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Amazon has disrupted every market it’s ever entered and according to some analysts, South Africa is likely to be no exception when the online retailer launches here later this year. It will be particularly concerned with the market dominance of local online giant Takealot, although the omnichannel offerings of such businesses as Massmart must also be considered. Amazon’s US website is the third most visited e-commerce site in South Africa; when the business launches here it’s likely to climb a spot or two. Amazon has unparalleled capacity to deliver a vast range to shoppers: when it launched in Australia, it offered 7.5 million products; within five years this had ballooned to 200 million. The backend is also a threat: its unrivalled customer analytics and logistics setup are key to its success elsewhere, and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be true here too.

Comment: Of comfort to retailers in our sector is that Amazon has yet to provide an entirely compelling alternative to the supermarket experience.

Brand Finance is the world’s leading independent branded business valuation and strategy consultancy (their words) and each year it produces a report that attributes value to leading brands in the countries in which it operates. This year, it has calculated that six of the top ten most valuable brands in SA are retailers in our own great sector – Woolies in third, followed down the scale by Checkers, Dis-Chem, Clicks, Pick n Pay and Game. Broadly, the Brand Finance methodology determines the value of a brand by estimating the future revenue attributable to it and calculating a royalty rate that would be charged for the use of the brand – or the amount a business would be willing to pay to license its brand as if it did not own it. The results indicate that South Africans place disproportionate trust in the retail sector. No surprises, the Shoprite Group came in strong this year, with Checkers adding +14% to its brand value for a valuation of almost a billion rand, and Usave and OK Furniture coming through as the fastest-growing South African brands in 2024, at +54% and +43% growth, respectively.

Comment: A useful if not entirely convincing indicator. It’s surprising to see precisely zero food or beverage brands in the top ten.

Big up to Game (South Africa’s Tenth Most Valuable Brand, see above) for the launch of an affordable range of sanitary pads. Great Value sanitary pads will retail at R7.99 for a pack of 8 and are aimed at the seven million girls and women who are unable to attend school, university or work every month in South Africa due to period poverty. Related, excellent work from Engen, whose Engen Maths & Science School (EMSS) programme empowers underprivileged Grade 10-12 learners at its 10 centres across the Beloved Country. Every year the EMSS offers over 1,500 learners vital supplementary tuition; the Matric Class of 2023 achieved a 77% bachelor pass rate, a +5% increase on 2022, and way higher than the national average bachelor rate of 41%. Next, which retail share offers the best value? If you’re FNB portfolio manager Wayne “Wayno” McCurrie, it’s SPAR, hands down, emerging from a tumultuous period with what seems like a solid plan, and currently trading at 50% its value from three years ago. But, says Wayno, it needs to avoid a rights issue to settle its debt and should expedite its retreat from Poland.

Comment: Speaking of Engen, anyone interested in Forecourt Convenience Retail should look out for our excellent report on the channel, coming soon.

Good news if you’ve bought any “weighted” meat, poultry, pork and seafood products or bagged citrus from Walmart in the last five years: you could be eligible for a payout of up to $500 if you can show receipts, as they’ve recently settled a $45m class action lawsuit for artificially (but it seems unintentionally) inflating the weight of such goods when sold on their “Rollback” discount. Moving on, but still in the US, Aldi has retrofitted a first store, in the Chicago area, to offer checkout-free service, as a prelude to rollout across its network. The tech uses computer vision to identify and keep track of every item in the store, allowing shoppers to exit the store without waiting in line or scanning items. This just a week after Amazon announced that it would be abandoning this approach in its existing US stores.

Comment: Amazon’s one thing. But when a canny and successful grocery retailer like Aldi gives it a go, we’ll probably all be doing it within five years.

Enjoying its new home this week is Black Cat Peanut Butter after a R300m capital investment by parent company Tiger Brands in a new peanut butter manufacturing facility in Chamdor, Krugersdorp – one of the largest investments the Striped One has ever made in a single project. “This new facility will introduce flexibility, improved efficiencies and reduce our cost profile, allowing us to retain our prominent position in the market and respond to consumer needs,” explains Tiger CEO Tjaart Kruger. Investments in state-of-the-art equipment at the manufacturing site will improve reliability and efficiencies, and packaging line upgrades will bring greater in-house flexibility for quicker innovations and new product offerings. Black Cat is almost 100 years old and is to be found in seven out of ten South African households. Despite its advanced years, it was voted Coolest Peanut Butter Brand by South Africa’s youth in the 2023 Sunday Times GenNext Awards and awarded Iconic Brand status in a 2023/2024 AskAfrika survey.

Comment: As we find ourselves increasingly arguing, age does not prevent one from being either cool or relevant.

Nice brand refresh from Pepsi, which has introduced electric blue and black to its logo to and, we quote, “bring contrast, vibrancy, and a contemporary edge to the classic Pepsi colour scheme.” It has also introduced a modern, customisable typeface that “reflects the brand’s confidence and unapologetic mindset.” Related: in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Australia, and the USA, Coca-Cola is promoting unauthorised street paintings of its previously sacrosanct logo, in a new campaign they’re calling Every Coca-Cola is welcome. One of the first placements is in New York’s Times Square. Moving on, Tongaat Hulett can’t catch a break: repair business Powertrans, to which Tongaat owes around R2m, has approached the High Court to have the business rescue plan for Tongaat set aside, arguing that the plan could lead to the collapse of the embattled sugar giant’s business.

Comment: Exciting stuff from Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Brand refreshes and extensions are equal parts science and magic, and always fun.

Great news: GDP growth this year is expected to completely storm through at 1.8%... what’s that? Ah. Adjusted for load shedding, GDP growth is expected to trickle in at a barely-there 1.2%. On the upside, the exchange rate has ticked up slightly, to R18.87/$ for the month of March after three straight months of decline. CPI is trucking along at 5.6%, keeping within the Reserve Bank’s targeted band for nine straight months. Unemployment: still a shocker at 32.1% for the fourth quarter in 2023, or 41.1% if you include discouraged work-seekers. Amid all of this, consumer confidence, which has been in deficit for the past four and a half years, is marginally up for the first quarter, to -15. Finally, where the pedal hits the metal for us as a sector, retail trade sales were down -2.1% YoY for January after increasing +3.2% in December. Food specialists fell -1.1%.

Comment: How do we know all this? Because we read the Trade Intelligence South African Economic Report, sillies, the most comprehensive there is out there, with a handy summary available here.