{"id":650117,"date":"2026-05-31T17:01:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=650117"},"modified":"2026-05-31T17:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:04:15","slug":"south-africas-largest-clothing-retailer-is-becoming-an-e-commerce-giant-with-rapidly-growing-online-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/650117-south-africas-largest-clothing-retailer-is-becoming-an-e-commerce-giant-with-rapidly-growing-online-sales.html","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s largest clothing retailer is becoming an e-commerce giant with rapidly growing online sales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pepkor reported significant growth in its e-commerce business in its latest interim financial results for the six months ended March 2026, with online sales growing by 30.9% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company launched its PEP Home online store in October 2025 and has seen significant growth across its e-commerce footprint, including a 72% increase in online sales for its Ackermans brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its Lifestyle brand, which included Tech and Home divisions, saw online sales grow by 20% year over year, with Tech delivering particularly strong growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company bolstered its online retail presence by launching schoolwear across its platforms in January 2026 ahead of the new school year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that 30,000 schoolwear orders were processed during the reporting period over its online shops, which include the company’s PEP mobile app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, +More, Pepkor’s group-wide custom loyalty programme, where customers can get discounts at PEP, Ackermans, Dunns, John Craig and Tekkie Town, reached 17 million members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company’s internal counter-to-counter courier, PAXI, saw its parcel distribution increase by 21% year-on-year to 3.9 million nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With PAXI, Pepkor uses its existing logistics network to deliver packages between its retail footprints to customers who purchase PAXI bags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pepkor’s e-commerce performance in its latest results matched that of its cellular division, where it sold 4.9 million handsets in the year, a 42% year-on-year increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has a cellular SIM base of more than 30 million individual cards, generating R1.1 billion in ongoing revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its cellular rental business, FoneYam, saw 1.3 million accounts activated in the reporting period, a 32% increase from the same period last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FoneYam now has 2.4 million active accounts, with the cellular rental book increasing from R2.6 billion to R1.7 billion the year prior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cellular rental business bolstered Pepkor’s financial services business performance, which posted an operating profit of R691 million for the period, a 63.4% increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pepkor’s business booms outside of clothing retail<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Jean Pierre Verster, CEO of investment management firm Protea Capital Management.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Financial services was the group’s fastest-growing business division, including credit provider Capfin, insurance arm Abacus, and the upcoming digital bank PlusB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abacus was particularly successful for the group during the reporting period, more than doubling revenue to R718 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean Pierre Verster, CEO of investment firm Protea Capital Management, told BusinessDayTV<\/a> that the expansion into financial services enabled the company to rely less on its clothing division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He called the clothing division a “mature business.” The single business arm contributed 74% of the group’s operating profit for the reporting period. It recorded R39.2 billion in revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group also revealed that it was opening 200 new retail locations across the country in the 2026 financial year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All of their new financial services businesses have been doing really well, whether that is in the townships, payments, Capfin lending, or the new bank they are launching,” said Verster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You can see these other divisions growing much stronger and delivering decent, double-digit earnings per share growth on a consolidated basis.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that if Pepkor’s new divisions continue to grow as they have, the group can significantly boost profitability, allowing it to enhance its retail business with these new investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pepkor revealed in 2025 that it would launch a bank product. The company soon acquired technology firm CloudBadger Technologies to support the bank’s backend systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the reporting period, Pepkor submitted the planned bank’s Section 16 application, a necessary regulatory step before the bank can officially begin onboarding customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that the PlusB digital bank would be officially registered as soon as the Section 16 application was approved. This process normally takes more than a year to complete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pepkor’s latest financial results showed a steadily growing e-commerce business supporting its strong clothing retail foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":639974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[22263,11165,5724,17140,81550,4278,70830],"class_list":["post-650117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-ackermans","tag-e-commerce","tag-jean-pierre-verster","tag-online-sales","tag-paxi","tag-pep","tag-pepkor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650117"}],"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\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650117"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650561,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650117\/revisions\/650561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}