Big South African eCommerce store retrenching staff

South African eCommerce store Superbalist is retrenching a large percentage of its staff, including shutting down a whole department.

The retrenchments followed Takealot’s sale of Superbalist to private equity investors led by Blank Canvas Capital last month.

On 1 September 2024, the Takealot Group announced that it had sold Superbalist to a group of private equity investors.

“This strategic acquisition will support Superbalist’s ongoing growth, allowing the Takealot Group to dedicate its efforts to further expanding Takealot and Mr D,” it said.

Takealot said Superbalist services will continue to operate without interruption throughout the transition period.

Takealot will also continue to provide warehousing and logistics services to Superbalist through a multi-year service agreement.

“The Takealot Group remains committed to providing exceptional value and service to our customers,” it said.

A month after the sale, Superbalist informed staff that a new round of retrenchments would affect as many as 28% of staff.

The latest round of retrenchments followed staff cuts in August 2023 as part of restructuring the business.

“We need to reevaluate our structures to ensure that the business operates effectively in this current economic environment,” Superbalist said at the time.

The latest round of Superbalist retrenchments will potentially affect 75 roles at the company across most departments.

The “vertical design centre” and “engineering” will be the worst affected by the new round of retrenchments.

Information received by Daily Investor suggests that Superbalist plans to serve notices by 2 December 2024, right after the annual Black Friday sales.

A person close to Superbalist also informed Daily Investor that aggressive markdowns of certain items have begun.

These markdowns range from Mango to their private labels as Superbalist tries to clear terminal stock.

Daily Investor tried to contact Superbalist about the retrenchments, but the company’s contact page did not work.