Nabilah Safira
TechInAfrica – The South African fashion retailer, Mr Price, has recently passed Competition Commission’s green light to acquired full ownership of Yuppiechef, a local online home and kitchen retailer.
The ownership was granted without conditions as the acquisition is not seen as a potential disruption to other retailers, according to the commission in a statement on Thursday (08/07).
“We are very excited about welcoming the Yuppiechef team into our family,” says Mark Blair, Mr Price’s chief executive officer.
He further shared that the online retailer has bagged numerous awards in both e-commerce and stores, “and Yuppiechef has a proven ability to launch private-label categories which have also attracted industry recognition.”
The omnichannel-centric company has been marking Yuppiechef as their future investment back in March and sees the acquisition as a medium to channel their customer base share-of-wallet growth while reaching higher ladders in the Living Standards Measure (LSM) levels to cater to more upper-income customers.
Founded in 2006 by co-founders Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden, Yuppiechef started humbly from 32 kitchen products and is now joined by nearly 200 members to navigate the brand. It has two primary operations, the retail division which consists of its online platform and seven physical stores, as well as the wholesale division, that import and distribute wholesale products.
The team writes on its website about the acquisition, ensuring that their brand values and practices remain the same, but now with Mr Price Group support to further elevate their brand.
“The Mr Price Group believes in what we are doing now and how we are doing it, and is giving their backing to help Yuppiechef become an even better version of itself. They have no intention to change the things our customers enjoy about us most – we will be keeping our respective brands, target markets, and operations separate from those in the rest of the group. When it comes to things like opening more stores (to give more of you the chance to browse the best of our range in person) and continuously growing our product ranges, we will have more help to do bigger and more exciting things.”
“If you are one of our customers already, thank you for your support so far, and if you are not, we will keep on trying to win you over.”
Read here for the full statement from Yuppiechef.
