Latest news with #TheFoschiniGroup
The Citizen
31-07-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Big payday at TFG: Here is how much the CEO and staff received
On top of the salary increase, CEO Anthony Thunström also received a bonus worth millions of rands. In a time where most South Africans are not prioritising clothing, The Foschini Group (TFG) has gone for a bold move and given its employees, including the CEO, salary increases. Is fashion doing that well? Despite everyone receiving an increase, the pay gap between the CEO and ordinary staff members is still mind-blowing. TFG operates a wide range of retail brands, including clothing, jewellery, tech, and furniture. Some of the well-known brands under TFG are Foschini, Markham, Sportscene, Totalsports, @home, Jet, The Fix, and Hi. Recently, TFG established an online platform, Bash, to sell their products with Luke Jedeikin and Claude Hanan. The two men are the founders of Superbalist, which was later sold to Takealot. The group is also known for offering qualifying young adults accounts where they can make purchases and pay back the retailer over a six-month or more period. ALSO READ: Foschini Group's online platform, Bash, boosts sales TFG increases staff salaries Dineo Noganta, Head of TFG Communications, told The Citizen that for the financial year 2025, CEO Anthony Thunström received a 5% increase, and so did the general staff and management. However, store and distribution centre employees' wages received a higher increase of 6%. Without revealing the amount, she added that the lowest store employee earns higher than the retail Sectoral Determination minimum wage due to the benefits they receive. 'The lowest store employee earns a basic pay aligned with the retail Sectoral Determination minimum but also receives benefits, which increase their pay to 50% higher than the retail Sectoral Determination minimum wage.' TFG gives CEO bonus While Thunström received a lower increase than other employees, he still outearns them. On top of the 5% increase, he also received a bonus of R4.1 million. A CEO's salary is typically set by the board of directors, which oversees the company's strategic direction and governance. The board assess the CEO's performance and sets remuneration in alignment with company goals and values, taking into consideration the individual's experience, the company's size and growth, and key performance metrics. ALSO READ: Capitec CEO tops banking pay charts — but how do staff salaries compare? A look at how SA's top five banks pay Breakdown of CEO salary According to the group's remuneration report for the year ended 31 March 2025, Thunström's guaranteed salary increased to more than R16 million after the 5% increase. His package deal includes an annual incentive worth more than R10 million. This is a bonus given based on the company's performance. He also received a deferred incentive worth more than R16 million. This is a bonus that will only be given to him at a later stage. Deferred incentives differ according to an agreement between the CEO and the company. The report also showed that Thunström received dividends worth more than R1 million. His salary package cost the company more than R44 million. However, this is lower than the R63.8 million he received in 2023. A strategy to retain talent? It is normal for the remuneration of one executive to exceed the combined salaries of ten staff members, due to differences in qualifications, experience, and responsibilities. Therefore, the difference in salaries is surely justifiable. But to what degree? David Shapiro, Sasfin Securities global equities strategist, told News24 that it is difficult to establish if the pay received by CEOs was worth it or not. He highlighted that there have been major increases in executives' pay across most companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Shapiro is of the view that to some extent, the increases are being fuelled by companies trying to keep up with one another and retain their CEOs. NOW READ: Pick n Pay CEO receives the highest salary in retail. Here's how much others get
Daily Maverick
07-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
After the Bell: Shopping sucks, but SA is stitching a comeback
Buying clothes has never been more complicated. There are more choices now than ever before. However, something has shifted fundamentally in our local market. Our own stores are pushing back. While I was growing up, I don't think I hated anything quite as much as going to shop for clothes. Even now, when I'm faced with the prospect of going into a store and buying something clothing-related, I'll find plenty of reasons to put it off. I was reminded of this when a friend told me today how she'd spent her weekend being reduced to tears by the exhausting and eventually unhappy search for a long-sleeved T-shirt for her son. In the interests of saving you the same experience, she says if you share her quest, you and Indiana Jones can avoid Woolies, Mr Price and Edgars. And strangely, buying clothes has never been more complicated. There are more choices now than ever before. Literally, there are so many different things to wear, and different places to buy them. So I find it interesting that many people, including myself, actually prefer to stay with what we know. For men, there is a very simple uniform in the corporate world, and you can really only choose between a suit without a tie, chinos or really smart jeans and a good shirt. Women, of course, have much more complex decisions to make. So bewildering are the signals that are sent to women about what is appropriate to wear that my brain would melt down very quickly if faced with the prospect. But clothing is integral to our daily lives and sometimes, more fundamentally, about how we see ourselves. If it is that you 'are what you wear', then we represent the world. Well, really quite a small portion of it. Mainly, China, Bangladesh and perhaps India. But more and more we are also representing KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. About three years ago, our clothing industry started to panic a little bit. It was entirely justified. The two Chinese behemoths, Shein and Temu were making massive inroads into our market. Their secret was pretty simple, but their real strength was in execution. They were able to design clothes quickly and get them out into the market at very low cost. The idea was that you would wear something for just a couple of times and then chuck it away. For someone like me, who thinks having two work jerseys is too much, this is horrific. Think of the environmental impact, the sheer waste of it. But to the people who buy these clothes, it makes perfect sense. The delivery system works, the designs are up to the minute, and they're wonderfully cheap. However, I think something has shifted fundamentally in our market. Because our own stores are pushing back, and have pushed back very successfully. First it was The Foschini Group, which realised that if you control stock properly, you can actually make quite a lot of money by producing your stock here. In a competitive industry like this, it was always clear they would be followed by other people very quickly. And that other powerhouse of our local textile industry, Mr Price, has followed suit. They've increased their local procurement by more than 50% in the past five years. You can imagine all the positive knock-on effects to this. They're creating jobs and all of the ecosystems that exist around clothing factories. This would include people as diverse as drivers and designers. It is a wonderful virtuous circle in our economy. So, what happened to create this happier state of affairs? Clearly our business leaders spotted an opportunity. They realised that, actually, while Shein and Temu were going to be threats, there were ways to counter them. One thing about clothes is that because everybody buys them, value for money does matter. And yes, Shein and Temu will give you what you want for a much lower price, but the value-for-money proposition is not the same. There is no chance that I could survive the winter wearing just one Shein or Temu jersey to work everyday. It would simply fall apart. And the same must hold for much of what they sell. Basically, while Shein and Temu were a shock at first, once consumers realised they did not last for long, they looked elsewhere. The other issue is price. And in this market, price really matters. When they started, these companies took advantage of the wonderfully named 'de minimis' rules. If shipments were below a certain value, customs did not charge any fees. The textile industry (including the clothing union Sactwu) spoke to the government and got the law changed. While there was some grumbling for a while from frustrated customers (would you like to suddenly pay more for a product you've been using for a while?), some must have changed their behaviour by now. All in all, this seems to have worked.
