From zero to Sixty60

In the midst of grappling with different levels of lockdown, retailers can forget about shooting the lights out and congratulate themselves on a job well done if they just manage to keep the lights on at all.

Under the circumstances, Shoprite is correct to congratulate itself on the team effort that saw sales rise by 6.4% to a record R156.9bn, despite the pandemic and the resultant disruption to its normal flow of business.

Its SA supermarkets continue to find favour with punters, notching up 16 months of consecutive market share gains. It’s now looking to cement its customer loyalty with its Xtra Savings rewards programme, which launched in November 2019 and had 4.7-million customers registered within months. The programme aims to provide shoppers with personalised offers, but it’s also a platform that, hopefully, should be able to provide an alternative revenue stream as time goes on.

The company also launched its Checkers Sixty60 delivery app, which delivers groceries to customers within an hour. This app has been scaled up rapidly in response to the pandemic, growing from an eight-store test launch in November last year to being operational in 87 stores by Shoprite’s year-end.

In double-quick time, it has become SA’S No 2 shopping app with about 620,000 downloads. Shoprite is patting itself on the back for having done this in such a short time during a pandemic. Which shows that, even though there’s a lot it can’t control, it’s doing well in getting to grips with the factors it can influence.