The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
SEVIOUS Mushosho, the Group Chief Executive Officer of erstwhile retail clothing giant, Edgars Stores Limited, is a man with big plans.
For years, Mushosho has watched as boutiques encroached on territory that was once considered the preserve of such major retailers as Edgars. Instead of the shelves of retail outlets, people start harvesting clothes from these new outlets, from the boot of cars and more recently, even from street pavements.
The likes of Edgars, for so long after the country’s independence, the trendsetters in terms of style, have become easy to ignore, as they are accused of being too pricey or offering garments that are simply not on par with what was being sold by informal traders.
As he watched models strut their stuff on Thursday evening, showing off the latest designs from the retail giant, he had only one thing on his mind: how to get those clothes off the models and mannequins onto the shoulders of ordinary Zimbabweans.
Doing so is no mean feat. After all, Zimbabweans have now got accustomed to getting their clothes from boutiques or the back of cars. However, Mushosho believes that within a year, the retail giant would have reclaimed lost ground.
“It’s very simple, as for ourselves, we know exactly what happened with our business,” he told Sunday Life in a candid interview ,on the side-lines of the launch of Edgars store in Ascot, Bulawayo last week. “This is why we changed a lot of things. We know what needs to be done…boutiques mushroomed because there was a gap. But now watch the space in less than one year, there would be very few boutiques. We are reclaiming our top spot in a very aggressive way.”
Times have been tough for clothing retailers in Zimbabwe since the turn of the century. As people tighten their belts due to tougher conditions economically, the authentic and durable clothes that were once their main selling point, seem to have lost their appeal. In such challenging times, it is perhaps a wonder how Edgars seems to be expanding its operations, particularly in Bulawayo. When Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce, Raj Modi toured the company’s factory last week, he remarked how they seemed to have increased their staff more than tenfold since the last time he visited, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“What we have done in less than one year, most companies would take five years to do,” Mushosho said. “You heard the minister say that the last time he was in our factory there were 33 people, now it’s full. What we have done is that we have ordered new machines, state-of-the-art automated machines, which cost US$1 million. That’s massive. It’s going to automate our production from stitching to cutting and embroidery. However, that does not mean we will let people go. Instead, we are going to produce even more and that will mean even more people employed. What we do is that we order top-class fabric and our designers work on their designs based on international standards and trends. We do the stitching ourselves. We now know that we have to play the game and take it to those boutiques to claim our market share.”
While Zimbabweans now delight in flooding their social media with pictures and videos of exotic destinations, where they buy top designer labels in exclusive stores, Mushosho said Edgars’ vision was to upstage its foreign competition.
“What we want to do, is to stop Zimbabweans from going to South Africa, going to Dubai intending to shop. We are creating Dubai here. We have ordered fabric from Turkey, from India and we are producing the same quality as those guys. We are going to unleash it locally and we are going to start exporting to South Africa this year. We are bringing Sandton here, as you can see from the beauty of this shop and what it can offer. We have partnered also with Italy, so we are going to be using Italian fabric to make some Italian designs. It’s going to be crazy but hey, that’s what business needs to do to survive in this market,” he said.
With other major retail outlets and departmental stores closing shop as economic reality bites, Mushosho described Edgars as the last man standing, a giant that was re-awakening as others sought permanent sleep.
“I know, people are comparing us to other retailers but we are different. We are the only formal retailer of fashion that is left.
We are the only big manufacturer of clothes in the country. If there is another one tell me where they are selling their clothes. If anyone is manufacturing, they have to come through us but none of them is producing at the scale that we are doing. We are the biggest retailer of clothes in this country. All boutiques combined will never get close to what we are doing.
“Where we walked, they will never walk. We are working with top manufacturers for footwear, men, women casual and formal.
I bet you, they never walked in those spaces. What we are bringing , they never had and they will never have it. Our motto is that we sell original, exclusive and high-quality stuff. That’s what we do. In this market, even when we dropped the ball, our cosmetics remained on point. So now, it will not just be cosmetics but every other department as well,” he said.
Last year, the retail giant found itself under the spotlight after it moved its main offices from Bulawayo to the capital.
Mushosho said while the move might have suggested otherwise, the retail giant was keen to bring even more of its business to Bulawayo.
“Our biggest challenge was that we moved our head office from here to Harare. I think it was misunderstood. It became political and it was as if we had dis-invested, which is not true. In fact, we have grown our investment in Bulawayo. We have employed more people in Bulawayo, we have modernised Ascot and we are going to be doing more. So, effectively we have done more than any other company and I think after today, the full story is going to be known. We have shown people the factory, we have shown people the things that we have done. What is left is for them to tell us what they think,” he said.
