Bullish Thoughts loves his coffee. Nescafe Premium to be particular, especially when intending to do some serious mind work. So, it happened this past weekend that the last bottle of Nescafe hit the dust bin in the evening and Bullish Thoughts had to make do with some brand of Instant Coffee. Can’t vouch if it was indeed real coffee though!
Then, something hit Bullish Thoughts. It was a statement made by the late Cairns CEO, Philip Chigumira (May His Soul Rest In Peace) that in that Cairns needed (or still needs) 5kg of coffee beans to produce 1kg of coffee powder. A peer company in South Africa uses just 2kg of coffee beans to produce the same kg of coffee powder.That’s the impact of old technology on your business.
Bullish Thoughts thus decided to celebrate exceptional ideas (thoughts) that have graced the Zimbabwean market in the past and currently.
Many economic and social commentators have been arguing that Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector in particular has to be creative and innovative to gain relevance in the global market place that Zimbabwe has become.
It is in this vein that Bullish Thoughts highlights some of the GAME CHANGERS that have hit the local market either through innovation (taking an idea and converting it to chingching ($$$$$$)) or those that have just raised the bar in their business lines.
The Spar(kling) experience…
Many in Zimbabwe owe the improved ambience in OK Zimbabwe supermarkets to SPAR. You just need to go to The Bridge Spar, Spar Anthienitis, Sam Levy and even Braeside Spar to see how this guild of independent retailers raised the supermarket shopping experience beyond imagination…and worse still, price the products at ranges that appeal to even the lower end of the income bracket.Innscorwhich manages the Spar franchise has done the market a favour and Evan Christophides has surely earned his salary.
Still on Innscor, have you noticed how they are assaulting the fast foods market.You can now eat a chicken for $2 and very soon a burger for the same amount of money! And you can still get your King Steer Burger for $7 if you so wish. You gotta love those bites and hot wingz imitated from SA’s Chicken Licken! To cap it, you have a compressed Pizza Inn, Chicken Inn and Creamy Inn that’s so small like a Zim $ era Afrofood shop! The Slice guys are going to be sliced!No doubt the effect is going to be seen in their bottom line and shareholders of Innscor can expect more chingching to come their way in the form of dividends especially given the entity’s aggressive dividend policy!
Fourth Generation Retailing Experience Coming Your Way…
Though it came to the party very late, Bullish Thoughts loved what he saw in OK ZimbabweMasvingo branch. The same has happened to OK Zimbabwe Avonlea. And what an awesome Bon Marche’ did they put up at Belgravia Shopping Centre. Fourth generation retailing thinking finally dawned on the company. And OK Zimbabwe did exceed investor expectations with their FY2011 numbers! Willard Zireva and team must be loving the traffic into the shops.
Keeping Your Confidence…
TN Holdings is one company that has transformed the consumer durable goods space. The entity which basically started as an advisory outfit, slowly ventured into broader financial services culminating in the taking over of Trustfin, establishment of an asset management arm and transformation of the finance house licence into a commercial banking licence among other business forays. An amazing banking experience can be felt in the second floor of 101 Union Building. Bullish Thoughts is however not looking at the banking side of the business. It is Tawanda Nyambirai’s acquisition of then Tedco Limited from Simba Mangwende that seems to have shifted/ upped the game. Tedco was reeling from undercapitalization then. The entity was rebranded into TN Harlequin and hit the consumer durable goods market with a bang. Credit retailing model was rolled out so fast especially on the bed and couches market. Even the marketing of the facility was so intense. In a market with tight cash squeeze, TN offered 12 months credit facilities and currently has terms as long as 3 years. TN upped the game in this space and only Innscor’s TV Sales & Hire managed to react fast enough though mainly on the electronic and electrical segment. Pelhams just came to the party in the last month or so. Bullish Thoughts liked the way TN thus forced its peer to also up the game leaving the customer as the winner. It was no extra ordinary idea but just upping the game so intensely. Bullish Thoughts just hopes all these entities driving sales through credit retailing, have in place strong credit management skills and systems so that shareholders ultimately will get more chingching in their pockets at year end.
Making Money Make Sense…
Bullish Thoughts quite vividly remembers Kingdom’s “Making Money Make Sense” programme on ZTV in late 90s or early 2000 hosted frequently by Gary Thompson. It was mainly focusing on unit trusts then. He also remembers how Kingdom Bank was at the forefront of Internet Banking and mobile banking then in partnership with e-Transact. This is one institution where innovation forms the core of the culture, Bullish Thoughts supposes.
It didn’t end in the back days! In the dollarized environment, Kingdom Bank had the first ATMs to dispense South African Rands forcing other financial institutions to immediately follow suit. It then introduced the Kingdom CellCard productcapitalisng on select supermarkets’ infrastructure. And NOW? You don’t even need a card to withdraw money from a Kingdom ATM. You just walk there with your fingers! A typical ABSA banking experience in Zimbabwe indeed. If Bullish Thoughts’ memory serves him right, this particular product saw Kingdom netting $4m deposits from the informal sector. Now that’s banking the unbanked market!
Eco Chinyi? …Push Technology for Zimbabwe
The Econet Wireless business growth path is well documented and out there for everyone to see. The company now has the widest voice and data coverage in Zimbabwe. Anyone remember the 90 base stations in 90 days programme that saw the Econet Team wine and dine with chiefs. Bullish Thoughts is quite sure Econet Wireless had to establish a Zimbabwe Culture Centre to teach the fellas going out to negotiate the mountain tops on which to erect the steel structures with the Headmen and Chiefs! Bullish Thoughts can even surf the net while in his mother’s groundnuts granary!
The same applies for data. If you want to surf the net then you better be an Econet Wireless subscriber. The only gripe Bullish Thoughts has at the moment is the pricey bandwidth though the speeds are quite good compared to some of the service providers. Hopefully the connection to the undersea cable happens much faster to lower the costs.
Econet Wireless has not stopped there. Whilst others are still looking for 3G partners and or testing their platforms for 3G rollout, Econet Wireless has already forced Bullish Thoughts to finally ditch Nokia for a Blackberry. Bullish Thoughts like everyone else, is now jut waiting for POTRAZ to do the market a good service and for Econet Wireless to then switch on the Blackberry service (or servers). By the end of this year, your Bullish Thoughts Column will be reading: Send from my Blackberry!
Drowning in the wise waters…
Delta Beveragespeddles a particular product where whether you are celebrating or crying you drown yourself in it. Alcoholic beverages! Bullish Thoughts is quite certain that no one will dare assault this market with a competing product because Delta has upped its game for good. On a lighter note, Bullish Thoughts is not quite sure why the prices of CSDs went up by 10c. Anybody got an idea? If it were Chicken Inn or Pizza Inn, one would just say because their name is not Fanta Inn or Coke Inn.
The glitter of gold…
Whilst the hype around the Tetrad Gold Fund has somewhat died down, Bullish Thought thinks that was an amazing piece of innovation from Tonny Fisher & Team. Hopefully the markets can continue to witness such further innovations coming its way from Golden Tetrad.
Still Creating Wealth For Life…
The insurance sector is a place where most people have a gripe especially post conversion of Z$ policies and pensions. It would naturally take almost a master stroke to shift the game. And First Mutual Life did do it through the Ecolife productin partnership with Econet Wireless. That was an unprecedented attempt to provide life insurance coverage to the 5.5 million plus subscribers on the Econet platform. EcoLife gives Econet subscribers access to life insurance via prepackaged airtime on their mobile phones. Whilst currently subscriptions have been frozen pending identification/ development of new ICT intelligence to manage the backbone aspects, this particular product has changed mobile insurance forever. In fact, HollardInsurancehas since teamed up with South Africa's MTN and MFS Africa to launch a mobile money life insurance product in Ghana following the launch of Ecolife. Transforming Africa indeed!
Shifting the way you move…
Bullish Thoughts thinks that’s enough for one column but do you know of any other game changers on the market? Share them with us and perhaps like they say at Nissan, together we can SHIFT THE WAY ZIMBABWE MOVES!
Top Stocks, Bad Stocks…
Bullish Thoughts will not Comment save to say, tell us what you think (you can email or even phone) from the two tables below on equities performance which are as at 08 July 2011.
Top 5 Risers This Year
| Counter | Price 8/7/2011 | 31-12-10 | Change | % |
| Fidelity | 17.00 | 2.20 | +14.80 | +672.73 |
| Cafca | 60 | 16 | +44.00 | +275.00 |
| Tractive | 15.00 | 6.00 | +9.00 | +150.00 |
| Radar | 45 | 20 | +25.00 | +125.00 |
| Turnall | 14.00 | 6.70 | +7.30 | +108.96 |
Top Fallers This Year
| Counter | Price8/7/2011 | 31-12-10 | Change | % |
| Starafrica | 1.2 | 7.00 | -5.80 | -82.86 |
| Chemco | 10 | 45 | -35.00 | -77.78 |
| Caps | 0.25 | 1 | -0.75 | -75.00 |
| Art | 0.55 | 1.4 | -0.85 | -60.71 |
| Falgold | 4 | 9.5 | -5.50 | -57.89 |
Bigger Pay Packet…
On the issue of the noise around the civil service pay increases, Bullish Thoughts thinks:
Invest Wisely!
Bullish Thoughts
Email: bulls@bulls.co.zw
Twitter: www.twitter.com/BullsBears2010
Blog: http://bullsnbearszimbabwe.blogspot.com/
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