during an interview with Mia Spies<\/a> at the Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPick n Pay experienced a challenging time for many years and lost significant market share against Shoprite since 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The situation reached critical levels after Pick n Pay became technically insolvent, and Sean Summers was asked to return as chief executive to fix the retailer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Summers launched a successful capital raise through a rights offer and listing Boxer to strengthen Pick n Pay\u2019s balance sheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These interventions, along with Summer\u2019s leadership, have helped Pick n Pay slowly improve its financial situation and operational challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Basson was asked why Pick n Pay was struggling nowadays, he said the company was doing better than many people think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPick n Pay is not struggling that much. Many things they set out to do, they achieved, and they are doing fine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Basson highlighted that Pick n Pay had significantly fallen behind Shoprite caused by social issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He explained that Pick n Pay founder, Raymond Ackerman, who was the driving force behind the company\u2019s success, started to step back as he got older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Pick n Pay was essentially a family business, it was difficult for talented employees to make it to the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another problem was that Pick n Pay focused on things which were not linked to the health of the business, like global warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was so much emphasis at Pick n Pay about non-business-related issues that it caused problems,\u201d Basson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor example, when there was a problem with the tomatoes in stores, it took a back seat to superficial issues like global warming. This is where they went wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, despite the challenges Pick n Pay faced for 15 years, the company still has excellent assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese assets include great stores and locations, better than Shoprite, and can be turned around easily,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that Pick n Pay is now doing relatively well and will continue to do better than they did over the last decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basson revealed that during Pick n Pay\u2019s struggles, he was approached by the banks to take a stake in the company and fix it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, he declined. \u201cI still have many friends in Shoprite and do not want to be seen as their competitor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was not willing to create a strategy for Pick n Pay, which I know the guys at Shoprite will struggle to compete against.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Shoprite chief executive Whitey Basson said Pick n Pay is doing better than many people expect despite making mistakes in the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":787721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[4067,4661,19960,7520,20403],"class_list":["post-840126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-pick-n-pay","tag-raymond-ackerman","tag-sean-summers","tag-shoprite","tag-whitey-basson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840126","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=840126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840158,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840126\/revisions\/840158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}