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Cape Town - Forty-nine years ago, founder of Pick n Pay Raymond Ackerman took a bold step.
He’d just been fired from his job and was walking around Zoo Lake in Johannesburg wondering what he was going to say to his wife when he got home. The young couple had three children and a fourth on the way.
With what Ackerman called “10% capital and 90% guts”, Pick n Pay was founded with four small stores.
On Tuesday, Pick n Pay began the celebration of 49 years of a business that now employs more than 70 000 people and has more than 1 100 stores in Africa.
Through the business and its enterprise development scheme, Pick n Pay has helped small entrepreneurs fulfil their potential and become part of the national retail chain’s supply network.
Last week, Ackerman was honoured for this commitment to entrepreneurship when he received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Rutgers-Camden Business School in Philadelphia.
He was lauded for his work as a global leader in the retail industry and for his contribution to building Pick n Pay as a company that prioritises its customers, is socially aware, and has contributed to economic growth in Africa.
