The shapeshifter revolutionising retail

The 2024 AdFocus Shapeshifter of the Year is Neil Schreuder, chief strategy and innovation officer for the Shoprite Group and MD of ShopriteX. The latter is Shoprite’s digital innovation unit, which fuses data, technology and talent to create a smarter Shoprite, able to provide enhanced and personalised customer experiences. It represents the group’s investment in fit-for-the-future precision retail and is part of the group’s strategy to grow its ecosystem of value for consumers and to monetise new and diverse revenue streams. Among other things, ShopriteX enables the group’s Sixty60 delivery service, its Xtra Savings rewards programme and a retail media network called Rainmaker.

Schreuder is responsible for customer strategy and digital transformation at Shoprite, tasked with driving a more customer-centric culture in the company using data and creating personalised experiences for the group’s 31-million consumers.

With consumer technology at its core, his role focuses on disruptive changes affecting grocery retail and unlocking alternative sources of revenue through media and data monetisation.

One of the reasons for the Shoprite Group’s success in recent years is an obsession with the performance and satisfaction dynamic. Schreuder says one of the secrets to its success is closed-loop measurement, tracking what consumers are purchasing in stores and online.

The group’s hugely successful on-demand grocery delivery app, Sixty60, has won numerous awards. The Shoprite Group has a 75% share of the online grocery market. The number of stores used to fulfil Sixty60 orders has grown from 466 a year ago to 539.

Schreuder says Sixty60 is the most disruptive thing that’s happened to food retail in the past four decades. “The success of Sixty60 lies not only in the technology and user experience online but also in the back-end integration with Checkers supermarkets,” he says.

Sixty60 was initially imagined as a “forecourt in your pocket”, with about 500 products. Today it offers more than 20,000 grocery and 10,000 general merchandise lines. The latest version of the app combines grocery deliveries with larger household good and accessories as well as alcohol deliveries. Schreuder says Sixty60 is doing 180 times its best five-year business case scenario.

Xtra Savings, the group’s loyalty rewards programme, is another hugely successful innovation. Xtra Savings is the largest rewards programme in South Africa, with more than 31-million members.

The AdFocus judges called Schreuder a true shapeshifter in terms of his ability to evolve in his career and somebody who has shape-shifted an entire category. They commented that Sixty60 stands as an incredible initiative developed under his watch.

The big take-out: Sixty60 is the most disruptive thing that’s happened to food retail in the past four decades.