Things are hotting up in Zimbabwe, and no, we are not referring to global warming, which all right-thinking people know is a daft conspiracy theory cooked up, if you’ll excuse the pun, by people who hate big oil companies and the hilariously outmoded internal combustion engines which feed them. We are of course talking about retail, with Pick n Pay opening its first store in Kamfinsa at the end of June and rebranding some of the TM Supermarkets they acquired with their investment in Kingdom Meikles, which by the way is having a toughish year, losing $3.1million US despite the buoying effects of Pick n Pay on their retail offering. Competitor OK Zimbabwe, a listed retailer, is girding its loins in the meantime, having expanded since it raised US$10 million a couple years back for capital projects, with 44 OK stores now trading, seven Bon Marche stores and two OK Mart stores, for a locally grand total of 53 outlets.

Comment: And the shelves beginning to fill up nicely everywhere, we are told.

OK, it’s not our habit to spread the word about those retailers who choose to deal in fashionable apparel, for a number of reasons which we need not go into right now, but in the absence of our own happy few actually doing anything this week, we’ll have bit of a say about Edcon, who have just sold their store card portfolio to Absa for about 10billion South African rands. This according to Absa will strengthen its toehold in unsecured credit, which is somehow a good thing, and enable it to hawk various other of its financial products to a (figuratively of course) captive market of punters in South Africa, Swaziland and various other of the frontline states who don’t mind buying their jeans and bath towels on tick. Absa, you will recall, bought a controlling stake in the Woolworths’ consumer finance business for R875 million not so very long ago, and obviously can’t get enough of the stuff.

Comment: Which, we are given to understand, is one way of making a living.

Former Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy has condemned as “Medieval” in some instances and merely “Victorian” in others the dying High Streets of Great Britain, where retailers are going out of business at the rate of 14 a day. Sir Terry’s own Tesco, which has a record of developing out-of-town malls to which they then unreasonably attract customers, is substantially credited with the decline of Blighty’s formerly vibrant high street culture. He points out in Tesco’s defence, however, that online shopping, which will account for a third of all non-food purchases in a year or two, has played its part, as presumably have rampaging mobs of hoody-clad yoof.

Comment: Never mind the high streets in question were designed in the days of gaslight and horse drawn carriages, a happy state to which we will in all likelihood be returning, except for the gaslight, when non-renewable resources give up the ghost on us.

OK, it’s not Sudan Red, but Unilever has been forced to recall mugs issued to unsuspecting punters in a Knorr Cup-A-Soup “free mug” promotion on account of some of them having handles which were disposed to crack, catapulting a hot half-pint onto your keyboard or what is worse, your lap. The mugs, we are happy to report, are in the process of being destroyed, presumably by a group of junior brand managers with hammers. Or one at a time on the forehead of the AE whose brother-in-law owns the promotional merchandise company in question. OK, snark aside, this is a big deal, as Unilever have responsibly and no doubt expensively cancelled the entire promotion, in keeping with their general approach to the well-being of consumers.

Comment: That’s the way to handle a crisis … oops, sorry.

QR codes – ring a bell? It’s that pixellated square dingus that you can never get to work on your BlackBerry. Know the chap? Good. Where were we? Ah yes. Wasting a couple of lines of text. Job done. Anyway, that said, it turns out that P&G are repeating their Korean Subway Wall experiment in Chicago, with Walmart, where the happy pair have slapped QR codes onto bus shelters (now known rather more dashingly as “pop-up-shops”). Scan the code successfully, and your phone will take you to a portal of 32 limited edition SKUs, an assortment of which Walmart will deliver to your door free of charge (minimum purchase $45. Terms and conditions apply). In New York, the Big Apple as it were, they do things a little differently, with ‘@PGMobile’ trucks, also slathered in QR codes, visiting high-traffic destinations and dishing out free samples.

Comment: Comment: Gimmickry aside, when Walmart and P&G start doing this stuff, you know that there is a whole new supply chain out there, hurtling towards Gomorrah to be born.

As we write, the economists are all scratching their scaly domes and coming up with imaginative digits which will best describe the retail sales scenario for the late, lamented month of April – the real numbers for which are out later today. Estimates vary from 2.5-6.9%, with a suitably diverse set of reasons also given, but miraculously, no-one will lose their job when the truth itself is revealed. Which brings us to our next subject: after four months of solid growth, employment fell 3.1% YOY for the month of May after growing upward of 4% in April. Transport jobs fell by 12.7%, agency work by 9.1% and domestic work by 8.4%, while professional jobs grew 4.9% and management positions a pleasing if complacent 2.2%. Since the Great Repression of the year 9, 2009 permanent employment has increased by 2%, while total employment, including temporary workers – has increased by 12.2%.

Comment: A complex and always worrying picture.

The panel of experts appointed by the Competition Appeal Court to consider the cost of developing training programmes to help local suppliers participate in Walmart’s global supply chain and indirectly to put the court in a position to develop an “investment remedy” that is rational and justifiable has, you will be relieved to note, been released, but only, you will be troubled to note, to the court and the lawyers concerned. The lawyers, we are given to understand, have since formed a co-operative lettuce farm and a white-goods assembly plant.

Emboldened by his success in selling inexpensive televisions, large bags of maize meal and, eventually, shares in the entity which became Wakro, uber-entrepreneur Mark Lamberti has just listed his next concern, in a very different industry. Transaction Capital is a financial services group which specialises in credit risk, and doesn't shy away from the unsecured stuff, currently financing 22,000-odd of SA’s fleet of 220,000 taxis. We're going to be squirreling away a few of those securities, we don't mind telling you.