There’s JM Coetzee’s Disgrace depressing, and then there’s the CNA. You’d be hard-pressed to find a store that evokes starker feelings of gloom and desperation than Edcon’s centenarian stationery and bookshop chain.Back in 1896 when it first opened its doors, a decade after Jo’burg was founded, CNA was probably on trend. It was WHSmith for the tip of Africa — all papers and periodicals, pots of ink and slide rules.Today, it’s another story.Spend five minutes in any of its 198 stores, amid its shemozzle of harsh strip-lighting, deeply impractical white floor tiles and rows of ring binders and packets of elastic bands, and you’ll reassess your life choices. Who, you wonder, is the market for their endless range of serial killer paperbacks and scrapbooking paper?Customers clearly feel the same way, which is probably why CNA’s sales plunged 7.2% for its financial year to March, after falling 5.6% the year before.It’s still making a profit, but the graph is only going one way.Perhaps und...
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