Hi {{ FIRSTNAME | there, }}

Real solid? A robotics and a materials startup are joining forces to create a house-building spider robot to 3D-print new buildings, first on Earth, then Mars. 🕷

It’s been a while coming, but we think we’ve just glimpsed the missing piece SA e-commerce always needed to take off – it’s all in the stickiness…

One of e-commerce’s biggest challenges has always been retention. It’s a nature/habit thing: The bargain-hunter you lured in to buy a TV on Black Friday is unlikely to buy again for 12 months (unless you discount it by 70% to get their attention again).

Why? Well, branded physical stores are concentrated where humans move around, so they’re almost always at the top of people's minds. And digital’s so noisy, you’re more likely to tend towards things you see in the real world when you want or need to buy something.

To counter this, e-commerce spends a lot of money on marketing campaigns, trying to be top-of-mind. And it goes pretty far: In the US, Amazon launched a Netflix equivalent, Amazon Prime, just to keep Amazon top-of-mind while you’re watching your favourite show.

One local retailer has taken a page from that book…

Is this the holy grail of e-commerce customer retention?

Checker’s recently released their results and for the first time, reported Sixty60 numbers: R18.9bn in annual revenue (±R51m a day!). In itself, that’s staggering, but there’s even more to it…

Local retail data analysis company, Reveal, shared in a recent newsletter of theirs just how sticky a Sixty60 user is. Some 83% of the customers who do one transaction on Sixty60 in a year end up doing at least 2 or more. Drilling down further, 66% of their tracked customers end up buying 3 or more times per year.

Compare this to Takealot: 52% of their customers buy twice per year, and only 28% buy 3 or more times per year.

Groceries are a daily/weekly need. So the holy grail of customer retention in e-commerce could very well be FCMG with a great delivery experience. You become part of the daily rhythms of the consumer. And in doing that, you get a chance to sell other, high-margin products (like TVs at full price).

So what’s there to do?

Big e-commerce players likely know this already, hence why Amazon recently launched FMCG on their SA store. Takealot is also playing more and more in this space through its subsidiary Mr D, doing groceries in partnership with Pick n Pay and adding high-frequency non-food FMCG-adjacent categories like pantry staples, beverages, cleaning, and personal-care, baby and pet stuff, etc. – selling in bulk, to keep prices low.

With Checkers venturing into offering Hyper-Market items in the Sixty60 app, they are using their stickiness to get to those higher-margin items. Hey, you got them locked in buying steaks and beers for a braai with the boys, might as well sell a TV and PS5 while they're at it.

Checkers Sixty60 pioneered a whole industry in SA and, for that, they are reaping the benefits. But what is super interesting is how some of these learnings can help shape the way we shop and trade online forever. We are watching this space…

PS. If you are into South African retail transaction data, we highly recommend signing up for Reveal’s weekly newsletter. It’s full of great insights into all things SA retail shopper behaviour.

Payroll that grows with you…

Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace, takes the admin out of payday so founders and CFOs can focus on growth, not glitches.

And it works from startup to enterprise.

♻️ Circulars, Assemble! Local circular economy startups can grab up to R1 million in funding from the Nedbank ReNEW accelerator. With a focus on waste innovation and job creation, this is a juicy opportunity for the green gurus. Applications close on 9 October.

📱 Capitec's Cellular Clincher. Capitec Bank's mobile and value-added services are now making up over 26% of its revenue, a three-point boost from last year, with active clients nearly doubling in the last three months. Very cool.

👂 Listen Up. Instagram's head has assured us Meta is NOT tuning into your conversations to serve you those spookily accurate ads. Interestingly, though, Meta will soon be using your interactions with their AI products to serve you some ads. LOL. What?

🚀 New Bank Shaking It Up. OM Bank is signing up 1’000 clients a day from its existing Money Account customers. The bank has R4 billion in investments and plans to transfer 400’000 Money Account customers before tackling external prospects. Nice.

✅ The Stack. Founders need reliable tools and suppliers. That’s why our Founder’s Stack gives you company setup and compliance in one place with Govchain, brand and communications that build trust with DoubleShift, and loads more vital startup tools & services.

Every Friday, we dive a little deeper into SA e-commerce — this time, we showcase a market leader…

Checkers might be rolling, but make no mistake, Takelot still commands the largest share of e-commerce in SA (circa 20-30%). And it only comes through utter dedication to innovation.

Since the old Take2 became Takealot in 2011, acquiring Mr D and Superbalist in 2014 and merging with Naspers’ Kalahari.net in 2015 (round about the time they hit R1bn in sales), they went from generalist e-tail to a multi-format platform, adding pickup points, dark stores and a marketplace with thousands of third-party sellers.

Introducing robotic sorting and a personal-shopper programme to reach rural communities in 2024, group revenue topped R15bn as regular users exceeded 2.3 million weekly users, and they managed to grow their tiered TakealotMORE subscriptions by 4x in the first six months.

We’re telling you this because on 30 October, we want you to come meet Takealot Group CEO, Frederik Zietsman, with us at Innovation City.

We’re ending 2025 with a bang in Cape Town, and you should be there.

Get R100 off with an early bird ticket sommer now.

Yesterday, we showed you how MyBento’s working to deliver flexible employee benefits to SA, asking what work benefits top of your list. And nobody wants chocolate…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🦄 Unlimited leave (and no one side-eyes you for taking it) (32%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚁 Free helicopter rides to skip traffic (11%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🍫 Lifetime chocolate supply in the office kitchen (0)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🌍 Work from literally anywhere (Bali, Mars, you name it) (52%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎸 Personal hype band to follow you into every meeting (5%)

Your 2 cents…

True dat, R. We vote for Xmas break + 20 days and all public holidays shifted to make ‘em all long weekends. 🏝️

Ah, must be the Ben Schoeman, Ludwig. Where every single highway in the universe combines into one deafening Midrand crawl. 🚧

Jip, Nikita, that’s the big one. ✈️

💼 Business Development Consultant @ Outsourced CFO

☁️ Cloud Support Engineer @ Cloud on Demand

🤖 Commercial Director @ Plentify

🧮 Commercial Manager @ Outsourced CFO

🐮 Creative Director +31 more jobs @ Flash Group

🌮 Customer Success Specialist @ The Awareness Company

🔎 Financial Analytics Team Lead @ Dataloop

🧱 Lead Engineer @ Syft Analytics

🤓 Rockstar Developer @ TaxTim

🤝 Sales Development Representative (SDR) @ Beeline

💎 Senior Account Executive @ Jem

🏗️ Senior Full-Stack Engineer @ Sociable

🐒 Senior Software Engineer @ Rafiki Works

🎒 Software Engineer @ Bag Learning

🧑‍💻 Software Engineering Roles @ Octoco

Hiring? Let us know here and we’ll feature it next week.

🛠️ Tool to Try: Ghostart learns to think like you, to write LinkedIn posts that actually sound like you.

🦶 That’s Interesting: The Guinness World Record for the largest feet is 10 cm longer than a ruler.

🏉 Next Level: A wild beluga whale playing fetch with a rugby ball.

⏰ Hack: Check out this guide to time-management hacks.

📀 Wow Site: An endless stream of cringe 90s and 2000s gifs. Do any repeat, ever?

Hey, Renier here 👋, co-founder of The Open Letter.

I’ve spent 17 years in SA tech and seen hundreds of startups rise and fall. The ones that made it all had one thing in common: a strong community.

That’s why I started The Founder Collab — a space where 100+ SA founders connect for:

☕ Meetups & events

🎓 Weekly masterclasses

📚 35+ expert sessions on-demand

🤝 A network unlike anything else

Come build your startup alongside me and 100+ other SA founders in The Founder Collab.

Spaces are limited — new founders join weekly.

Help us make The Open Letter more useful to you.

Vote in the poll, leave a quick comment, or hit reply — we read every single one.