In the Desire of Conquering East African Supermarket Business
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Management Teaching Case Emerging Economies Cases Journal In the Desire of Conquering East African 1 –8 © The Author(s) 2021 Supermarket Business: What Went Wrong Reprints and permissions: in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india in Nakumatt Supermarket https://doi.org/10.1177/2516604221999224DOI: 10.1177/2516604221999224 journals.sagepub.com/home/eec Felix Adamu Nandonde1 Abstract By October 2017, the East African Community’s (EAC) largest retailer was declared bankrupt. All stores within and outside Kenya, namely Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania were closed. Many suppliers in EAC took the retail company to court after having suffered huge losses. Some few suppliers looted the stores with the aim of compensating themselves for the incurred losses. Simply put, Nakumatt’s reputation was in the mire and the company headed for a total collapse. Everyone in the region was asking himself/herself, what might have gone wrong to Nakumatt supermarket. In general, the current case is a lesson that sheds light on the rise and collapse of one of the largest household names of retail stores in EAC. Key words Nakumatt, Atulkumar Shah, supermarket, entry strategies, Africa Background estimated to have 6,500 employees, annual sales of US$620 million, and more than 20,000 items in their stores with With the emergence of East African Community (EAC) more than 6,500 employees in the region (Omondi, 2017, market, which is estimated to have 177 million citizens and Primrose Management Limited v Nakumatt Holding Limited more than 22% of its population living in the urban areas and anothers, 2018). (https://www.eac.int), many brands emerged in the region By October 2017, EAC’s largest retailer was declared aiming at capturing this fast growing market. One of such bankrupt. All the stores within and outside Kenya includ- brands is Nakumatt Supermarket. The Nakumatt ing Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania were closed. Supermarket is a family retail company, which originated in Suppliers took the retail company to court after having 1978 in a small town of Nakuru in Kenya and managed to suffered huge losses following the closure of the retailer. grow into a leading household retail company in the region. Few of these suppliers looted the stores with the hope of Up to 2014, Nakumatt supermarket had stores in four coun- redeeming the incurred losses. Simply put, Nakumatt’s tries in EAC, namely Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and prestige was in the mire, as the company headed for a Tanzania and had plans to expand business to other markets total collapse. such as South Sudan and Nigeria. Everyone in the region was asking himself/herself, what The individual behind this success is Mr Atulkumar has gone wrong with Nakumatt supermarket.? In general, Maganlal Shah who was an ambitious entrepreneur. He the current case is a lesson that sheds light on the rise and believed that he could exploit the growing market of EAC collapse of one of the greatest household names of family by expanding his business to other member countries. Mr stores in EAC. Shah inherited the mattress business from his father and managed to develop a strong household brand in the region. Originally, the then household name of the supermarket was Nakuru Mattress, but after some years of success, the store changed its name from Nakuru Mattress to Nakumatt with 1 Department of Business Management, School of Agricultural Economics an elephant in blue colour as the store’s logo. and Business Studies, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania By February 2017, Nakumatt supermarket had 65 stores and was operating in four of EAC members countries’ mar- Corresponding author: Felix Adamu Nandonde, Department of Business Management, School kets, namely Kenya (46 stores), Uganda (9 stores), Rwanda of Agricultural Economics and Business Studies, Sokoine University of (3 stores), Burundi (1 store) and Tanzania (5 stores) with a Agriculture, P.O. BOX 3007, Morogoro, Tanzania. space floor of 20,000,000 m2. The leading retailer was E-mail: [email protected] Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits nonCommercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 Emerging Economies Cases Journal Atul Shah’s Dream Shah of making sure that every individual in Africa has access to the products at affordable prices and in a good Having studied in the USA and with an experience of and hygienic environment. In general, Atul Shah believed working in the retail store during his stay in the USA, Mr that high-quality products do not have to be highly priced. Shah had a dream of changing the manner in which East With a dream of attracting buyers who preferred fresh Africans shop for products, including groceries, furniture products, Mr Shah introduced fresh vegetables sections and electronics appliances operated. Traditionally, retail and a built-in butcher counter. The built-in butcher was business in the region was not organized and was con- selling fresh meat and fish. Furthermore, the retailer intro- trolled by wet market. It is estimated that more than 90% of duced a segment of fresh selling vegetables, which were the retail businesses were controlled by informal retailers, sourced from the local markets. With increasing health and Mr Shah had a dream of changing this situation. awareness, vegetables that were sold in the modern retail Mr Atul Shah’s aimed at making life easier for modern stores were highly preferred by urban consumers because consumers in big cities of East African market such as they were perceived as organically healthy. Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, and Kigali. Because con- sumers perceive traditional retailers as selling fresh products, the retailer had to use different techniques to attract consum- Business Philosophy ers, especially in the middle-class group, to buy fresh prod- With a desire of conquering modern consumers in the East ucts in their stores. Learning the fact that middle-class African market, the Nakumatt supermarket business phi- consumers in Africa work more than 8 h per day, the Nakumatt losophy was to link the host country suppliers with the supermarket introduced readymade food for sit-in and take market where the retailer operates and to buy goods from away. Furthermore, he introduced 24 h services, which were local entrepreneurs. Mr Shah believed that increasing the not possible at the wet market. This was a huge relief to many number of goods bought from host country entrepreneurs urban consumers in large cities where Nakumatt operated. and connecting them with other markets where the retailer In view of all these, the family retailer gained huge operates would increase the retailer’s legitimacy among influence as among the most preferred by middle-class con- consumers and political leaders. In that regard, Nakumatt sumers, and the business attracted many urban dwellers. supermarket business philosophy seemed more of promot- However, in East Africa, the wet market controls more than ing host country entrepreneurs to reach a class of elite con- 90% of grocery business. To change the demand of young sumers in the East African market. He once said: urban consumers, more had to be done in terms of innova- tion and promotion of the new forms of retail business. We are restructuring business to continue playing a pivotal In this regard, the Nakumatt supermarkets introduced role in the regional retail space by providing a market platform benefits such as bonus packages for those who used royalty across the region for local produce. (The New Times, 2016) cards which recorded credit points whenever a customer bought items from Nakumatt supermarkets. This attracted This made Nakumatt one of the preferred retailers in the many consumers from all works of life to visit Nakumatt region by consumers and policymakers because the owner stores to purchase commodities with the expectation of used to stock products produced by local entrepreneurs in gaining credit points, which were often redeemed upon the host country and opened more markets for goods from certain reasonable point accumulation (Nandonde, 2016). other countries within the region to be sold in the stores. Furthermore, the family retail business introduced online In general, Atul’s dream was to link producers with the retail payment and joined with different online platforms to consumers in different markets and countries where the facilitate distribution of its services. Nakumatt supermarket operated, as shown in Figure 1. In general, Atul Shah’s dream was to see everyone in East However, achieving this dream was not possible, and the Africa to shop in the Nakumatt stores. To achieve this, Atul family retail business faced many barriers that extinguished introduced own brand on many food items labelled ‘blue mart’. Items under the blue mart brand were bread, sugar, and cereals of different kinds. Despite the fact that Nakumatt tar- geted middle-class consumers, the retailer managed to attract consumers from different lifestyles who purchased blue mart brand. One particular reason on why the blue mart labelled products attracted many consumers was the fact that the items were sold at relatively cheaper prices as compared to the prices operating in other business outlets for the same commodities. The family retailer allocated US$2.3 million for own brand products that targeted repackaging of the products into smaller packages for affordability and portability Figure 1. Nakumatt Business Philosophy. (Mungai, 2013). This again was a long-time dream of Mr Source: The author. Nandonde 3 their dreams. In practice, each country in EAC has a policy among actors in developing economies.