Back in the day, it was said of retailers who demanded immediate payment from their shoppers while keeping their suppliers on the leash for three months and more, that they were no better than common banks, living off the interest of the cash they were sitting on. Shoprite, said the wise, was in fact a property developer too, but that’s a story for another day. Now, as it happens, some of the retailers actually are banks, and, it turns out, quite good ones. Take Shoprite for example, whose Money Market Account has recently become South Africa’s lowest-cost bank account, with a R5 flat fee for cash withdrawals, and every other transaction totally free, and with no monthly charges – an offer unmatched by any other South African bank. And the account is, make no mistake, a fully-fledged, transactional bank account, allowing salaries and wages to be paid into it and with almost two million banked and otherwise unbanked customers signed up since it launched in 2020.

Comment: Vertical integration of the financial supply chain? Or just giving the shoppers what they want?

Cosmetics – had you noticed? – are having something of a moment, with every other TikTok seemingly a tutorial on how to glow up your face, and retailer brands like Sephora and Glossier taking over high streets and malls all over the world. A good time, then for Clicks to once again reclaim its crown as Coolest Specialist Health, Beauty and Accessory Store in the annual Sunday Times Generation Next Awards, which focus on the country’s ‘youth’ between the ages of 8 and 30. “A clear brand identity and positioning is particularly important when marketing to the youth,” says Dr Melanie van Rooy, Head of Marketing at Clicks. “Value is also incredibly important to this income-sensitive segment, as is personalisation and differentiation.” Clicks interacts with the youth market in a number of ways, including by engaging health, beauty and wellness influencers across Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Spotify.

Comment: An enviable segment, and a solid investment in the future of the brand.

Woolies has taken another step forward on its Good Business journey with the opening of a new PET Wash Plant in Cape Town – not, as you may imagine, a grooming facility for your furbabies, but a means by which an additional thousand of the retailer’s food packaging items can now be recycled. “As part of our vision to have ZERO packaging waste to landfill, we are designing our packaging for circularity,” says Woolworths Foods Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer Latiefa Behardien. “An example of which is our switch to an ‘easy wash off’ glue which ensures that the glue from the packaging’s label washes off entirely in the recycling washing process.” Moving on, Massmart’s private label frozen foods ‘M’ brand has enjoyed growth of over +30% in Makro stores between January and June this year and is looking to aggressive expansion in both lines and sales. “There is no doubt that perceptions around private brands continue to shift in South Africa, as the quality of these products improves, and consumer budgets become increasingly constrained,” says Group Private Brand VP Clyde Hill.

Comment: COVID and our recent economic travails have removed any obstacles of perception there might once have been to the rise of private brands.

Those numbers re. online retail in the Netherlands, about which you were so anxiously enquiring: turns out that 54% of Dutch punters prefer Albert Heijn for their online grocery needs, according to Deloitte (over there they call it De Lotje), while 41% shop at specialist app-only retailer Picnic, and 34% choose Jumbo, which they pronounce (Stop it. Ed). The bad news for all of these worthies is that online as a percentage of the overall grocery market has declined to 11.4% this year, down from 12.6%. Across the grey and stormy North Sea, Britain’s John Lewis Partnership reported a loss of £92m in the six months through July, with grocery asset Waitrose dropping sales -5% to £3.6bn pounds for the period. John Lewis attributes the losses to higher costs not being fully picked up by punters, sliding demand, and the unravelling of pandemic shopping patterns. And in Portugal, some of the big chains have proven themselves unable to keep their fingers out of the till, competition-wise: the competition authorities have just slapped Auchan, Modelo Continente and Pingo Doce, as well as their joint supplier of alcoholic beverages, Active Brands/Gestvinus, with a €5.6m fine for price fixing. “Nothing will stop Pingo Doce from continuing to offer the Portuguese the greatest discounts and the best price and promotion opportunities, as it has always done,” thundered one of the defendants.

Comment: Chilling news from the UK, where right now the chill is not in short supply.

A handsome set of interims for Libstar, which has the dubious distinction of being the JSE’s most reasonably priced food business. Total Group revenue for the six months through June increased by +9.6% to R5.2bn, with operating profit up a pleasing +10.1% to R346.8m, as the business cracked down on its operating expenses which increased at a sub-inflationary +4.8%. Libstar, which brings to market such brands as Denny Mushrooms and Lancewood Cheese, does warn that inflationary pressures will continue to bear on the business in the second half, as will challenges resulting from port mismanagement. “Our product base is quite diverse – and consists of both branded and private label products, so we can offer them at different price points,” explains CFO Charl de Villiers, who will take over the reins when CEO Andries Van Rensburg retires at the end of the year. “We are well positioned for satisfactory results.”

Comment: The resilience of our food sector – particularly after the year we’ve had – continues to amaze.

PepsiCo, in partnership with solar heating specialists Absolicon, are exploring the feasibility of integrating solar heat in food and beverage processing at three plants in South Africa, in keeping with PepsiCo’s ambition to use resources more efficiently and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of the value chain. Absolicon’s tech has an operational temperature of up to 160°C heat and 8 bars of steam pressure, in line with the thermal energy demands of PepsiCo’s processing. In other news of the sustainable, local start-up Curbon will make carbon-neutral online shopping possible through the launch of the country’s very first plugin created to help fight climate change. Using data from the world’s leading climate science institutions, the start-up’s flagship product estimates the emissions of customers’ carts at checkout and empowers shoppers to neutralise the carbon footprint of their purchases on e-commerce stores in real-time, on platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magneto.

Comment: Two big potential leaps forward, in a sector that is starting to grow exponentially.

Retail Trade Sales figures were out last week, and according to the hoary sages of StatsSA, we’re going gangbusters, with sales up +8.6% in the year to July. But hold your horses there: this number is annual and reflects the fallout from last year’s deadly outbreak of civil unrest and the lingering effects of COVID. Month on month, growth was essentially flat, with sales declining -0.1% from Jun, and in fact fell -1.3% for the quarter. One of the culprits here was the increase in fuel prices, which saw already-strapped South Africans have even less left over to spend in our stores. That said, our own great sector, Retailers in food, beverages and tobacco in specialised stores, saw sales growth of +28,.5% for the year – a not insignificant number, but again off an extremely low annual base. In other economic news, inflation came in at 7.6% YoY for the month of August, down 0.2 percentage points from July, but still well beyond the targeted band of 3 – 6%.

Comment: Numbers not entirely tethered to our current economic reality. A key message could be, avoid anything that might upset our rickety economic applecart.