Shop Talk: General merchandise
This month, we’re excited to re-launch the Insights General Merchandise Dashboard, which tracks the spending of 22seven’s c56,000 users at more than 50 well-recognised SA retailers.
What’s included on the General Merchandise Dashboard? Well, the best definition we have for this broad market is all online and in-store retailers where the goods sold are not predominately food or fashion items. (The Food and Fashion markets are analysed separately on the Grocery and Apparel dashboards, respectively.)
Retailers on the General Merchandise Dashboard therefore include local online behemoth Takealot and international peer Alibaba, Clicks, Toys R Us, Builders Warehouse, iStore, newcomer DIY retailer Leroy Merlin, Sportsman’s Warehouse and many more.
Shop Talk is a monthly newsletter that highlights the main observations from the Insights spending dashboards. Every month, we alternate commentary between the categories of spending covered by these dashboards. This month we provide an overview of our new dashboard, and we introduce relevant trends to familiarise readers with the new product.
Spending highlights from the General Merchandise Dashboard
Twice the value of apparel spendingThe value of 22seven user spending at retailers on the General Merchandise Dashboard is twice as large as their spending at the 120+ clothing and footwear retailers that make up the Apparel Dashboard, and about two thirds the value of spending on the Grocery Dashboard.
Takealot is the largest retailer on the dashboard and made up 22% of all spending in March 2022. Dis-Chem and Clicks comprise a further 13.5% and 11% respectively. Makro (9%) and iStore (6%) round out the top five.
It’s interesting to note that 80% of spending on the General Merchandise Dashboard comes via only 11 of the 55+ retailers analysed.
Over the past three years, Takealot has gained an enormous share of spending among 22seven users. On the contrary, Massmart brands make up three of the five biggest losers.
Leroy Merlin increases share in the DIY categoryFollowing a period of elevated expenditure on home renovations, related to customers spending more time at home due to Covid restrictions in 2020, the proportion of user spending at DIY retailers Builders Warehouse and Leroy Merlin has returned to pre-Covid levels. However, the composition of that spending has shifted.
Leroy Merlin opened its first store in 2018 and today has four stores in Gauteng. Despite this relatively small footprint, its share of user spending has grown rapidly, and accounts for c30% of all spending at these two major DIY retailers in Gauteng.
iStore and JD Group are symbolic of a spending shift towards technologyiStore, along with Pepkor’s JD Group of companies – Incredible Connection, HiFi Corp, Everyshop and others – have experienced large increases in spending share over the past three years.
These gains most likely reflect an increased spending allocation towards technology devices and products due to consumers devoting more time to online schoolwork, remote working and entertainment services.
Tapestry now @home with TFGThe General Merchandise Dashboard also includes user spending at major furniture and homeware retailers, including all of Tapestry’s brands, TFG’s @home, MRP Home and Sheet Street*, plus Weylandts*, HomeChoice* and others.
In February, Insights published a deep analysis of the growth opportunities for any group looking to purchase Tapestry Home Brands. That group turned out to be TFG, and this dashboard will help track TFG’s influence on the Tapestry stable going forward.
Providing credit to Tapestry customers is one of the opportunities identified in our analysis, because of the high transaction values at their stores.
* These brands are included in ‘Other’ on the dashboard, but specific details are available on request.
Alibaba and the e-commerce leadsTakealot is far and away the largest online retailer among 22seven users, and we’ve reported previously on its significant growth over the last two years.
However, Takealot is not alone. The General Merchandise Dashboard includes 10 entirely online retailers, such as OneDayOnly, eBay, bidorbuy and AliExpress. In future editions, Insights will distinguish online purchases from store-based retailers to provide a detailed overview of online spending in this wide-ranging category.
Stay ahead of the gameThat’s it for this month. If you want to know more about data-driven consumer trends in South Africa, sign up to receive Nugget, our bi-weekly newsletter. You can also follow Insights on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Simon Anderssen[email protected]084 7300 309
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