WRITTEN BY COLIN GIBSON

DYNAMIC Dynasty

After 65 years in business, and now under the management of the third generation of the Blumenthal family, Pan African Shopfitters is an agile and energetic business, as directors Michael Blumenthal and Charles Jankelow explain to Colin Gibson.

“Our business has changed as a result of changes in demand in the

marketplace,” says Michael Blumenthal. “A lot of international brands

have been coming into South Africa; a lot of value engineering has

been going on, and a lot of space planning has been happening.”

Being a family business has obviously helped in keeping up with

a changing marketplace. “We live it,” says Blumenthal. “We’re fairly

young guys; we’re all in our forties, but we’ve lived through the

changes and we accommodate the market as changes occur.

“We obviously look to modernise our systems and our

machinery,” he continues. “We look at that all the time to keep up with

international standards. We have an in-house software development

program and we use it to our advantage. We are able to change and

adapt, we are aware of new products that come online and new ways

of merchandising; it’s an evolution. We look at what the international

guys are doing and what retailers are doing and we make it all available

if our clients want to use it or improve on it.”

“We also go every three years to EuroShop in Germany and to

various other trade shows all over the world,” says Charles Jankelow,

a director since 2008. “If there’s something new we’ll implement it.

You can always find new products and new technologies and you have

to develop the skills to work with them.”

From technical design to in-house manufacturing to complete

installation, Pan African’s large portfolio of services and capabilities

allows it to deliver a full turnkey solution with extensive in-house

experience and expertise in all the disciplines involved, from joinery

to metalwork, electro-plating to powder coating and anodising, from

design to transportation.

Although Pan African has a concept design capability, its growing

number of international clients means that a project is more likely to

begin with concept drawings and materials specifications, from which

technical drawings are made in-house. Depending on the size of the

project, it typically takes six to eight weeks from the concept stage,

through manufacture and fitting until the shop is ready for opening.

This is a highly vertically integrated business, with many aspects

to it. “Each one of these disciplines is a business on its own,” says

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Wherever you are in the world, retail shopfitting is a fast moving business. The world is a much smaller place now than it was in 1948 when Gunther Blumenthal founded Pan African Shopfitters in Johannesburg with six employees, but the family business has kept pace with a changing marketplace.

The third generation of family directors, comprising Michael,

Lance, David and Keith Blumenthal have since grown Pan

African into the largest shopfitting organisation in Africa,

and an industry leader in custom and bespoke retail shopfitting

serving major national and international retail brands.

The family has witnessed a great deal of change over the

years, largely driven by customers and by advances in technology.

Blumenthal. “Because of the demand and the lack of supply of

materials and expertise over the last 65 years, we’ve adopted these

businesses in-house and we do it all internally.”

Nevertheless, it must be very complex to manage, I suggest.

“It might seem challenging to the untrained eye,” says Blumenthal

modestly, “but when you’ve grown up with it, it’s not as difficult as

it seems. We have excellent systems, managers and department

workers. Everyone’s in sync and everyone works together to

streamline the process. A lot of our staff have been in the business

for 40 years, so they have grown with the business and have become

a very valuable part of it.”

This is where a family business scores again—not only in terms

of staff longevity, but also in management expertise. It has to be a

complex business, but when you’ve grown up with it, it’s a way of life.

“We could have anywhere between 40 and 80 projects on the go at any

one time,” says Jankelow, “all over the country, all over the continent,

and further afield. We work quite a lot in other African countries. We

have also been working in the United Arab Emirates and we were

one of the biggest suppliers to BHS (British Home Stores) a couple of

years ago in the UK. The rand is fairly volatile. If it’s a strong rand we’ll

import and if it’s a weak rand we’ll export. We move with the trends.

We are able to adapt.”

A service provider like Pan African Shopfitters has limited ability

to influence its own growth because it is dependent on market

demand, so it makes sure it is fit enough to take advantage of growing

demand when it occurs. “We absolutely depend on market demand,”

says Jankelow. “If the demand is there we will grow, which we have

been doing. We have somewhere between 45 to 50 thousand square

metres under roof now and we have between 800 and 1000 staff,

depending on demand. There are periods when we run night shifts

and there are periods when we run seven days a week. It’s all based

on demand. If the demand’s there, we will supply.”

Rather than complexity, time is the hardest thing to manage

because it’s always in short supply, says Blumenthal. “I would say

that for any retailer anywhere in the world, lead time is probably the

greatest challenge. There’s never enough time to do a project.”

With all the resources at its disposal, Pan African Shopfitters

can manufacture whatever it needs, but when the customer wants

to open a new shop on a particular day, it has to find a way to make

time, too. The company’s greatest asset and the source of its major

achievements is its ability to manage time, says Jankelow. “You get the

best feeling when you have a twelve week job, only seven weeks to do

it, and you pull it off.”

102 | Endeavour Magazine

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