Raymond Ackerman, the South African retail tycoon and the founder of Pick n Pay has died. He was 92-years-old.
“It is with profound sadness that we announce the death at the age of 92 of visionary South African, and founder of Pick n Pay, Raymond Ackerman,” his family said in a statement on Thursday.
“He is survived by his wife, Wendy, children Gareth, Kathy, Suzanne, and Jonathan, his 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.”
Born in Cape Town in 1931, Ackerman was not merely the offspring of the founder of the Ackermans clothing group. He was a beacon of hope, inspiration, and resilience for countless South Africans.
His journey in the retail sector began with a foundational belief that resonated deeply with many: ‘the customer is queen’.
This ethos, combined with his commitment to treating others with respect and the understanding that doing good is good business, set the stage for a retail revolution in South Africa.
From the humble beginnings of acquiring four stores in Cape Town in 1967, Pick n Pay, under Ackerman's visionary leadership, burgeoned into a retail behemoth.
It now serves millions across South Africa and seven other African countries across 2000 stores.
His groundbreaking "four legs of the table" philosophy, which emphasised Administration, Social Responsibility and Marketing, People, and Merchandise, with the customer reigning supreme, was a game-changer in the retail sector.
However, to remember Ackerman solely as a businessman would be an incomplete tribute.
His family says he was was a devoted father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
“Raymond Ackerman was a man of the people; never too busy or too proud to make time for others,” the statement said.
“He remained humble throughout his life, and passionate about building a more just future for South Africa. He was an enduring optimist about South Africa’s future, and his passing leaves a great void for us all.”
He was a compassionate employer and a committed philanthropist.
Even in the1960s, he was determined to promote all employees to managerial positions, in defiance of apartheid laws which forbade it.
By the end of the 1970s, he had become active in the newly-established Urban Foundation, becoming a prominent champion of equal opportunity policies and merit-based salaries and wages, and increasingly critical of government’s homelands policy, the Group Areas Act and Job Reservation.
But he was also critical of sanctions, in the belief that they destroyed jobs and deepened poverty.
In 1989, Ackerman and a group of businessmen met newly appointed President FW de Klerk in Pick n Pay’s Cape Town office.
The group told De Klerk that late former president Nelson Mandela should be released as soon as possible, and that apartheid legislation should be scrapped.
Ackerman met Mandela on numerous occasions after his release, and the two established a warm relationship.
Ackerman was the driving force behind the bid to bring the 2004 Olympic Games to Cape Town, dedicating considerable energy and funding to the initiative.
In 2004, he established the Raymond Ackerman Academy for Entrepreneurial Development in partnership with the University of Cape Town, which was later joined by the University of Johannesburg.
The Academy has produced hundreds of new business owners, many of them offering employment to others, while well over 400 of its graduates are now actively employed.
Over the years, Ackerman was honoured by many institutions for his services to both business and society.
In their retirement from the board of Pick n Pay Stores Limited in 2010, Raymond and Wendy became Honorary Life Presidents. He maintained an active interest in Pick n Pay and his philanthropy projects.
A product of Bishops Diocesan College in Cape Town, he was president and then the patron of the Old Diocesan Union. He received seven honorary doctorates from local and international universities.
Ackerman was an avid and at one stage a scratch golfer, and was especially close to the Clovelly Golf Club, which his father founded and which was the first non-racial golf club in South Africa. He regularly watched all the golf majors and much sport on TV.
IOL News