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Mr. Tekkie, the shoe retailer founded by former executives and staff of Tekkie Town, plans to open its first stores in late October.
The inaugural stores, to be opened on October 24, will be located in Acornhoek, Mpumalanga and in the Bloemfontein CBD. The retailer will open a store in Cape Town on October 25. It will be located on the corner of St Georges Mall and Strand Street in the Cape Town central business district.
The former CEO of Tekkie Town and the new head of Mr. Tekkie, Bernard Mostert, previously told Fin24 that 15 stores are expected to be launched in its first phase of expansion.
Mostert told Fin24 on Tuesday that he does not expect Mr. Tekkie and Tekkie Town to be competitors, as he expects Tekkie Town to be returned to its former owners - who are the management of Mr. Tekkie - based on an ongoing court case. He added that the two stores will have largely different product offerings with only a “small overlap”.
The launch of Mr Tekkie comes as some of the former Tekkie Town executives that founded it are still engaged in various court actions against Pepkor around the sale of Tekkie Town to Steinhoff International in 2016.
Tekkie Town was later transferred to Steinhoff Retail Africa, or STAR, the JSE-listed company that contained Steinhoff's African retail assets. STAR has since changed its name to Pepkor Holdings as it seeks to distance itself from Steinhoff International.
Mostert and other senior Tekkie Town executives resigned from what was then still STAR in June 2018. They soon started probing the feasibility of launching a new shoe retailer.
* Correction. A previous version of this article stated that the inaugural Mr. Tekkie store would be launched in Cape Town on October 25. This is incorrect. Two stores will be launched on October 24 in Mpumalanga and the Free State. A previous version of this article also stated that Mr.Tekkie's original roll-out would be in the Northern and Western Cape, which is incorrect.
* Update: This article was updated on Tuesday at 13:25 to include comment by Mr. Tekkie CEO Bernard Mostert on why he believed Mr. Tekkie would not be in direct competition with Tekkie Town.
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