Guarding our retail space

This includes mainstream brands in fashion, homeware and furniture in the UK, not niche and various French, Spanish and American brands looking for a gap to pounce and take their share of this market.

Past South African practices were to send buyers overseas to shows as well as international stores to get a good feel of the trends and key products. Samples were bought and nine times out of ten, these were sent to local and international manufacturers to replicate. We have got away with this for so many years as the companies we were following did not have a presence in the South African market. There was no real infringement of copyright and no real concern from international stores, in most cases they were quite oblivious to this practice.

In all fairness, the merchandise structure in most South African companies consists of buyers and planners and the R&D was a process that happened between the buyers and manufacturers. The missing link in this system and of extreme importance going forward will be the inclusion of fully fledged design departments within these structures. This has started happening within larger groups in South Africa, and the rewards of such have been highly profitable even if done in specific areas and on a relatively small scale.

The paradigm shift for local retailers should be about creating a unique identity that still pleases the masses yet could have a viable grounding in international markets. There is a major focus currently on South Africa from international businesses that see great opportunity here and want and will take meaningful market share unless we up our game.

There is no place for middle to upper market stores looking the same and selling identical items, yet challenging each other on price and discounts. If we continue like this, before we wipe our eyes, a new entry into the market, with fresh products and appeal has captured the hearts of the South African consumer.

If we continue to run these businesses by purely looking at sales history figures, we will still be stuck with brown, green and orange and make the entry of foreign companies increasingly easy.