Choppies Fashion Line �Amazes� Customers
Isaac Pinielo | Monday December 19, 2016 15:35
There was an array of clothing on display ranging from children’s wear to ladies’ and men’s clothing, which is labelled Choppies. The same applies to the store at Game City.
A customer who happened to be surprised by the presence of the clothing department in the Choppies store joked that the supermarket could eventually sell vehicle spare parts and furniture.
“This shop is so amazing. It wants to sell everything in one place,” the customer said.
Another customer who preferred to be called Bosa applauded the mass grocery retailer for introducing fashion clothing in its stores. “This is very commendable because it will save us time of shopping. Instead of going around different shops we can now get our goods in one store,” Bosa said.
The recent addition of clothing into the Choppies stores is shaping the supermarket into becoming a fully-fledged department store, which will join the same league as Woolworths, Clicks and Game in offering general merchandise across a wide product range.
In their integrated annual report for 2016, Choppies says it plans to launch clothing in six hyper stores in the coming months. Choppies added seven new stores during the year which created 600 new jobs.
While the group’s marketing manager, Otsile Marole declined to shed more light on this development, she said management will issue a formal statement at the beginning of next year.
“We will respond to you a little bit after January once we have finished all our logistics and implementation. We will probably call you to explain about the whole clothing department and how it is going to work, but there are still a couple of things that we are doing at the moment,” she told The Monitor over the phone.
The group, which is dual listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), is the fastest growing grocery retailer in Africa. It had a total market cap of over P4.5 billion as at June 30, 2016.
Having opened its doors in 1986 with one supermarket named Wayside Supermarket in Lobatse, and later opening a second store in 1993, Choppies was initially known to be selling only food-based and other fast-moving consumer goods.
But fast forward to 2016, the group has never stopped pushing deeper into the retail business. While on this aggressive drive, the retailer introduced fast foods in the form of Choppies Fried Chicken or CFC at its premier outlets. This move, which is believed to be direct competition against the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Chicken Licken, will eventually lead to the introduction of eateries in its hyper stores.
Choppies also has a presence in eight of the nine provinces in South Africa as well as in Zimbabwe, Kenya and Zambia, with Tanzania and Mozambique following in 2017. In addition to traditional grocery offerings, Choppies is rapidly expanding its financial services offering throughout its outlets.