03 Nov 2011 Shoprite’s Whitey Basson wins ‘Business Leader of the Year’
The Sunday Times‘ Top 100 Companies were announced last week – and part of the programme is the Business Leader of the Year, a prestigious award, not least because winners are chosen by their peers, CEOs of South Africa’s Top 100 companies. Shoprite CEO, Whitey Basson, credited with taking his group to the forefront of the retail sector in South Africa and on the continent, is the 2011 laureate. Shoprite bought Checkers in 1979 for R55-million and Basson was made managing director. Today the Shoprite Group’s market cap is R60-billion and it employs 95 000 people.
WHEN WHITEY BASSON presents results to Shoprite investors, he dresses casually and jokes about business and anything else that tickles his fancy. But underneath the light-hearted appearance is unflinching dedication and seriousness about the business he’s been running for 30 years. Basson, the Top 100 Business Leader of the Year, manages both the details and the grand objectives like a hawk.
“I have to give as much attention to the guys who make the bread as I do to the guys who make the decisions as to where it’s made,” says Basson. “I manage by trying to sleep on weekends. I sleep with one eye open.”
Shoprite has dominated the retail industry in the past five years, and Basson, a colourful character who speaks his mind, has become synonymous with the successful retailer. He has been a trailblazer on several fronts.
Shoprite was the first South African retailer to go into Africa, long before it was fashionable to do so, giving it firstmover advantage on a continent said to be the biggest untapped consumer market in the world.
He was first to invest millions in centralised distribution, making the group more efficient than competitors early on. Despite the group’s size, Basson focuses on detail each time the group goes into a new country or region. With effective systems, he can instantly determine the gross profit margins of a tin of food in Nigeria, market share in Ghana or provide the right products for the right target market in any region.
“There was always a saying that retailers can’t cross borders. Today it’s possible to manage a retail business across the globe,” says Basson.
It has been a long hard slog, particularly in Africa, where nearly every aspect of doing business has unanticipated challenges. Getting food to stores is difficult, products can languish at ports for weeks and it is hard to determine who owns the right to land goods earmarked for a store.
“At the end of the day it was his drive and vision that achieved that,” says Shoprite’s chairman, its biggest single shareholder and Basson’s longtime friend, Christo Wiese. Wiese says Basson’s success is partly due to his down-to-earth style and the fact that he really enjoys people.
“His leadership style is that he is one of the men. He’s happy to get his hands dirty, he’s very detail conscious.”…..