Obituary: Gordon Hood - Mall magnate, philanthropist

1930-2013

GORDON Hood, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 83, designed and built pubs, hotels and shopping malls before becoming the managing director of OK Bazaars when it was South Africa's largest supermarket chain.

Hood was also the chairman of Operation Hunger until his death and was instrumental in turning it into a significant force for rural development rather than just a giver of aid.

He was born in Burton-on-Trent in England on March 13 1930. His father came from a long line of coopers and was sent out to South Africa in 1938 as the head barrel-maker for Lion Breweries.

Hood grew up in a one-bedroom flat in Braamfontein. His bedroom, until he graduated from university, was an enclosed balcony.

He matriculated at Parktown Boys' High School. His father told him he could be whatever he liked as long as he did not become a cooper. He decided to study architecture because his uncle was an architect.

While at the University of the Witwatersrand and for some years afterwards, he immersed himself in his first love, the theatre. He designed stage sets, directed and acted in plays, and in a film with Jamie Uys, who later directed The Gods Must Be Crazy. He directed his wife, Diane, in The Devil's Disciple at Wits.

When they had their first child, he decided he had better get a proper job and began designing pubs for his father's old company, Lion Breweries. In those days, brewers used their own pubs as outlets for their beer. After Hood began designing the pubs and small inns, the company asked him to manage them as well.

He was made manager of the estates division for Lion Breweries, which subsequently became South African Breweries. When SAB bought the Southern Sun hotel company, Hood was transferred there as the director of development. Sol Kerzner was the MD.

He worked with Kerzner for seven years and built hotels including the Chobe Game Lodge in Botswana, Beacon Island in Plettenberg Bay and Le Saint Géran in Mauritius. What distinguished his hotels was that they all looked different. Not for him the Holiday Inn practice of standardising hotels so that guests would know exactly what they were getting. He wanted his guests to have a unique experience whenever they booked into a different Southern Sun hotel. And, besides, he wanted to enjoy himself. In fact, these were the happiest years of his corporate life.

When SAB bought OK Bazaars, he was made director of development and estates to oversee the building of grand shopping centres with OK as the magnet, which would move the supermarket chain away from the somewhat bland and uninspiring stand-alone stores that characterised its image at the time.

He built Fourways Mall in northern Johannesburg, Mark Park in Vereeniging and Menlyn Park in Pretoria, among others. He was also responsible for South Africa's first hyperama, in Edenvale, followed by hyperamas in Roodepoort and Sandton.

The MD was Meyer Khan. When he left to become the MD of SAB in 1982, Hood was appointed to take his place.

He had an MBA from Wits, but still had to sit up late at night doing a crash course in accounting. "I used to design the stores. Now I'm responsible for the baked beans," he joked.

By the time he took over, OK - a department store that catered for everyone - was already in trouble. It was being seriously challenged by relatively new and fast-growing specialist stores such as Dion, which only did electronics, and Pick n Pay, which only did food and was led by one of the most dynamic and savvy retailers in the world, Raymond Ackerman.

In addition to losing market share to more commercially astute rivals, Hood had to contend with an increasingly fraught political environment.

In 1988, he pulled the plug on a costly shopping centre project in Boksburg after a newly elected right-wing council reimposed petty apartheid measures in the town. This precipitated a boycott by black consumers, which saw business at OK's existing store in the area plunge by 49%.

"We are not going to have any store anywhere that any section of the population may feel it is not welcome at," said Hood, explaining his decision.

Adding to his problems was growing labour unrest as the South African Catering and Allied Workers' Union began flexing its muscles.

The OK was too big and unwieldy to respond fast enough to changing conditions and pressures. It continued to lose market share to the more efficient Pick n Pay, Shoprite-Checkers and Spar stores. Earnings per share plunged and there were huge job losses.

In 1994, Hood retired and three years later the once mighty OK Bazaars was sold to Shoprite-Checkers for R1.

Hood devoted himself to wildlife photography and his work for Operation Hunger.

He is survived by his filmmaker son Gavin and daughter Lara. His wife died in April 2011.