Verimark – the company behind Bauer pans and Shogun knife-sets — is betting on its "best Christmas ever" after introducing a raft of new products. Despite desperate times for South African consumers, CEO Mike van Straaten said he was "very excited" about Verimark’s monthly sales after the results. "The growth we’re showing in retail partners is substantially higher than those of our partners," he said. The CEO, whose rapid-fire patter sounds part sales talk, part racehorse commentary, said: "I don’t want to oversell it [but] I’m personally optimistic that it will be one of our best Christmases ever." Releasing interim results on Thursday, Verimark grew revenue from continuing operations by 13.7% to R209.7m. A big jump in new products — almost 86% up on the previous period — meant a similarly large increase in advertising spend, which contributed to a slide of almost 44% in pretax profit to R2.2m. "We had a lot more new products tested — so you load your costs – and sales kick in aft...
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