Right about the time Massmart founder Mark Lamberti was opening his first Game store in Mauritius, Whitey Basson was cutting the ribbon at his first Shoprite store in the island nation. Some 14 years later, Shoprite has opened two more stores, and Massmart has pulled out of the country after its store there underperformed. Digging deep and finding space in some of Africa's more difficult markets - among them Nigeria - during a 21-year venture into the rest of the continent has proved to be a winning strategy. Central to it is Basson. "He comes across as rough and ready but he is extraordinarily astute and he is astute in a number of ways: as a strategist and the way he went about growing that business," Lamberti told Business Times this week. The pair met early on during Basson's 37 years at the helm of Shoprite, after Lamberti bought six ailing Makro stores in 1988 and expanded into general merchandising. "We completely restructured the South African fast-moving goods industry," sa...
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