Pep (stylized as PEP) is a multinational budget

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholes ...

company based in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. Founded in 1965, PEP operates around 1,800 stores across 11 countries in

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme for Africa, United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and ...

, and employs around 14,000 people. A subsidiary of Pepkor, the company also owns and operates the largest

clothing Clothing (also known as clothes, garments, dress, apparel, or attire) is any item worn on a human human body, body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin s ...

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

in Southern Africa, where it manufactures much of its product line.

History

In 1955, after putting himself through university, the son of South African farmer, Renier van Rooyen, started running a bargain shop part-time in Upington with no previous retail experience in partnership with Gawie Esterhuyzen while they ran other businesses. Eventually becoming more experienced and involved full-time van Rooyen began restructuring and expanding the bargain store, buying out his partner Esterhuyzen in 1956.Neethling, B. (202
The man who started a R73 billion business with R1,000 and no business experience
Business Investor Van Rooyen opened an additional store in 1959 to focus on selling just discounted clothing. He amalgamated the two discount stores and added a small warehouse under a holding company called BG Bazaars by 1960 and started expanding outside of Upington. BG Bazaars built quick success by offering good quality clothing, blankets, and shoes at very low prices, maintaining low overheads, and providing friendly personal service focusing on underserved markets similar to the modern retail giant

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

. By 1965, Van Rooyen launched the PEP Stores Ltd (known locally as just "PEP"), with just R50,000 in starting capital, in De Aar, followed by branches in Kimberley and Postmasburg integrating all the BG Bazaars branches under the PEP banner. In just two years they opened a further 29 branches with an average turnover of R79,000 each. Things took a big shift in 1971 when van Rooyen approached Whitey Basson to become the financial director of the new retail chain that van Rooyen had founded. Van Rooyen was planning to list the company on the JSE as ''Pepkor''. Basson agreed to join the company as financial director and in 1974 became head of operations. By 1981, PEP expanded to 500 stores, 10 factories, 12,000 employees with a turnover of close to R300 million. At this time Christo Wiese also bought out van Rooyen's holdings in Pepkor, becoming the major shareholder and chairperson of Pepkor. In 2014 Wiese sold Pepkor to Steinhoff International in exchange for about 20% of Steinhoff's issued shares.

References

{{reflist, 30em, refs= {{cite web , title=COVER STORY: Whitey Basson , website=Accountancy SA , date=30 November 2016 , url=https://www.accountancysa.org.za/whitey-basson-shining-south-african-role-model-manages-by-embarrassment/ , access-date=19 November 2019 {{cite web , title=PEP Stores :: Looking and feeling good , website=pepstores.com , date=5 January 2009 , url=http://www.pepstores.com/cms/view/content/about_looking_and_feeling_good , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090105175918/http://www.pepstores.com/cms/view/content/about_looking_and_feeling_good , archive-date=5 January 2009 , url-status=dead , access-date=22 November 2019 {{cite AV media , first=Bruce, last=Whitfield, title=Meet Whitey Basson - the retail genius behind the rise of Shoprite , website=702 , url=http://www.702.co.za/articles/282989/whitey-transcript , accessdate=21 November 2019, format=radio show transcript {{cite web , last=Motsoeneng , first=Tiisetso , title=Steinhoff ex-chair Christo Wiese open to talks over $4bn claim , website=BusinessLIVE , date=18 March 2019 , url=https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/retail-and-consumer/2019-03-18-steinhoff-ex-chair-christo-wiese-open-to-talks-over-4bn-claim/ , access-date=21 November 2019 {{cite news , title=Life of Pep Stores founder Renier van Rooyen was a classic rags-to-riches story , url=https://www.fin24.com/Entrepreneurs/News/life-of-pep-stores-founder-renier-van-rooyen-was-a-classic-rags-to-riches-story-20181110 , accessdate=21 November 2019 , work=Fin24.com , publisher=Naspers , date=10 November 2018 Retail companies established in 1965 Companies based in Cape Town