{"id":834602,"date":"2025-08-11T16:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=834602"},"modified":"2025-08-11T16:47:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:47:16","slug":"one-of-south-africas-biggest-retailers-buying-hundreds-more-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/834602\/one-of-south-africas-biggest-retailers-buying-hundreds-more-stores\/","title":{"rendered":"One of South Africa&#8217;s biggest retailers buying hundreds more stores"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Competition Commission has recommended that the Competition Tribunal approve retail giant Pepkor&#8217;s acquisition of hundreds of retail stores in South Africa, including Legit, Swagga, Style and Boardmans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The brands are all under Retailablity, which is a privately owned retail group that offers affordable apparel and lifestyle products across several retail brands in South Africa, including Edgars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The businesses to be acquired operate 462 stores across South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Eswatini.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the Edgars, Edgars Beauty, Red Square, Kelso and Keedo businesses are not included in the transaction and will continue to be operated by Retailability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the commission, Pepkor Holdings has four operating segments, but only two are relevant to the proposed transaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These are the clothing and general merchandise segments, including all clothing, footwear and homeware (CFH) retail brands under Pepkor Speciality and the furniture, appliances and electronics segment under Pepkor Lifestyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Target Businesses\u2019 activities in South Africa are as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Legit sells ladies\u2019 fashion\/apparel and various beauty products. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Swagga consists of Swagga\/Beaver Canoe stores that sell apparel for men and boys. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Style sells men\u2019s and women\u2019s contemporary and formal fashion wear, as well as kids\u2019 clothing and cellular products. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Boardmans consists of an online-only store selling appliances and homeware products.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The commission said the proposed transaction is unlikely to substantially lessen or prevent competition in any market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, to address public interest concerns, Pepkor will employ the employees on terms and conditions that are no less favourable than the current employment terms and conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, the retail brands won&#8217;t retrench any employees because of the merger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lastly, Pepkor has also undertaken to maintain or increase the proportion of local procurement from small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and providers that are owned by historically disadvantaged persons (HDPs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Scaling up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Legit-store.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Legit-store-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-834607\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Legit-store-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Legit-store-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Legit-store-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Legit-store.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The acquisitions align with Pepkor&#8217;s strategy to scale up its operations in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The group is already the largest clothing retailer in the country. It operates over 5,800 stores across 10 African countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The acquired businesses will be incorporated into the Pepkor Speciality business unit, which already houses Tekkie Town, Shoe City, Dunns, Refinery, CODE, SPCC and Ayana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pepkor\u2019s Speciality total store base has 941 stores across South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Eswatini.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier this year, the group said the transaction will add scale to Pepkor Speciality and expand its product offering in the adult market, especially in womenswear through the Legit brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe acquisition of Swagga and Style has strong synergistic benefits, expanding the group\u2019s store<br>portfolio and providing the opportunity to further grow the group\u2019s share in the adult wear market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Boardmans online brand, which operates in the homeware product segment, will become part of the Pepkor Lifestyle business,\u201d said the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was previously noted that the total purchase consideration payable on the closing of the sale will represent less than 2% of Pepkor\u2019s R96 billion market cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The purchase consideration will be settled in cash, it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Competition Commission has given a thumbs up for Pepkor to acquire hundreds of retail stores in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":834608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[4076,18135],"class_list":["post-834602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-pepkor","tag-retailability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834609,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834602\/revisions\/834609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}