While back home Woolies has done very nicely from food, thank you very much, abroad their focus seems to be shifting to apparel. With their various acquisitions in the blasted Antipodes (the latest of which, David Jones, has just been given the nod by our very own Reserve Bank) their boldly-stated intention is to take on the likes of H&M and Zara, neither of which are known for locally-sourced kale, if you know what we mean. Case in point: their recent investment in a merchant academy to train buyers and designers, whose task it will be to cut lead times and turn Woolies into a quick-response fast-fashion outfit, whose bright young things will troll the world’s capitals with their smartphones and copy everything in sight.

Comment: Woolies has always been a classy outfit whose vaulting ambition may not have been as apparent in the past as it suddenly is…

If you’re the governor of Imo State, southern Nigeria, the opening of a Shoprite in your provincial capital is a very big deal indeed. Chief Rochas Okorocha, who currently occupies that position, is well chuffed with the imminent arrival of the Big Red One, anyway, punting it as the beginning of great things for the state capital Owerri and its people. Reading between the lines, Imo is a heck of a place, blessed with an abundance of natural resources including oil; cursed with too many people and not enough malls. But with the breaking of the ground for the Owerri Shopping Complex, site of Shoprite’s second store in the south-south region, something at last is coming right.

Comment: With foreign direct investment in Nigeria growing at 20% per annum, the Owerrians and their governor have cause for excitement.

Three of South Africa’s most reputable businesses are retailers, and the other two are, respectively, a bank and a phone company. Dapper upmarket retailer Woolworths headed the Reputation Institute’s (RI) National RepTrak Pulse Survey, generally considered to be the most reliable measure of this ephemeral quality, with SPAR in third and Pick n Pay in fourth. SPAR replace Shoprite in the rankings – the Big Red one dropped to a disappointing 9th this year. According to the institute, Woolies topped the tables on every measure: leadership, citizenship, governance, workplace, innovation, products/services, and performance. The institute believes that this success is due in no small measure to Woolworths’ well-established habit of engaging with all of its stakeholders – including customers and staff – not merely its shareholders.

Comment: Excellent work, that immaculately-turned out business.

Feisty spud-chipper McCain, along with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), has won a signal victory against the Dutch, whose previous venture on these shores didn’t turn out at all well for the locals. Dutch frozen potato chips importer Farm Frites International has just had an attempt overturned to have the International Trade Administration Commission (Itac) prevented from imposing a residual dumping margin on the business, thus effectively removing it as a competitor from this market. Itac had concluded a dumping investigation against Farm Frites and other exporters from Belgium and the Netherlands, and imposed a margin of 26% on them. This after the imposition last year of a provisional safeguard duty of 61.42% on imported fries, a measure used by the DTI to prevent unforeseen surges of imports.

Comment: A complex matter no doubt. But nice in these straitened times to have Big Brother on the side of local business.

We tire of hearing how Africa is not for cissies. But apparently big fearsome jungle cats don’t have an easy time over there, either: Tiger Brands has unfortunately had to write off half the value of its Nigerian acquisition, Dangote Flour Mills, after just two years of trading there. Tiger, you will recall, bought 63.5% of Dangote Industries in 2012 for about $190million. In their latest trading update, the Men in Stripes kicked their toes in the dust and gazing at the patterns they’d made there, muttered that they would be impairing the value of the business to the tune of R849million due to “underperformance” and “excess milling capacity that continues to increase in the Nigerian flour market.”

Comment: A shame, as in other Tiger-related news the business is achieving some success “in implementing key strategic initiatives aimed at regaining market shares and further strengthening its core brands.”

Retail sales growth has dropped to a six-month low, increasing only 1% for the month of March YOY, the hoary sages over at StatsSA tell us. This, say the economists, inclines us to believe that economic growth has “moderated” somewhat, although how something that was not moderate to begin with can moderate further they decline to explain. Practically, it means that the dear old economy is going to have to get its A into G for the next three quarters if 2014 predicted 2.7% GDP growth has a hope of materialising. But back to retail sales: the month on month picture is worse: a decline of 1.4% from February, in which month sales declined 0.3% from January. Rising inflation, higher borrowing costs, elevated debt levels, reduced buying power, and blah blah.

Comment: Where is the leadership? Where are the speeches saying: here’s a situation, this is what we plan on doing about it?

Meanwhile, over in the US, Walmart’s first quarter sales are coming in a touch on the lean side, prompting the Big Feller to announce plans to up its CAPEX by $600million, much of which will be spent on an accelerated rollout of its Neighbourhood Market and Express formats, which are outperforming the Supercentres significantly, as food stamp cuts to the poor and availability issues take their toll.

Fans of the smooth dark stuff will be enchanted to learn that Swiss Chocolateur Lindt, they of the gleaming gold bunny, will be adding their Hello “lifestyle” chocolate range to those already here, which as you guiltily know already include Lindor and Excellence, you wicked, wicked things.