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So would you say this time around you lost market share, or you kept your ground? Yes, we did increase prices, but we didn’t pass the full price increase on to consumers. In fact, we did absorb some of the inflation increases – both at retail and manufacturing – to try and maintain affordability for our customer, which we know is under pressure. The kind of volumes is more an indication of the strain that the consumers are under, rather than customers switching to other prices. We do benchmark our prices in the industry, and we believe we still have very competitive pricing.
And the imports, or specifically the supply chain – what’s that looking like for you right now? We have had a number of companies complaining about the challenges of getting as many goods in as they’d like, because of the real challenges and the shortfalls on our port lines. What has the experience been like for Italtile?
Oh, we actually opened seven stores, one of which was an online web store, and we opened one store in Zambia for CTM. We opened a Protea Glen in Soweto, and then we opened five TopT stores, which are distributed more in the areas around the urban centres, more rural areas, catering for the developing market. So we’ve seen increases in volumes through TopT, albeit small.