Seamless Xtra’s Alia Alhussein speaks with Hazel Pillay, Managing Director at Pick ‘n Pay. The Pick n Pay Group is a South African retailer. It operates three brands – Pick n Pay, Boxer and TM Supermarkets. Pick n Pay also operates one of the largest online grocery platforms in sub-Saharan Africa.
In this interview, they delve into the strategies, partnerships, and responses to market changes, highlighting the balance between business growth and positive societal impact.
Hazel, thank you for being with us today. What are your predictions for the future of the retail industry in South Africa?
So firstly, greetings from South Africa and thank you Alia and Seamless for connecting with me and spending some time with me today. I think some of the big influences for retail in South Africa will certainly be the technological influences, which will help companies become more innovative and help to make their businesses far more efficient on the back end.
I think there’ll be a continued dynamic improvement in unicommerce. So both platforms of brick and mortar and online are incredibly critical. They are hand in hand to ensure that the customer experience is amplified and that customers can use technology as well as brick and mortar to have a satisfied customer journey.
And I think personalised customer experiences will be amplified in the greatest way. So data mining nd learning about your consumers in a very deep way so that you can speak to them in a personalised, individualised manner is really going to become extremely critical and is already.
Just to touch on that as well, Hazel, how would you say the market needs to adapt to upcoming trends and challenges?
I think the faster adoption of technology is soemthing we’re all aware of. It’s happening around us and we’re doing it to a certain degree. But the adoption of more AI and making data mining and data science far more centric in your business is really what is facing all retail leaders at the moment.
So what inspired Pick and Pay clothing to partner with Sari for Change? And how do you see this collaboration align with the brand’s commitments to sustainability and social empowerment?
So just in line with the topic that you introduced, Pick ‘n Pay clothing has a really strong ESG intention and a very strong strategy over time. It’s impossible to convert a business into being, sustainably viable instantly. So this is definitely one step forward and learning about what’s happening out there. Part of our ESG strategy is to support local industries, local manufacturers, and SMEs. It’s not always easy as a large company to onboard SMEs. But you do get one or two who are very well equipped, like Sari for Change. It’s really easy to partner with them and to execute a certain type of product. In their case, they upcycle saris, and we’ve never done an upcycling program before. So that would be the first range of upcycling products we’ve ever sold. We weren’t entirely sure how the South African market would take to it. So we sold it in five stores and it literally sold out within a week.
How it aligns with us is growing local, helping to support the creation of more jobs locally, and that particular company employs women out of the community who don’t have the skills to work in manufacturing and takes them on a journey to teach them, to build a career, and to have a formal job that can help change the lives and change the lives of their family.
That’s honestly very impressive and the change that you’re making in that space Hazel. Now, mentoring future leaders is a key aspect of your skill set. Could you share some insights into the approach to team building management and mentoring in the retail industry and how these practices contribute to sustainable growth and success?
So I think the role of a leader is multifaceted. One of them, and probably the most critical one, is to serve. And I think, first, a leader has to be very self aware. You need to understand your leadership style, your values, your gaps and once you’re able to understand yourself well, you need to also build up the skill to understand people as teams, as individuals.
I recently just read this book, ‘Your Next Five Moves’ by Patrick Bet-David, and for the very first time, I think I love the way he articulated that every person is motivated in a different way. Some people are just motivated to get a paycheck, some people are motivated by purpose, some people are motivated by status, and some just want to change the world.
And I think if you understand each individual well, firstly, you’ll understand whether they fit into your company really well, whether they align with values, and you’re able to build a team that can actually align with the purpose of the company. Secondly, I think you have to have people strategies, just like you have a business strategy, just like you have a product strategy.
You need to be able to identify talent in its current form. And sometimes I think leaders often look at a CV and they look at what people might have done. And yes, it contributes to the skills and experience of an individual. But very recently I promoted a young leader into a senior management role and she hadn’t really led before.
But she had the experience of leading in other experiences out of work. So you’re looking for things that you can’t always see. You’re looking for things that are not necessarily always heard in people’s speeches. You’re watching for action. And I think when you find young talent, the best to do is to zigzag them across different functions, help them to get as much exposure as possible so that they can become ready future leaders of tomorrow.
The other practices that I always tell people about, is learning and leading is a lifelong journey. And every time you go into a big role, something that’s much different to what you’re doing. and I often use, if you were just doing a function versus leading a function. Some of the things that I would advise would be getting a coach to walk you through that journey. Your first leadership role is often quite lonely, so you can have a neutral person walking with you. Reading, you know, there are many people that don’t have formal education and learn a lot from just reading all the time, making sure that you are finding ways to transform the way you see the world is what keeps you relevant.
Thank you, Hazel. That was very inspirational and insightful. Lastly, I’d like to ask how is the South African retail landscape evolving, especially in the light of recent economic challenges and consumer behavioral shifts?
I think the entire world is going through economic challenges, and they’re common, but they’re also unique to each country. In South Africa, each customer wants to be absolutely clear about the value that they’re getting when they exchange money. So making sure that your proposition is understood without a customer having to work out how much am I saving, that they know they’re getting clear value for money.
And they want that more and more. They’re able to know your competitor set, where they can save as little as 10 Rand. That’s how savvy they are. They’re looking for convenience and community retailing. So they have extremely busy lives. They don’t want to have to travel very far. They want instant gratification. They want to be able to close and solve the problems they’re facing in a day as fast as they can. And along with that economic challenge, you know, we always used to speak about buy now, wear now. I think it’s far more acute than it’s ever been.
The weather influences this to such an extreme way. So if you technically buying for a winter season and it’s still very hot. Nobody any longer pre buys winter because they really like something and they’re going to wait two months to wear it. They want to be able to buy something and wear it right now because of instant gratification. I think the whole world is also facing the disruptors of Sheen and Temu, who are obviously getting into the country with the offering of tariffs and rebates that aren’t penalising their prices. So this is causing another disruption to how consumers are actually shopping online, and with who and how clever they are about where they can get the best value.
Thank you, Hazel. You touched on some key points. It’s been great having a chat with you and just getting the discussion going, and I ook forward to continuing that at Seamless Africa in October
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