It was one of several obstacles the world’s largest retailer has run into in Kenya. The US retail giant has spent the past few years trying — and failing — to crack the east African hub, whose growth is fuelled by aspirational consumption.
Walmart’s move into Kenya highlights the sea change in the continent, as a nascent consumer class expands and draws in foreign investors who had previously overlooked the African middle class — estimated at a total 350m people by some metrics. Accelerating growth in the continent, forecast at 4.5 per cent this year and 5 per cent next, outstrips that of all global regions bar developing Asia.
“We should have been here a while ago but we just couldn’t get the deal right — unfortunately it’s taken us too long,” says Mark Turner, marketing director at Massmart, the South African group in which Walmart bought a controlling stake in 2011.
Massmart’s chain Game already has 172 other outlets in 11 African countries, but Kenya has long been the prize beyond its reach. It is also a potential pathway for expanding Walmart’s existing presence in east Africa, a region of 240m people.
At $53bn, Kenya’s economy is far smaller than Nigeria’s $509bn economy — Africa’s largest — where Game already has stores. But it holds the retail crown for the continent. While only 5 per cent of Nigeria’s retail sector consists of formal shopping, rather than open-air markets and small kiosks, in Kenya the proportion is 30 per cent.“The middle class in Kenya is really growing. It’s more appealing, it’s more sophisticated and it’s ready for formal retail,” says Mr Turner. Massmart considered branding its Kenyan store as Africa’s first 2Walmart,” but in the end decided against because it is too hard to manage two brands at once, he adds.
When Game ultimately opened its Kenyan doors last week, they revealed something more akin to a wholesalers’ warehouse than a flashy modern supermarket. Wide aisles, entire banks of kettles, toilet rolls, fridges and televisions make the offering clear — no frills, and no-frills prices to boot. The store launched with a host of heavily discounted deals and promises to refund the difference plus an extra 10 per cent if they failed to undercut fierce competition.
“They have really good bargains for the price, especially on duvets,” says Mumbi, a 34-year-old mother of two who rushed into the store before work.
Her two overladen trolleys at the checkout were filled with $190 worth of goods, including duvets, toys and a cafetière. Mumbi, who did not want to give her surname, says she was only disappointed there were not more international brands on offer in the store, half of whose wares are sourced locally. The most expensive television, from Samsung, is $4,300.
Although Kenya is richly coveted by retailers and the foreign investors who back them, entry into the sector is notoriously difficult, thanks to a series of tightly held family-owned supermarket chains and a dearth of affordable space.
Walmart spent years trying to buy Naivas, the country’s fourth-biggest chain, before shareholder wrangling saw family members sue each other and finally put a stop to Walmart’s efforts last year. In 2007, Game also failed to secure a space in Westgate, which was the country’s flagship shopping mall until a 2013 terrorist attack, because it could not agree terms.
“If we can’t run the right cost model we can’t give the consumer what they need,” says Mr Turner. “It’s about finding the right property deal with the right partner in the right location.”Walmart favours greenfield retail space, and believes the answer to its Kenya woes comes in the form of Garden City, a sleek new shopping mall designed by the same team who created west London’s Westfield shopping centre. It is part of a $250m development from UK private equity house Actis, which has a 60 per cent equity stake, along with CDC, the UK government’s development finance institution, with 31 per cent, and the World Bank’s IFC.
Unlike more gloomy dens in Nairobi, the centre is light and breezy: overlapping freestanding leaves comprise the roof. On the first day of trading, as hard-hatted labourers still hammered at building work with only 30 of 120 stores open and several stairwells still closed to the public, the region’s biggest shopping mall drew 15,000 shoppers.
“We think we will get triple the basket spend and double the dwell time of the nearest shopping mall,” says Mike Kingshott, development director at Garden City, who says a forthcoming cinema will also attract an evening crowd.
However, Game, which says it is targeting sales of $1.12m a month from 35,000 shoppers, faces considerable competition. Nakumatt, the region’s biggest chain with 39 stores in Kenya alone, has also opened a store in Garden City. It was deluged by so many shoppers on opening they bumped into one another.
However, Game rang up more than twice the number of till sales as Nakumatt on the first day of trading, at 8,990 versus 4,000.
“Game can’t just have one store — to be any threat to Nakumatt they have to have five, seven, 10,” says Mr Kingshott.
Game says it wants to open at least four stores and is actively looking at two new sites.
Nakumatt managing director Atul Shah, counting customers on his newest shopfloor, believes he can give Game a run for its money. And if Walmart tried the acquisition route again in the region, his company would be ready. “If they come with a price [for Nakumatt] . . . everything is for sale,” he says.
Developers rush to build new malls despite Westgate attack
Competition for a slice of Kenyan retail is so fierce that Walmart is already locked out of Nairobi’s next two big mall developments. These are the Hub, a shopping centre in the leafy Karen suburb, and Two Rivers Lifestyle Centre, a 40-acre development near several upmarket suburbs that will dwarf Garden City when it opens later this year. Two Rivers will be the biggest mall in the sub-continent outside South Africa.
In both the new malls, France’s Carrefour, the world’s second-largest retailer, will be the anchor tenant as it makes its first foray into sub-Saharan Africa. Exclusivity clauses deem Walmart’s Game to be too close a competitor, in part because of its fresh food offering. Walmart was also nearly pipped to the post at Garden City — Carrefour tried to secure a place but was unable to do so once Game had signed.
Westgate, the country’s flagship shopping mall, was devastated by a 2013 terrorist massacre that killed 67 people. Despite the attack, developers are rushing to put up new malls as the growing middle class expands its geographic and financial reach and Kenya improves its infrastructure.
The 32-acre Garden City site just outside the capital upped its security plans in the wake of Westgate, and now has undercover armed agents. The development combines shopping with apartments and offices in what a few years ago would have been ludicrously far off the beaten track.
When Actis first eyed the plot of land in 2007, it was for a light manufacturing zone. But a $360m 12-lane superhighway launched in 2012 changed everything. It overhauled what was previously a two-lane log-jammed road regularly deluged by flooding, and turned an industrial prospect into a retail one.
Garden City forecasts that the number of people within its catchment area, at 1.15m today, will grow 11 per cent by 2017.
“When you put in a transformative piece of infrastructure the middle class moves,” says Koome Gikunda at Actis, adding that prohibitive land prices in more established neighbourhoods have also sent middle-income families searching for cheaper environs.
-FT.com
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