Stocktake: Store revamps and relaunches

New and revamped stores are in the retail headlines this week, with Shoprite reopening in Jabulani Soweto after the riots; TFG revamping Sportscene Canal Walk to ‘own’ street culture; and a new online liquor offering called, simply, Liquor.co.za.

Sportscene revamps Canal Walk superstore

TFG has opened the renovated Sportscene store at Canal Walk. The store had been undergoing major changes over the past few months. The street wear retailer has increased its floor space in the revamped store and aims to be a creative cultural hub in the city. Taking on a similar design to their superstore in the Sandton City mall, the Canal Walk store now feature’s a sneaker laundry by Walk Fresh; tattoo and piercings parlour by Black & White Tattoos; MOMO Bubble Tea from Taiwan; and a wider range of sneakers and apparel brands. Keeping in line with their passion to create opportunities for young artists, the upgraded store now includes its very own Sportscene Studio for musicians to book a free session online and go record their music. This feature proved to be a hit in Johannesburg, with both established and upcoming artists frequenting the facility to create their work. Sportscene’s senior marketing coordinator Bianca Kensley said, “Our experiential store encompasses music, art and sneaker culture. It’s part of [our] vision to be enablers in a country with so much talent. The Sportscene Studio is a creator hub which gives artists, DJs and the creatives of Cape Town an opportunity and platform to create music and playlist them on Sportscene Radio across 300 stores, the blog and our Mobi App.”

New digital liquor store launches

Liquor.co.za has gone live, offering both direct-to-customer (D2C) and high-volume business-to-business (B2B) requirements. It forms part of the Cascade Holdings stable bringing together players in the hospitality and entertainment industry: Adam Chaskalson, Tyrone Lasarow, Shaun Duwe and Allen Jaffe. Chaskalson and Lasarow previously owned the largest mobile bar company in Cape Town and have experience on the product-development and logistics side; while Shaun Duwe understands how the South African alcohol and entertainment landscape fits together. Jaffe and his team at eComplete bring the technological expertise in the ecommerce field. “We have gone with a mobile first approach,” explained Jaffe. In addition to its customer-centric approach, Liquor.co.za will offer the best deals on a vast range of liquor products, from the most popular, to the premium and those crafted, seldom-seen brands. “Liquor.co.za is not driven by traditional liquor retailers trying to do ecommerce for the first time; and it’s also not being run by digital specialists just making a go at the liquor market with no skin in the game,” Shaun Duwe added. “It is a wholly online-only offering for the local liquor market, run by professionals with pedigree in the liquor trade as well as the digital landscape. Essentially tech is one part of the puzzle, but that supply, merchandising and customer support are all crucial too.”

Shoprite re-opens Soweto’s Jabulani store

Shoprite Jabulani in Soweto has reopened its doors after it closed temporarily following the recent unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. Two Usave eKasi trucks were deployed to Jabulani to enable community members to purchase basic food items and other necessities while the Shoprite Group worked around the clock to restock and rebuild affected stores, including Shoprite Jabulani. In celebration of the store’s re-opening, Shoprite made a donation to community organisation Shout SA, which assisted with cleaning up around the Jabulani Mall. The Shoprite Group has distributed thousands of food hampers following the unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, which has left many people destitute. It has also made an initial R1 million donation to its Act For Change Fund, for use by vetted organisations involved in relief efforts to help communities rebuild.

This week in numbers

US$625 million

Top African regions are set to become leading startup and investment hubs. On the back of Cape Town being recognised as the tech capital of Africa, topping international rankings for foreign direct investment strategy, several other African cities are quickly emerging as leading startup and investment hubs to watch. “Startups in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa raised a total of US$625 million last year. Of those, Kenyan startups raised US$191 million, the most of any other African country.” HAVAÍC sees Southern Africa, dominated by South Africa; Anglophone West Africa, led by Nigeria; Francophone West Africa, dominated by Cote d’Ivore and Senegal; East Africa led by Kenya; and North Africa dominated by Egypt, as key African geographies to pay close attention to. Each are quite different, with some of them tackling more regional challenges and others offering globally scalable solutions,” notes Ian Lessem, managing partner at HAVAÍC, investors in early-stage, high-growth technology businesses.

QUOTE of the week:

“The middle class, the taxpayers in SA, were more resilient during lockdown than people thought they would be. That is a good news story. That top 30% has been super resilient. According to the quarterly labour force survey, we lost about 3 million jobs under lockdown, but we have 2.4 million of them back in the formal sector,” says Brandon De Kock, BrandMapp director of storytelling, on Retailing Africa this past week.

Main image credit: Sportscene store by @gidion_felix.

*Stocktake is a weekly roundup of current FMCG retailing and brand news, curated and edited by Retailing Africa Publisher & Editor, Louise Burgers. Keep the industry updated and send your announcements and news to: news@retailingafrica.com.

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