"You must select a market, know the product you are selling and you must believe in what you are doing. You have to be single-minded and prepared to work day and night. In other words, you must eat, sleep and drink your business”.
With these words Renier van Rooyen described the recipe from which he created one of the largest
retail businesses in South Africa from very humble beginnings. The key ingredients of this recipe were ‘Faith, Positive Thinking, Hard Work, Enthusiasm and Compassion’, combined which formed the building blocks for Pep Stores’ success under Renier’s leadership.
With the founding of the company in the 1950s he combined his personal philosophy for success with a business formula of selling clothing cheaper than anybody else’. The result was that within 25 years, he managed to turn a small concern operating out of a single shop with one employee, into a retail giant with 500 stores, 10 factories, 12,000 employees and a turnover of close to R300 million in 1981. During this period the name Pep became synonymous with quality clothing at discount prices, while the Pep slogans, ‘Always cheaper, always better! ‘We don’t sell cheap clothing: we sell clothing cheaply!’, became household words in South Africa.
Renier van Rooyen entered the business world at the age of 23 and achieved his success without the benefit of capital of his own. He originally borrowed the equivalent of R1,000 to start his business and had no business experience or financial training – this makes his feat all the more remarkable. Together with his humble beginnings in the unlikely entrepreneurial location of Upington in the rural, arid and sparsely-populated Northern Cape, his meteoric rise has reserved him a special place in South African business folklore - the classic ‘rags-to-riches’ story.
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