The lone survivor of South Africa's apparel department stores, Edcon, the owner of Edgars, may be on its way to the retail graveyard where the corpses of John Orr's and Stuttafords lie.
There have been many false dawns over the past decade of the debt-laden retailer's imminent return to its glory days of the past century, when it was owned by SABMiller, now AB InBev. Its flagship store, Edgars, continues to struggle to find a place in the increasingly competitive local fashion space, which has seen the entry of some of the world's leading global retailers, with the company earlier this month reporting a quarterly sales decline.
With Edcon readying itself for a return to the local bourse, after being taken private in a highly leveraged R25-billion move just over a decade ago, the retailer's struggles will weigh on just when will it return.
In retail you can "let people make mistakes, but [they] can't keep making the same mistakes - they must learn from them," said Andrew Jennings, former president of Saks Fifth Avenue, GM of Harrods and MD of Woolworths, and author of Almost is Not Good Enough - How to Win or Lose in Retail.
Jennings said that Edcon decided a few years ago to go with more fashionable expensive assortments and they forgot about their heartland customer, which is at the very centre of the business.
"If they are not selling the merchandise they have in their stores then they have to change their strategy, and Edcon appears to have been through some major changes," Jennings added.
Over the past decade, Edcon's three CEOs have made some notable strategic blunders...