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Meeting a very low bar, Clicks has had a marginally better week these past seven days. After the own goal of the TRESemmé ad, the druggist has bypassed the functionaries and the EFF, meeting with Small Business Development Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni to thrash out what proper contrition looks like. Turns out, it’s putting your money where your mouth is, by increasing spending on small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs), particularly those specialising in local hair and beauty care. Clicks’ preferential procurement spend currently stands at 50.2% and spending with local suppliers in 2019 came to R26.7bn. However, the Minister pointed out that this included established and not fully empowered companies and has committed her department to helping Clicks to build a more inclusive model by focusing on SMMEs owned by blacks, women, the youth and people with disabilities.

Comment: Good steps.

Shoprite were a relative latecomer to online shopping – they beta-tested their Sixty60 platform in March of the year 2020 – but are pretty stoked with progress to date: from eight pilot stores they’ve expanded to 87 and have no intention of stopping there. CEO Peter Engelbrecht attributes this success to the mobile emphasis of their offering, pointing out correctly that traditional online grocery shopping requires eight clicks to get to the precise SKU you want before hitting buy. Pick n Pay, in the meantime, seems to be cementing its position as SA’s biggest online grocery retailer: having launched its association with booze-delivery outfit Bottles pre-COVID, it repurposed the service for the delivery of essential foods when prohibition began, achieving this in three days, which was a touch quicker than it took them to get onto centralised distribution.

Comment: Online remains the new frontier for grocery retail in the Beloved Country, and arguably might allow some scope for the consolidation of our great sector to relax a little as smaller players in niche markets achieve scale.

In Dublin, Tesco has partnered with Manna in a, ahem, pilot programme to deliver groceries via drone, and the retailer is looking at a UK rollout in the not-so distant but still gleaming future, where your food will indeed be delivered by flying robots. Over the pond, Walmart is trailing a service of its own, in partnership with Flytrex, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with cloud-controlled drones picking up and dropping off select items. In other Tesco news, the retailer has been named as South African Stone Fruit Retailer of the Year by industry body Hortgro, in recognition of its strong performance and promotional support. Back to the laughably-named United States of America, where German discounter Aldi has announced that it is joining the U.S. Plastics Pact, a collaborative, solutions-driven initiative aimed at creating a path towards a circular economy for plastics in the United States by 2025.

Comment: Truly, we live in an age of marvels. And also tasty deciduous fruit.

In further fallout from the TRESemmé ad, Unilever, after what we can assume was a tense meeting with members of the EFF, have taken steps to atone for their role in the debacle. “We were shocked to discover that we had supplied images for the Clicks website that portrayed black hair as inferior,” the business said in a statement. “This was racist, and we apologise unreservedly.” Measures include setting up a new Diversity and Inclusion Assets Committee to ensure future advertising campaigns and publicity materials reflect its values; establishing an Advisory Board to review how its haircare products can be communicated more positively; developing programmes to support black hair stylists and small professional salons; and reviewing its Diversity and Inclusion training, and accelerating training on Unconscious Bias for all staff.

Comment: A horrible mess for all concerned. But as Unilever, Clicks, and indeed South Africa have shown, something good may be made of the hurt and the anger.

A bit of a shakeup among our colleagues of a piscatorial bent: The stern men and women of the Competition Commission have given Pioneer Fishing the go ahead to acquire the Glenryck pilchards brand from founding owners Bidvest. They add the brand to Sea Pride, which they already own, giving them substantial clout to go up against SA’s leading pilchard brand, Lucky Star, owned by the Oceana Group. Pioneer are planning on bringing other products under the brand, including omega-high variants, white fish, and fish spices, launching these sometime in 2021. Sea Pride has not gained much traction among retailers, being sold mainly to wholesalers, institutions and school feeding schemes. The acquisition will also give Pioneer a stronger position in the endless tussle over fishing rights.

Comment: Sounds like a power move. Interesting to see how it plays out.

So it seems that the Reserve Bank might just hold off on dropping the prime rate of interest, a move it believes might not do too much anyway to alleviate the pain of the position our economy finds itself this week. It may wait until the final meeting of the year in November before easing it back a notch from its current 3.5%. Or not. At the time of writing, the consensus among economists (that can’t be right. Ed) was that the worthies of the Bank would trim it down by just a quarter of a percent, to 3.25%. The likelihood of an increase in inflation, currently wafting around at the lower end of the targeted spectrum, driven by an increase in the fuel price, might see a more conservative approach. The beauty is, by the time you read this, you’ll know. And so will we.

Comment: Macroeconomics, eh. Can’t live without ‘em, can’t eat ‘em either.