It is easy to forget that Pick n Pay sells clothes as well as groceries. Its clothing business is also doing considerably better than the rest of South Africa's clothing market. In the six months to August, Pick n Pay Clothing grew sales in its standalone stores by 3.9%, against just 0.3% for the rest of the market, according to the industry figures it cites. Over two years it has grown at roughly three times the market's pace.
That is strong company to be outgrowing. Mr Price, Pepkor, The Foschini Group and Truworths are all chasing the same shoppers, and Daily Investor points out how hard they have found it to grow sales consistently in a lacklustre economy. Chief executive Sean Summers told the publication that the past two years have been tough for clothing, partly because Shein and Temu arrived with cheap clothes shipped from abroad.
An old business with new tricks
Pick n Pay Clothing is not exactly new. Its first standalone store opened at Menlyn Mall in Pretoria back in 2002, and today there are 439 of them, 18 run by franchisees, selling value clothing to families. What has changed is how it uses the grocery business to sell more clothes.
In March it added clothing to asap!, the delivery app its customers already use for groceries, so they can order food and clothes from the same place. Together with a relaunched website, online clothing sales grew 137% on a year earlier, and Pick n Pay says the app's clothing sales came in well ahead of budget. It also opened seven new stores and revamped another 13 in the six months.
The shops it already had
Here is the catch. Like-for-like sales, which compare only stores trading in both periods so new openings cannot flatter the result, fell 0.7%. That means some of the growth is coming from expansion rather than existing stores selling more. It is still an improvement on the six months before, when like-for-like sales fell 5.6%, but Pick n Pay itself calls the clothing market "exceptionally challenged".
Its answer is more of what has worked. The 13 revamped stores have sold better than the rest of the estate since their makeovers, so another 10 revamps are planned for the second half. The goal is to get the shops it already has growing again, not just the new ones.
