Prior to the World Cup we probably all had our preconceptions of what ‘the Rainbow Nation’ had to offer—a somewhat polarized picture maybe defined by poor v plenty, the townships v the much-desired, luxury holiday locations of, for example, Camps Bay. Before the staging of the biggest sporting event in the world here, could we really name any significant South African brands?

The start of the really warm weather has inevitably caused a flurry of consumer spending as we all rush to the suncare aisles, the garden centre or the hardware store… Suncare, gardening, DIY are all huge market sectors in their own right but when I (probably with hundreds of others) browsed these aisles at the weekend, I realised that — with a few exceptions — they are largely static ones. And all three have the potential to be so much more by reinventing and developing a new retail positioning and experiential — ‘X’ — factor.