Good news about major computer store in South Africa

Incredible Connection has opened at least ten new stores between 1 October 2023 and 25 April 2025.

Pepkor Lifestyle store marketing coordinator Henno Barry recently announced the launch of two new Incredible Connection stores last week.

The two newly opened stores are Incredible Gateway, in Durban, and Incredible Cellular in Musina.

“A massive thank you to all the teams involved in making these launches a success,” Barry stated.

Following Barry’s announcement, MyBroadband contacted Pepkor Lifestyle for comment about Incredible Connection’s store footprint in South Africa.

A spokesperson said that Incredible Connection had opened eight new stores in the 2024 financial year, which ended on 30 September 2024.

Adding the two that Barry announced in April 2025 makes ten new stores in around 19 months.

“Incredible Connection continues to see expansion opportunities,” the spokesperson said.

They added that Pepkor Lifestyle could not comment further, as the company was in a closed period.

Pepkor Lifestyle is the recently rebranded JD Group, which was acquired by retail holding company Steinhoff over several years. Steinhoff also owned Pepkor.

Steinhoff took a controlling stake in JD Group in 2012 after it had already acquired over 32% of the company. It then bought out JD Group in 2015.

Just before the accounting scandal that brought Steinhoff to its knees in December 2017, it listed Pepkor separately on the Johannesburg stock exchange while maintaining a substantial stake in the company.

JD Group now forms part of Pepkor, and its retail store brandsincluded Bradlows, Russells, Rochester, Sleepmasters, Incredible Connection, and HiFi Corp.

During the 2024 financial year, JD Group was rebranded to Pepkor Lifestyle, and the company reported opening 54 new stores across all its brands, expanding its retail base to 906 stores.

Pepkor Lifestyle employs 5,700 people across South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Eswatini.

Strong performance in furniture, but not tech

“Strong performance was achieved in furniture and the Bradlows brand refresh enhanced sales,” Pepkor said in its integrated report for 2024.

“Pepkor’s Lifestyle business has developed strong capabilities in supply chain, logistics and financial services, supported by scalable integrated systems and data-driven insights.”

Despite beginning to reposition the Incredible Connection brand with new Incredible Cellular stores, Pepkor reported that its Tech segment did not perform as well for the former JD Group.

“Performance in tech had to contend with a high base in the prior year, in addition to significant promotional activity by competitors in key categories,” it stated.

Pepkor Lifestyle contributed 13% of the group’s overall revenue and 7% of operating profit.

Pepkor’s integrated report also reveals that HiFi Corp and Incredible Connection opened 11 new stores during the 2024 financial year.

Since Incredible was responsible for eight of those, that means HiFi Corp opened three new stores during the previous financial year.

However, Pepkor Lifestyle also recorded four retail store closures during the year. It did not reveal how many of these belonged to Incredible Connection.

In 2022, Incredible told MyBroadband that it planned to tackle the threat of online retail through after-sales support and customer convenience.

Specifically responding to questions about the launch of Amazon’s marketplace in South Africa, Incredible said its services extend beyond online sales.

“A differentiating benefit of purchasing computing from Incredible and its stores are the various payment options,” the company stated.

“These include credit, revolving credit, buying on contract and even business offerings such as business rentals.”

Incredible said customers also have access to tech experts who can help them with upgrades, repairs, installations, virus removals, and data backup.

Its customer service also includes computing health check requirements and related essential products such as networking and printing.