Upington

Thanks.

Foster from Upington.

Yeah, Foster, to be fair, the EFF released a statement yesterday, um, earlier.

I think the ANC as well.

Mm

... consistency of product, whether it's Upington or Cape Town, because of, of the, um, product that you put into-

Mm

... into the dough or into the flour with the, with-

So we found a, uh, we, we found a date where we knew we were gonna be somewhere with, you know, decent phone access.

So we were in a South African ostrich farming town called Upington.

Right.

I got a calling card, uh, talked to the hotel, uh, staff ahead of time and said, "Hey, I have an interview at your time midnight, could I please use your phone for it?" And they said, "Sure.

We got a card." So did the, uh, my interview from the lobby of a little hotel in Upington.

And then, yeah-

It's, uh-

So yeah, I think we've seen generally good uptake across the country.

Our ambition, of course, is to see how can we, a year or two down the road, make sure that we have all the cities of South Africa covered and the whole map Every store is covered, whether you are in Uppington or Springbok or in Nilsbred or Bloemfontein.

We'd like to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in this.

In the first year of being in business, is there something that you reckon you've done completely wrong that you want to learn from as you go forward? Perhaps let's look at the first six months of business.

Well, it certainly, the quick answer is that it strengthened my belief in South Africa, my optimism for South Africa, because you suddenly become aware of just how many problems there are in the rest of the world, and how people are grappling with them, sometimes successfully, other times less successfully.

But you suddenly see us, and certainly from my point of view, remember I come from Uppington, where the newspaper is out two days late.

So, you know, you kind of, it's really, it's a wonderful way to learn that lesson.

to engage with those people, to listen to them.

But I thought I wanted to tell you this story because the designer talking about, you know, the masses and what one can do, what business can do.

One of the things that I'm very proud of about Pep Stores is Pep Stores was founded on the basis of making clothes affordable for poor people.

When I grew up in Uppington as a child, you very rarely saw a black or coloured child that was not dressed in hand-me-downs, very seldom a brand new outfit.

Now, in 1965, in pep stores, for a three-, four-year-old child, you could buy shoes, underpants, shorts, and a T-shirt for under a rand.

And it hit us so badly.

It was in the sense that somebody had bought out the Upington laboratory and they realized they needed a nematologist to do the, uh, interpretations of the result.

They were counting, but they didn't know what to do with the results.

Okay.