Hello all, apologies for the long lay-off, i just didnt have time to sit and talk to you for a while but time flies when the world is moving along at crazy speads. It been 9 months in Zim! and I am still being amazed on a regular basis. As some of my African friends say, that’s Africa for you, the more things remain the same the more they change. I wish I knew what that actually means but change is creEping into some place here too.

So, in my many meetings with interesting and influential people here I discovered that the old establisment in the supermarket business is feeling the stress and pressure of a dynamic competitive market. Not long ago a Botswana entity called Choppies came into Bulawayo and all but took over the majoirty of Spar shops here then quickly set about bringing a different culture of doing business, competing for customers! Choppies did what any sound retailer would do, went around being a secret shopper and discovered that prices were high enough to be undercut by 5-15%, options could be increased and customer service was next to zero in this new market. They simply improved on those three things, lowered prices across the entire shop, added some variety in parts of the stock and inproved customer service by smiling more and asking to help. The results were astonishing especially to the old establishment whose sales began to fall with one major retail saying they went from selling $90-100k worth of groceries per day to $25K! Scary for them but easy pickings for Choppies. Now if only choppies could go elsewhere in Zimbabwe all shoppers would have an alternative and this would force change in the market as it has in Bulawayo. The old establishment are rushed off their feet tyring to catch up and hope that the customers will return to their shops to discover all the good things they are now doing but that is neither here nor there. Maybe for OK the Grand Challenge came at the right time. God! aren’t there many cars to be won at in the Grand Challenge! I was telling someone it used to be just one car to be won at the first Grand Challenge, now 35! or maybe even more. Anyway speaking of prices, I have just returned from England for a two week break and I dont know how this has happened but prices have been falling consistently in the shops, not just small drops but big drops like 10-20% in some products, even my office furniture suppliers has knocked of chunks from her prices. That $1 can of coke I complained so much about can now be found at 50c in some places but 65c almost every, that’s a 35-50% drop in price. I havent done a big food shop yet but I am sure there are drops in other things too, I know veggies are falling as farming goes from the tobacco and cotton to consumer produce in winter.

More perculiar stuff is in the banks, I have noticed there is one bank, METRO, that only opens on payday! and everytime I pass through that bank and there is a mile long queue of people waiting to be served I want ask them why they havent changed banks yet because clearly Metro can’t be giving them the service a bank is supposed to. It seems there is an agreement between public employers and the bank which can not be dissolved and the customers are locked in! And the perculiar stuff wouldn’t be complete without a contributions from Air Zimbabwe! So their Embraer jet which was servicing HRE-BYO-VFA-HRE-JNB has been recalled by its owner, guess who? Innscor the company that owns Chicken Inn and Nandos! but that’s not the perculiar part, those sectors it left are now being serviced by a boeing 767! an long range air craft that burns all the money it makes on those short trips in its take off fuel! the rest of the trip is being paid for by Air Zim! Why are they not wise enough to accpet that Air Zim can’t run an airline? Some months back there was a story about directors at the airline stealing 11m Euros from the company, at first I thought it was a lie, because, where would Air Zim get 11m Euros but it was true. That’s is the height of greed, how do the directors steal from a company with nothing, where would they work if it truly collapsed. One would have thought the directors would be working hard to turn around the airline until it was thriving and then steal from it!

So much to right about, I will collect my thoughts and write more in the days to come.

Top tip; spending 20 minutes in the morning sitting on the floor doing nothing, stop thinking until there is nothing active in your mind and your thoughts. Your thoughts in the rest of the day will be sharper and more successful in whatever you do but it takes time, to learn to be still for 20 minutes, pace yourselves!