Pick n Pay are gearing up for their biggest Black Friday Event ever, to ensure that punters get the best possible prices on items across a variety of categories, including last year’s hot tickets: big screen TVs for the lapha, cellphones and “household products” which is something of a catchall, and is stocking up accordingly. Black Friday, you will recall, is a recent and cynical adoption of an American invention which retailers use to spread the risk of holiday sales over two months and get rid of deservedly slow-moving stock before the Christmas rush.

Comment: Although retailers typically see a doubling of sales on that enervating day, make no mistake – there is little to no margin in Black Friday. And with a trading profit of 2.2%, unless very carefully managed, should it really be on Pick n Pay’, or anyone’s, agenda right now?

Checkers are not going all-in to replace Woolies as the posher supermarket of choice. They’re too smart for that, hedging their bets and spreading their risk like the whales they are in the sprawling casino of South African retail. What they are doing, however, is launching a cheerfully packaged range of organic goodies, from all-purpose cleaner to almond milk, purple sweet potato noodles to peanut butter protein balls, running the gamut, if that’s a word, of options from vegetarian, to vegan, to gluten-free, to raw, organic, reduced sugar, and high protein, as well as eco-friendly takers on household products. The range launched this week, under the catchy name Simple Truth and is characterised by its organic, green squishy logo and the very visible benefit claims on the front of the packaging.

Comment: Excellent news, suggesting that a. there’s already a healthy market out there for this sort of stuff and b. with Checkers’ muscle behind it, this market will grow.

One of Dis-Chem’s perhaps under-appreciated assets, like that of Clicks before it, is its loyal customer base. Now we’re not just talking dear old mum and dad who love it for its wide and well-lit aisles and excellent everyday pricing on life’s little necessities. No: Dis-Chem has a solid (if stolidly-titled) Loyalty Benefits Programme, with 4.3million active members. And not only that, it has deals with (more racily-named) partner loyalty programmes like Vitality and Legacy Lifestyle, who generally spend more in stores, with an average basket of R405. It has just garnered another 22,500 happy customers through its fuel reward programme with Total, and now it’s going after the 8.2million punters on whom it has the goods in its database, gathered through everyday interactions. Its first diabolical scheme is to target these shoppers – or rather their pint-sized heartstring-tuggers – with the Micro Popz campaign. The campaign rewards punters with a surge of dopamine when they see the joy on their little ones faces on receiving figurines from a range of Disney characters.

Comment: Just no. We love the loyalty, but the great Indian Ocean garbage patch does not need more plastic.

We love a good mystery, and by jingo that’s exactly what Clover has given us this week. Their share price jumped 19% on the news that they have entered into negotiations for the acquisition of the business in its entirety by a third party. Goodness, but who? Not Tiger, surely? An appealing thought, but with the Striped One still digging itself out of the pit dug by listeriosis and its Nigerian adventure, probably not. Zeder, then, those titans of agribusiness investing? We hear that they might be keen to diversify their dependence in this sector on Pioneer. Maybe. But wait a minute … no! Nestlé? We heard that they had a quiet sit-down with Clover a couple years back, and with Danone and Parmalat already in dairy in South Africa they would surely be interested in a piece of the action.

Comment: So them, then, or some as yet unnamed private equity outfit would be our best guess.

As has been kindly pointed out to us by the hard-eyed denizens down in Research when we made the unforgiveable error of showing them our sensitive side, we will soon no longer have the comfort of ‘Mansize’ Kleenex to fall back upon in times of distress. This is because, over in the UK, consumers have complained that the name is sexist, so they will be rebranded Kleenex Extra Large, and described on the packaging as ‘confidently strong’ and ‘comfortingly soft’. Which we’ve decided to adopt as our personal manifesto from here on in.

Comment: Except when it comes to our dealings with Research. We’ll leave out the ‘comfortingly soft’ for them.

So retail trade sales grew +2.5% for the month of August, after rising +1.4% in July. The furniture and household equipment sector grew an impressive +10.4%, with pharmacy up +3.1%, with this great sector we call home (‘food, beverages and tobacco’ in StatSpeak) up +0.3% after dropping -1.9% in July. What does this mean? It means, perhaps, that we might just pull out of recession in the third quarter, assisted, as usual, by the dear old South African consumer and the retailers which serve her, despite the mining industry’s worst efforts to the contrary. In other economic news of the cautiously optimistic, Moody’s have indicated that rather than being concerned at the appointment of our fifth Minister of Finance in seven years, they’re happy that Comrade Tito will keep things on an even keel and that they’ll hold off on a possible downgrade of our growth prospects until after next year’s budget.

Comment: Can you feel it? Don’t bet against the Beloved Country, people, unless you have money to burn.

Over in the US, where twilight is rapidly falling, Sears, the business which essentially invented online retail albeit in its analogue form, hung up its scuffed and threadbare gloves and declared bankruptcy in the face of Amazon and Walmart’s tag-team assault on the bricks and mortar business model. In the UK, in the meanwhile, the competition authorities are broadening the scope of their investigation into the proposed Asda/Sainsbury’s merger to take into account the competitive effects of discounters Aldi and Lidl, and online retail. It would be a sad world indeed where scale was the single prerequisite – indeed only hope – for success.

14 million South Africans are at risk of going hungry every day, while one-third of all the food produced here ends up in a landfill. This is the sort of equation which characterises our current global economic model, and which initiatives like World Food Day are designed to highlight, if not address. To mark the event this year, Woolies have launched their One Small Spoon campaign, by which the business is bringing all of its food security programmes together under one banner to maximise their impact.