Stop selling us packaging - we only want what's inside!

ECONOMIST.com: One strategy would be to sidestep retailers completely and sell directly to consumers through the internet. P&G’s new boss, Bob McDonald, has alluded to this sort of plan. It could be exactly the type of “game-changer” his company desperately needs.

SHOOT: What these brands need to do is quit selling packaging to consumers, and sell us the contents. That is, after all, what we're buying, not pretty pictures. The brands that make these deprecating moves will survive those who insist on selling packaging and frills that consumers can no longer afford.

clipped from www.economist.com Earlier this month P&G reported profits of $2.5 billion, down 18% in the most recent quarter from a year earlier. Sales of its products—which include such brands as Bounty paper towels and Tide detergent—were down 11%. Analysts worry that it might take years for the company to restore its profits to their former levels. For most packaged-goods firms, recent earnings reports were grim. Unilever, the world’s third-largest consumer-goods firm by sales, announced this month that profits in the second quarter were down 17% from a year ago. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex tissues and Scott paper towels, Sara Lee, a manufacturer of frozen foods, and Colgate-Palmolive, with its eponymous toothpaste and soap, all saw revenues drop in the past quarter. Firms that specialise in food, including Nestlé, Kraft and Kellogg, are holding up better than those that sell products for cleaning and grooming, but only because consumers are preparing more meals at home.

South Africans currently paying record-high prices at the till, Checkers is cheapest, then Pick n Pay and then Spar

"Our basket focuses on basic foodstuffs such as bread, milk, margarine and rice, and does not attempt to monitor the prices of luxury items. The reality is that most South Africans buy these basic foodstuffs and they are currently paying record-high prices for these products. The consumer will have to protest more effectively against this," Kleynhans said.

SHOOT: I believe the time is not far away where we will see demand destruction take place, and suppliers will begin to change the inputs that go into things like packaging and printing costs. Because more and more will simply not be able to afford food in future.

clipped from www.fin24.com Solidarity's research revealed that Checkers was "slightly ahead" of Pick n Pay and Spar in terms of competitiveness. "If we leave out all the products in our basket that are on special or are not available, our basket currently costs R175.73 at Checkers. At Pick n Pay our basket costs R181.43 and at Spar R197.22. "Our basket focuses on basic foodstuffs such as bread, milk, margarine and rice, and does not attempt to monitor the prices of luxury items. The reality is that most South Africans buy these basic foodstuffs and they are currently paying record-high prices for these products. The consumer will have to protest more effectively against this," Kleynhans said. "Following the 16.8% food price increase last year, we still saw increases at the beginning of 2009, despite the drop in input costs experienced in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Swine flu death in Randfontein brings South Africa's toll to 9

SHOOT: I'm surprised these numbers are so low.

clipped from www.iol.co.za A ninth South African has died of swine flu, Beeld newspaper reported on Friday. Although the death of Gautenger Grobbie Grobler, 53, on Saturday, has not been confirmed by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), Beeld said it had a copy of his death certificate. It stated that he had died of swine flu. He was a car mechanic in Randfontein on Johannesburg's West Rand. The NICD has confirmed eight H1N1 deaths, including three pregnant women.

You can't have lightspeed internet and electric cars getting 230mpg if the lights aren't on

SHOOT: People are preoccupied, dazzled in fact, by technology. They're unaware of the the simple fundamentals [reality], which is that you can't have a population growing infinitely and limited resources depleting without coming up to a crisis, a crash, a collapse. In South Africa we've reached our electricity limits, but we still expect to be able to build hundreds of thousands of new homes, and don't think that will have an impact on electricity demand, and supply. Well, koo koo, it does, it is having an impact.

clipped from news.idg.no The question of electric power has dominated discussions on how technology can be used to spur economic growth on the continent. South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana and countries within the Sahara desert suffer from chronic power shortages that outstrip domestic and industrial demand.

By 2012, electricity will make up 10% of household expenses

MONEYWEB: This is going to create a price shock of which we have not seen since the oil shocks of the 70s. It was the oil shocks of the 70s that coined the phrase stagflation. Is stagflation what South Africans are going to remember most about the second decade of this century?

WIKI: Stagflation is an economic situation in which inflation and economic stagnation occur simultaneously and remain unchecked for a period of time.

Economists offer two principal explanations for why stagflation occurs. First, stagflation can result when an economy is slowed by an unfavorable supply shock, such as an increase in the price of oil in an oil importing country.Second, both stagnation and inflation can result from inappropriate macroeconomic policies. For example, central banks can cause inflation by permitting excessive growth of the money supply.

clipped from www.moneyweb.co.za There are rumours that on September 30 Eskom will be asking for a 40% price hike each year for the next three years. Reports say that this could see our electricity prices more than double. Just doubling our electricity bill would be a relief - what South African households will actually experience is electricity that is 267% more expensive in 2012 than 2008. Simply adding percentage hikes together does not show the compounding affect of price hikes on top of price hikes. If one looks at 2008 figures for household consumption, electricity makes up 3% of our total household expenditure.  However, if all other goods and services only increase in line with an inflation rate of 6%, the amount of household income spent on electricity will rise to 10%. Although large users of electricity like steel manufacturers, mines and smelters can all negotiate rates, smaller businesses will simply have to accept the price increases and hand this on to consumers.

ALEC HOGG: I spend a lot of time at the Rosebank Mall - not too much time, not like David with the coffee shops - and I've noticed there that the security presence is probably up 50% in the last couple of weeks

Tragically Jaco Pretorius, managing director of Protea Coin Security's guarding division, died in hospital after allegedly being shot while trying to stop three robbers who had just hit a Sterns jewellery store at the Irene Mall Village, Centurion.

Listen to more here: http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/applications/mw/templates/2009_listen_audio.jsp?url=/mw/media_stream/mw/audio/090818-04.mp3

SHOOT: Crime is coming closer to us as financial conditions worsen for more and more people. Over 700 000 South Africans lost their jobs since the beginning of 2009.

clipped from www.realestateweb.co.za Gauteng malls have been hardest hit, but shopping centres elsewhere haven't escaped this growing trend of robberies. At Canal Walk, Century City, in Cape Town, a mall employee was shot and wounded by robbers in April and a restaurant employee was shot and injured in May in a robbery. Earlier this month two security guards were shot and wounded at the Trade Route Mall in Lenasia. In the first week of August there were at least five incidents involving armed gunmen at Gauteng shopping malls including at the Bracken City Mall, Alberton, where a gang of about 20 robbed a Pick 'n Pay supermarket, a bottle store and a pharmacy within a few minutes. The robbers, apparently armed with handguns, worked through tills and ordered customers and shop attendants onto the ground, before getting into a shoot-out with Ekurhuleni Metro police officers as they were making a get-away. One officer was injured.  And, so the list goes on, of one shopping mall "hit" after the next.

Sowetan newspaper provides proof that Caster Semenya’s a girl

“People should not mistake her strong voice and her physique for that of a man. She has always been a girl and did everything that girls did,” said Morolong.

SHOOT: Case dismissed?

clipped from www.sowetan.co.za clipped from www.sowetan.co.za Mokgadi Caster Semenya is a girl, and her birth certificate corroborates what her family, friends, neighbours, teachers and fellow pupils have always known. Semenya, who is now the centre of attention after winning gold in 800m at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in Berlin on Wednesday night, was certified a girl at her birth on January 7, 1991. The fracas about her gender has now angered Masetlhong villagers in Moletji outside Polokwane, where Semenya was born and bred. “Caster is a girl and the school has never had doubts about her gender. “To top it all, she is straight and has never entertained issues of lesbianism,” he said. “She used to be a good soccer player, though she was an average pupil in class,” he said, adding that Semenya was a “very talkative” person who is fond of tsotsitaal. “That she is a tomboy does not mean that she is a man,” Modiba said. Her long-time friend Debra Morolong also quashed doubts that Semenya was a man.