Mr Tekkie takes aim in new war

Entrepreneur will open a chain of stores under new banner.

Action while court cases against Steinhoff drags on.

News that the founders of Tekkie Town were planning to open a new chain of stores to sell sport and leisure shoes was confirmed when entrepreneur Braam van Huyssteen announced the opening of several new stores under the Mr Tekkie banner within the next few months.

Rumours that the founders of Tekkie Town will open another business has been circulated since Van Huyssteen made an off-the-cuff remark about this possibility in an interview with Moneyweb at the beginning of June – shortly after the disposal of Tekkie Town to Steinhoff’s Africa Retail (Star) turned sour. By then, most of the founding members of Tekkie Town had resigned from their management positions at Steinhoff.

The first artwork of the proposed new business leaked out a few weeks, later but Van Huyssteen only confirmed the store identity yesterday.

Van Huyssteen was named South Africa’s master entrepreneur of the year in 2011 by Ernst & Young for founding and growing Tekkie Town. His investment of R20 000 in a single sport shoe store – and 10 years of dedicated work – grew into a national retail chain of 389 stores and an annual profit estimated at about R300 million at the time of the sale to Steinhoff in 2016.

The sale of Tekkie Town to Steinhoff is currently the object of at least four court cases, with many more to follow. The major case seeks that the whole transaction be reversed on the basis that Steinhoff misled the vendors when offering shares as settlement for the major part of the business, while Steinhoff management were aware of financial irregularities that overstated the profits and subsequently led to unrealistic valuation of these shares.

Van Huyssteen is confident that the court case will succeed and that Tekkie Town “will be returned to its rightful owners”.

“Mr Tekkie and Tekkie Town will then be managed side-by-side from Tekkie Town headquarters in George,” says Van Huyssteen.

The building he refers to is also the focus of a disagreement between Van Huysteen and Steinhoff subsidiary Pepkor. The office building is owned by Van Huyssteen, who is adamant to evict Pepkor within a few weeks.

Meanwhile, Pepkor issued a legal summons that claims Pepkor is within its rights to occupy Van Huyssteen’s building.

Five former Tekkie Town executives, among them previous CEO Bernard Mostert and head of purchasing Michael Brown, joined Mr Tekkie in executive roles.

“We deliberated long and hard as to how we want to create and roll out Mr Tekkie,” said Mostert, CEO at the new Mr Tekkie.

“Dawie [van Niekerk, who will be the new COO] and I resigned from Pepkor in June due to a vacuum of good leadership that made it impossible to achieve the results we expect of ourselves.”

Van Huyssteen, 53, is upbeat about the future. “Mr Tekkie represents a great opportunity for us.”

R20 000 investment grew into retail chain.