Retailers News South Africa

The Crazy Store celebrates 400th store opening

Homegrown retailer The Crazy Store will open its 400th store on Heritage Day, 24 September, in North Cape Mall in Kimberley.
The Crazy Store celebrates 400th store opening

Kevin Lennett, managing director of The Crazy Store, attributes the company's success to its quest to continuously grow and improve its product offering and the importance placed on understanding customers.

“Opening our 400th store in 2020 is a massive achievement for our business and comes down to hard work and spending time engaging with our customers when they are in our stores. We have set out to fill our shelves based on customer feedback, requests, and of course, their shopping patterns.

"We want to go the extra mile for our customers and to delight them with an extensive product range, whilst delivering five-star customer service. The Crazy Store has a quality promise to all our customers. We stand by our products so if there’s a problem, consider it sorted," says Lennett.

25 store openings per year

The Crazy Store is easily accessible with a store on almost every corner. Employing almost 2,000 people across its stores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana and now with the new 289m2 store in Kimberley, there are a total of 400 stores.

“The Crazy Store is a business filled with heritage and family values which is testament to how we run the business today. It only seems fitting that we’d open the doors to our 400th store on Heritage Day.”

With an impressive number of stores, a target was never set to be achieved by a specific date. “Although we look at sites on an ongoing basis, we will only open a store if the space is right. Recent years have seen us opening an average of 25 stores per year, with a high of 43 stores opening in one year. As a trusted brand, we are a drawcard for many shopping centres. That said, we are a humble brand and know that we need to keep working hard to keep our customers coming back and also give back where we can," says Lennett.

Lockdown challenges

The opening of the 400th store does not mean that The Crazy Store did not face challenges during 2020. Due to Covid-19, none of the stores were able to trade during Level 5 of the lockdown, and Level 4 only saw 35% of the extensive product offering being made available to the public.

“The support from The Crazy Store customers post lockdown has been amazing so there is reason for optimism as the business now sets its sights on the future and the 500th store mark.

“Over the last few years, we have shaken the misconception that we stock ‘cheap and nasty’ products and introduced a quality and control department which tests all of our products. Our business model is one of quality and value and has therefore become even more attractive to existing and new customers,” says Lennett.

With over 5,000 product lines, 18 different product categories and an impressive 80,000m2 of combined floor space, The Crazy Store is a household name and an attractive retail offering for landlords across the country.

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