Renier van Rooyen: The Founder of PEP
“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 in nominal terms. 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 stepped away from the company in
1982, PEP empire continued to grow under Christo Wiese on the foundations that Renier laid down, and by
2023 it had sales of R90 billion and employed more than 100,000 people.
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. It is the classic
‘rags-to-riches’ story.
This website also deals with the other dimensions of Renier’s personality, such
as his charismatic and dynamic personality, his leadership abilities, his
legendary tact, enthusiasm and his ability to reach out to even the
lowest-ranked of his employees. Like his business acumen, these personal
characteristics were not the product of a ‘Harvard-type business education,
but, as is often the case with born-leaders, appeared to come naturally to him.
Related with these personal qualities was his
compassion for his fellow man and his constant efforts to extend a helping hand
to the needy - in Renier’s case this often was directed at the coloured
community, which constituted a large part of Pep’s customer base, partially as
a result of Pep’s origins in the Northern Cape and later in the Western Cape,
where they constituted a majority of the population.
This close link with the
coloured community was evident not only from Renier’s financial generosity
towards them, but also in his tireless efforts to oppose apartheid legislation
which resulted in so much hardship for the coloured and black people of South
Africa. Renier’s outspokenness on the injustices of apartheid and his views on the necessity
of scrapping apartheid preceded political
reform of the De Klerk era by at least 20 years.
Ultimately, however, this is an account of how one man ate, slept and drank his
business, of his dreams and vision, and of his ambition and drive to succeed in
the business world, and in the process, to elevate himself from a meager and
humble existence to head a retail super-company. By giving substance to an idea
of selling discount clothing for cash, Renier van Rooyen found a way of
achieving his ambition, and his endeavors in this respect during the period
1955 to 1982 form the core of this blog and the book on which it is based.
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 in nominal terms. 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 stepped away from the company in 1982, PEP empire continued to grow under Christo Wiese on the foundations that Renier laid down, and by 2023 it had sales of R90 billion and employed more than 100,000 people.
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. It is the classic ‘rags-to-riches’ story.
Related with these personal qualities was his compassion for his fellow man and his constant efforts to extend a helping hand to the needy - in Renier’s case this often was directed at the coloured community, which constituted a large part of Pep’s customer base, partially as a result of Pep’s origins in the Northern Cape and later in the Western Cape, where they constituted a majority of the population.
This close link with the coloured community was evident not only from Renier’s financial generosity towards them, but also in his tireless efforts to oppose apartheid legislation which resulted in so much hardship for the coloured and black people of South Africa. Renier’s outspokenness on the injustices of apartheid and his views on the necessity of scrapping apartheid preceded political reform of the De Klerk era by at least 20 years.