{"id":621082,"date":"2025-12-03T15:59:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=621082"},"modified":"2025-12-03T16:00:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:00:31","slug":"prominent-south-african-online-shop-shuts-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/621082-prominent-south-african-online-shop-shuts-down.html","title":{"rendered":"Prominent South African online shop shuts down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pepkor has quietly shut down online retailer Everyshop, less than five years after launching the store with a bold plan to capture first-time online shoppers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it is unclear exactly when the change happened, opening everyshop.co.za in December 2025 redirects users to the HiFi Corp website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A banner on the website states that HiFi Corp is Everyshop’s new home. Everyshop’s social media pages on Facebook and X were also nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last time the Everyshop website was cached on the Internet archiving platform WayBack Machine<\/a> was 16 September 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pepkor Lifestyle confirmed to MyBroadband that it discontinued the Everyshop online platform as part of a strategy to streamline its retail brand portfolio and focus investment on its strongest consumer brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everyshop, being the least recognised brand in the portfolio, was discontinued and its ranges and capabilities were incorporated into HiFiCorp and Boardmans, where consumer demand and brand equity are strong,” the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everyshop operated as a platform aggregator and did not have a separate team. Accordingly, this brand rationalisation had no impact on staff employment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shutdown is not surprising, considering the poor performance of the retailer and previous feedback from its owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launched in March 2021, Everyshop was intended to be the main online arm of Pepkor’s JD Group of companies, which included Incredible Connection, HiFi Corp, Rochester, Bradlows, and Russels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retailer spent millions of rands on developing the platform and marketing its brand and offering, with the aim of becoming a significant local e-commerce player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At launch, the online store’s product categories included entertainment, fashion, health & beauty, perfect home, work & study, projects & DIY, lifestyle & leisure, fitness, cellular, and toys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With JD Group’s extensive store and logistics footprint, Everyshop seemed well-positioned to quickly grow its customer base and offer many customers quick delivery times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company had established two dedicated fulfilment centres for Everyshop in addition to its 15 large-scale distribution centres. It also planned to roll out pick-up lockers and in-store terminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it made the perplexing decision to spend much of its marketing budget on traditional media, including print, to try to reach first-time buyers who were not getting served with Internet ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strategy was a bust<\/a>, likely for a simple reason \u2014 before a customer could start shopping online, they must first be connected to the Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convincing consumers new to the Internet to give their money to a new and unknown retailer would also be a tall order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even established retailers must first help these shoppers overcome fears over online shopping scams and customer service quality before they can get them on board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barely known in recent years<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Everyshop
Everyshop terminal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By the third quarter of 2022, Google Search Trends data showed that Everyshop’s popularity online quickly waned after a big surge in initial search traffic at its launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarweb data showed that Everyshop had a fraction of the recognition and monthly traffic of Takealot.com and Makro.co.za by the third quarter of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that point, it was getting over 1.2 million visits in a quarter, or about 400,000 per month. Takealot was recording over 44 million quarterly visits or 14.7 million monthly visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By December 2023, Everyshop’s monthly visitors had nosedived to 126,802. In early 2024, JD Group told MyBroadband it had halted investments in Everyshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It explained this was in part due to the online stores of its established physical retailers \u2014 including Incredible and HiFi Corp \u2014 performing better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last quarter of 2024<\/a>, Everyshop was recording an average of 31,770 monthly visits. At that point, Takealot had increased its monthly average visitors to 20.6 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More niche retailers like Evetech, GeeWiz, Wootware, and Rebel Tech were also more frequently visited than Everyshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JD Group was absorbed into Pepkor Lifestyle earlier this year. The company told MyBroadband that it expanded its wide range of categories on HiFiCorp’s online store in parallel with the Everyshop rollout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“These new categories \u2014 including outdoor, furniture, bedding, and other general merchandise \u2014 performed exceptionally well on the HiFiCorp platform, significantly exceeding expectations,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“More recently, Lifestyle became the new custodian of the well-known Boardmans brand following Pepkor’s acquisition of Legit and other retail brands.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pepkor said this provided additional opportunity to simplify the group’s offering and align products with more established brands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pepkor-owned retailer once seemed well-positioned to become a major e-commerce player in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":395119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[11165,101789,67312,16490,84467,16494,10412,98589],"class_list":["post-621082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-e-commerce","tag-e-commerce-retailers","tag-everyshop","tag-hifi-corp","tag-incredible","tag-jd-group","tag-online-shopping","tag-pepkor-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621082"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621475,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621082\/revisions\/621475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}