In this presentation Charlotte Kemp uses Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) to dissect the decline and recent turnaround of South Africa’s retail giant Edgars/Edcon. She begins by recalling Edgars’ cultural role in South African life – the first credit card, the department‑store experience, the myth that Edgars was an essential part of the nation’s fabric. She then moves to the systemic layer, describing how large‑format flagship stores, high mall rents, complex inventory, mounting debt and slow decision‑making created a fragile business model that was further exposed by COVID‑19. The worldview of the 1980‑90s – success through scale and prestige – reinforced these problems, while the underlying myth of retail inevitability prevented critical self‑examination. A pivotal radio interview with the CEO highlighted the crisis. A new owner, Retailability, intervened by challenging the old myth ("Edgars must be the biggest department store") and replacing it with a new myth ("Edgars must stay relevant to customers"). The new worldview shifted from scale to efficiency, flexibility and relevance. Concrete actions followed: closing under‑performing stores, renegotiating leases, simplifying operations, focusing on profitable locations, and opening smaller, relevant stores. These systemic changes produced visible results – renewed store openings, improved customer vibe, and restored confidence. Kemp concludes by urging listeners to apply CLA whenever they encounter stagnant results, noting the difficulty of confronting deep‑seated myths and worldviews but emphasizing its power for shaping future change.
Chapters
But I'm going to give you another example, which for anyone in South Africa you will recognize, and that is of the retail giant, Edgar's. This is an advert they had for— they had out recently. You had a bad day? People forgot we existed. Now, when I was growing up, Edgar's was— when you grow up, you get your first Edgar's account and you get your first card, and then you know that you're a grown-up because you got you got your, your Edgar's credit card. It wasn't just a department store. It was a place that we went to, that we hung out at. It did financial products and funeral plans. It had everything that you need, you know, personal and makeup and homeware. And, you know, it was just everything you could find in Edgar's. And any big store or small that you went to, they had an Edgar's. So it was part of our culture growing up. But there was a problem that Edgar's had, is that their sales were declining. Their large flagship stores were increasingly empty. And for any of the South Africans there, think back to, you know, a couple of years ago before COVID if you ever went into, into Edgar's, I would have loved to work out who did the salespeople training there. because it was really good. You would walk in and there would be salespeople around. They'd be very friendly and they want to help you and, and make sure that everything you need is there. And they could do that. You could have 3 or 4 salespeople helping you because there were only a handful of people in the store. The sales training was really good, but it wasn't answering the problem. And maybe they were just playing around at the top there, but it wasn't addressing the real issue. Their debt was mounting, their malls had less foot traffic, and the stores were increasingly more expensive to operate. This became a really serious problem. And then COVID came and just absolutely escalated the crisis. So when we look at the system beneath it that created these results, part of the system were these huge rental commitments in the premium malls, in the big malls. Their large format department store era was built literally for another era, like for the '80s and '90s. They had high debt servicing costs, they had very complex inventory. If you went into an Edgar's store, you could find all these other brands with like these little mini shops within a brand. And there were like technical problems as well about slow decision-making and being unable to respond to the competition from online retailers and from fast fashion. And all of that started to create these serious problems. Beneath the system was the worldview that made sense back in the '80s and '90s when I was growing up, when Saturday morning meant going into town and going to visit Edgar's. Having a big store was prestigious for the Edgar's brand. Department stores were a destination, a place that you went to and you met up with people, and customers enjoyed browsing around through the different items in the store. And that was the worldview they had, and part of it was based on this this myth of Edgar's being part of the fabric of South African life. Becoming an adult, getting your first card, that was a big event. My mom took me, we celebrated. Part of the myth is that retail is inevitable and essential and cannot be replaced with anything else. It's a myth that we all believed. And the danger of those powerful myths is that organizations start to believe that what they have created is permanent and inevitable and cannot be challenged. And that was the problem. So, whoopsie, we gotta go back one. There we go. So when COVID hit, everything for Eggers really came to a crisis. And I remember listening to a recording of a radio interview with the CEO, And he was being interviewed by Bruce Whitfield, I think, on The Money Show. And the CEO was talking about, very frankly, because this was not an Edcon problem, this was a South African problem, that Edgar's didn't have enough money. They had enough money probably to pay salaries this month, but now we were going into lockdown and people weren't buying from Edgar's and they already had problems. and they didn't have money to service their debts. And the CEO is getting choked up. He's getting emotional on radio in front of the entire country. And it was really a pivotal moment. And I imagine this man had grown up with the myth of, of Edgar's. He wasn't much older than me. So, you know, he would have grown up with that as being part of his background and his own life. And he must have been so proud when he finally got to that position of CEO. And now he's facing this situation that, that really traumatic for so many people. And it was like nobody was looking at Edgar's going, oh, look at all the things you did wrong. It was like everybody was feeling that kind of shared pain of what that company was going through. So they needed to change things, and they could only change it by starting right down with the myths and metaphors. So a new company came along and bought them, Retailability, and they challenged a whole lot of things. And I think part of it is because they came in with a fresh mindset, um, they didn't bring in all those inherited values and myths and things. And they said, let— what is real here that we can make work? And, and what do we get rid of? What do we let go of? So the old myth was, Edgar's must be the biggest department store. Apart from a grocery store, Edgar's was always the largest store in a shopping mall. The new myth was, Edgar's must remain relevant for its customers. That's the story we're gonna tell. That's what we're gonna talk about. Edgar's is relevant, not Edgar's is biggest, not Edgar's is proud. Edgar's is relevant to what our needs are. So once they change that little bit, then they could start to change the worldview. The old worldview was success comes from scale, from being large. The new worldview is success comes from efficiency, flexibility, and customer relevance. That's how we're going to measure it. That's what the worldview is. That's what we're operating in, in a world that is online and everything is happening so quickly. We need efficiency, flexibility, and being relevant. And so they created new systems. They closed underperforming stores. They reduced their store footprints in the shopping malls. They renegotiated their leases and rental exposure. They simplified their operations. They got rid of a whole lot of elements to the business that were there for ego but didn't actually add to the bottom line. They focused on profitable locations. They pulled all that together and they created better systems. And those better systems inevitably, without any effort after you created the system, create new better results. And the visible results today is that Eggers is now opening new stores again, not huge massive stores, but really tight relevant stores that are profitable, that are creating renewed confidence in the shopping malls and with consumers. And when consumers walk in now, when a customer walks in, there's a new attractive energy and vibe in the Edgar store that has been missing for a very long time. So for me, I just find that to be a really powerful illustration of how we can use this causal aid analysis. And again, I invite you, Sketch that out anytime that you're stuck thinking, I'm not liking the results here, let's go down and explore what is beneath. And as you go down, you'll be able to find those other layers. This is not the easiest exercise, and this can be challenging when you start to get to worldviews and myths and metaphors. It's literally about our identity, how we see ourselves. And anybody who's had any challenge to their identity, who've had to, you know, rework things, especially post-COVID, you'll know that that is quite challenging. So just give yourself a good dose of grace if you are working through that. But in terms of making real change, in terms of shaping things for the future, there's nothing better than that particular model, causal data analysis. So yes, we can really shape things for the future.
