The blue box is the most recognisable thing Takealot owns, and for September the name on it is not Takealot. Through Heritage Month, parcels are arriving with the name translated into each of South Africa's twelve official languages: Vatbaie in Afrikaans, Thath'okuningi in isiZulu, Tsayagolegontsi, and nine more. It is the first time the company has changed the name on its boxes since it started in Cape Town in 2011.
This is packaging, not paperwork. The trading name has not changed, the website has not changed, and the thing you check out on is still Takealot. What the company has done is stand up a live web domain for every translation, one of them for South African Sign Language, each with a pronunciation guide and a fact about the language attached. Afrikaans, one of them points out, is not simply Dutch that became South African: Malay, Khoisan, French and German all left marks on it.
What a logo is worth
Karla Levick, Takealot's chief marketing officer, called a logo one of the most valuable things a company owns, and said Takealot was choosing to replace its own with "the languages of the people who built this business". The reach behind that is real enough. The company says it now completes one in every five deliveries made in South Africa and gives more than 13 000 businesses a route to customers through its Marketplace. Those figures come from Takealot itself, and they are also why this will be hard to miss.
Two other things run alongside it. The Takealot Heritage Design Challenge is in its fifth year: a member of the public designs a box, wins R100 000 in vouchers plus R10 000 for a charity of their choice, and sees the design printed on a million boxes over the festive season. The producer Muzi is fronting a weekly series on Takealot's social channels about local music genres, from lekompo and Maskandi to Kwaito and Cape Town hip hop.
The first profitable year behind it
The timing is not accidental. In June the Naspers-owned Takealot Group reported its first full-year profit, swinging from a R213.53 million adjusted operating loss to a R180.67 million profit. The value of everything sold across the group grew 14%, to R32.85 billion, which it put down to what people were buying, the TakealotMORE subscription, and a sharp rise in the advertising money sellers pay for placement.
Nothing about the order itself changes. Same checkout, same courier, and the boxes go back to reading Takealot when Heritage Month ends. 2oceansvibe reports the campaign finishes with September; Takealot's own release commits only to running it throughout the month.
