Back-to-school 2025: Retailers report good start

Jannie Vermeulen, Ekspa and Adno’s
Benoni, Gauteng, SA – Up until October, it was a tough year, but then it started to improve. We had a Black Friday offering, and quite a few parents took the opportunity to buy early at lower prices.
     December was up on the previous year, and our first day of trading in January was very good. We supply uniforms for 34 schools, so we’re very busy.
     We still have to get to the end of February to see whether we will be up on 2023/2024 overall, but it’s looking promising. I have heard that some other school wear retailers have not done well.
     Parents were affected by interest rates on cars and bonds, and we were also affected by a very mild winter.
     Getting stock wasn’t a problem – many suppliers delivered early, which allowed us to top up where we were short. On the shoe side, we have 5 or 6 suppliers, covering quite a wide range of price points.

Yunus Hansa, Luggage Centre
Newcastle, KZN, SA – Trade for most of last year was poor. In December, it wasn’t very good, but there was demand, including on the school wear side, which was surprising. These next 2 weeks are very crucial for us, and we’re hoping the demand continues.

Idris Pandor, Gem Schoolwear
Durban, KZN, SA – Since Education is always on top of the minds of parents, we are fortunate that we see an uptake in purchases of uniforms as soon as schools have their orientation days towards the end of November and early December.  It is always the new intake in Primary and High Schools that drive the early sales.
     The eager and wise parents buy early before Christmas and New Year. The parents with kids that are already at school do the top up buying after New Year and that is where it becomes challenging when they throng to the stores in the last 10 days before schools open and we need to be ready with our stocks. Planning is very essential, in fact planning at Gem Schoolwear starts as soon as January is over.
     Gem Schoolwear produces uniforms that are locally manufactured, by South Africans for South Africans, and are priced competitively. We are proud to create employment for hundreds of employees locally.
     So far up to the end of December, there has been an improvement in sales in our retail stores as well as our wholesale division compared to last year. We hope this trend continues into 2025. Our online store is also showing a positive growth, and this is a market that we need to nurture.
     We do our best to carry a large range of basic school wear to support our school wear dealers as well as school shops countrywide and beyond our borders at short notice while "special orders" do take anything between 4 to 8 weeks to produce.


Chiman Harjeven, Knight’s Shoes/City Fashions
Grahamstown, E. Cape, SA – We’ve only just started with back-to-school. There wasn’t much of that in December, but there seems to be a lot of interest now. We’ll know more next week.
     December trade generally was better than I expected – not great, but I was pleased.