(Sigh.) The garment industry. We of the consumer goods sector have long preferred not to sully our thoughts with this trade, beset as it is with sweatshops, cancelled orders, and middle-aged men in skinny jeans. But it seems as if our major retailers are going all in on clothing, so we have no choice but to follow. Take Pick n Pay Clothing, for example, which is keen in the face of Shoprite’s UNIQ launch to double its footprint to 650+ over the next five to eight years. But competition for good sites is stiff, and the brand faces additional headwinds like the arrival of fast-fashion demogorgon Shein on these shores. To cut lead times and do the right thing by the economy, Pick n Pay is hoping to source as much as 60% of clothing from local producers. The business has recently become the first clothing retailer to be awarded a 4-Star Green Star Interiors v1 rating by the Green Building Council of SA, for their efforts in building with recycled materials, and their efficient use of lighting and water.

Comment: Actually some pretty cool stuff in this sector. But you’re not getting us back in those skinnies.

Some side-mission work from Checkers this week which has rebranded its Checkers Food Services (CFS) to Red Star Wholesale Catering Services and is expanding its network from Gauteng and the Western Cape into KwaZulu-Natal. Red Star Wholesale has a range of more than 8,000 quality products and has launched a new e-commerce ordering platform to reach thousands of hospitality and catering businesses. It provides free delivery on orders over R1,000 and delivers six days a week – Monday to Saturday – in a fleet of refrigerated vehicles. For suppliers interested in this opportunity, Red Star Wholesale provides clients with fresh produce, cleaning and packaging materials, meat, frozen foods, groceries, beverages including liquor and wine, and chilled perishables, including over 400 cheeses. There is also an exclusive CaterClassic range of more than 100 products, including meat, condiments, tinned food, dried fruit and nuts.

Comment: For a business with the goods, the DCs and the trucks, food services are a no-brainer.

A fresh new campaign from Woolies, which is making bold strides in the area of beauty. ‘Beauty is You’ will use a variety of platforms, leaning hard on social media, to spark conversation and share the stories about beauty inspired by South Africa’s cultural heritage, unique points of view and personal experiences. A more inclusive beauty story, then, for a wider audience. Smart. Speaking of, Shoprite is offering those SASSA grant beneficiaries with gold cards expiring in the next few months the opportunity to switch their payments, free of charge, to a Shoprite Money Market account. They’ll also get up to R100 in Shoprite vouchers when their first grant of R800 or more is paid into the account. Finally, in the battle for share of the couch-potato wallet, there’s a surprising contender. In a recent survey, MyBroadband found that same-day delivery service Zulzi beat all comers, including Checkers Sixty60, Pick n Pay asap!, and Woolies Dash on price over a six-item basket. No mean feat, and an important differentiator in these difficult times, although the composition of the basket is a bit of a mishmash – milk, bread, potato chips, premium instant coffee and 4 litres of soft drink.

Comment: While home delivery is nascent, it’s already a crowded and competitive sector.

Did Tesco copy the Lidl logo for their Clubcard loyalty programme promotions? A judge in the UK High Court seems to think so, ruling that Tesco had “taken unfair advantage of the distinctive reputation” for low prices held by Lidl’s trademarks, by putting their promotional offers into a similarly shaped yellow circle to the one in the Lidl logo. Seems a little specious to us, but you be the judge. Have a look here. To Germany now, where Israeli supplier of infrastructure for autonomous checkout and retail analytics Trigo has teamed up with German grocery giant REWE Group to open Germany’s largest hybrid-autonomous supermarket. Customers will have the option to shop and pay for their purchases in a traditional way or autonomously without checkout. Finally, to India, where some consolidation might be on the offing as grocery giant Reliance – the largest chain on the subcontinent – joins 48 other bidders for the acquisition of ailing chain Future Retail. All this in the week that India surpasses China as the world most populous country.

Comment: The formalisation of Indian grocery is likely to be a big story in the next couple of decades.

Investing heavily in the Beloved Country this week is SAB, which has announced that it will be investing R5.8bn here this year, R2.4bn of that in new projects. For example, they will be spending a cool half a billion plus on the expansion of the Ibhayi Brewery, which will create, they reckon, upwards of 14,000 jobs across the value chain. SAB had, you may recall, cancelled R5bn in investments over the COVID lockdowns. “Our commitment to invest a further R5.8bn and our support of the conference demonstrates our belief that the ongoing work with government is creating a conducive operating environment that allows for investments and facilitates the future growth of businesses,” says CEO Richard Rivett-Carnac. “We are positive about the future of the country and are making further investments because of the potential in SA.”

Comment: Music to our ears, which have grown unused to the sound in recent months.

Fred Hume, MD of frozen food importer Hume International, claims that we’re facing a shortage of French fries as a result of a local shortage of the right varieties for fries, and load shedding. Willie Jacobs, CEO of Potatoes SA, says that there is no shortage despite some crop damage from tuber moths. We’ll do a bit of digging and get back to you on this one. Something there is definitely a shortage of, however is mushrooms – SA has only 18 mushroom farms; two have closed and Denny’s factory in Durban was destroyed by fire last year. Denny estimates volumes are down by -20%, or 75 tons per week across the industry. Finally, National Brands has advanced to the Supreme Court of Appeal its case against Cape Cookies, hoping to win its appeal against the latter registering its (quite honestly a bit clunky) Snackcrax trademark, which National Brands argues is suspiciously similar to its Salticrax, Vitasnack and Snacktime brands.

Comment: So far, no one has claimed ownership of the circle. They’d make billions.

Last week, the governor of the dear old Reserve Bank attended the jamboree of canapes and high finance that is the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in blossom-bedecked Washington DC, where he insisted that the Reserve Bank is free to pursue its own course without following the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hiking tendencies. Although what it will probably do is hike the interest rate again, to target the lower reaches of our 3-6% inflation band. In not unrelated news, the ZAR, bless it, has weakened -7.6% against the dollar this year, the worst performer in a basket of 16 major currencies followed by Bloomberg. And finally (we buried the lede a bit here) the BankservAfrica Economic Transactions Index has dropped -1.7% for the second quarter in a row, an early indicator that we may be in recession – thank you load shedding, inflation, and the rate hike meant to fix it.

Comment: This ball of fiscal string reminds us uncannily of the conditions we were reporting on post the 2008 mini-crash.