh largest grocer in the UK as the discounters continue grow at more than four times the rate of the Big 4. According to the latest data from Kantar Worldpanel, Lidl saw an 18.9 per cent increase in sales in the 12 weeks to August 13, raising its
Amazon’s $13.7 billion (£10.7 billion) takeover of organic grocery chain Whole Foods has been given the green light by both shareholders and government regulators. The takeover means Amazon now has a direct pathway into bricks-and-mortar retail, with more than 460 Whole Foods stores — nine of which are in the UK — now part of
Literary icon Maya Angelou famously said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” In the hyper-competitive world of food wholesale and retail, it can be easy to lose sight of this simple truism. Every day, people are bombarded with numbers,
South African salaries increased for the fifth consecutive month in July with average salaries and pensions rising – leading to the strong possibility of a consumer recovery. This is according to the latest monthly data from BankservAfrica’s Disposable Salary Index (BDSI) and Private Pension Index (BPPI). This is the first time since December 2015 that
Running around, going to work, picking kids up from school, making dinner and, between all of that, there’s shopping to do. Because of this, I believe our job at Walmart isn’t only about saving our customers money, but also about making shopping faster and easier. We’re announcing an exciting partnership with Google to do just
The Shoprite Group delivered industry-leading results for the 2017 financial year, defying tough market conditions. Now serving over 35 million individual customers on the African continent, the Group gained market-share and grew trading profit 11.6% (15.7% compared to 52 weeks) to R8 billion. “We have now achieved 64 consecutive quarters of like for like sales
SPAR South Africa is working together with Mr Price Group to reduce youth unemployment. Invaluable retail work experience will be gained through MRP Foundation’s skills development initiative. The programme, Jump Start, empowers unemployed youth with entry level skills and links them to job opportunities in its retail and supply chain. Since 2008, the youth development
SPAR Zimbabwe recently ran a campaign – the ‘Piggy Bank Challenge’ – aimed at educating children on the importance of saving money whilst at the same time providing financial support for children’s charity, Childline. Running until the end of February, the campaign saw piggy banks (money boxes) on sale in SPAR stores in Zimbabwe. Parents
