Speakers

Arie Fabian

Arie Fabian

Paragon Capital Partners
Partner

Topic: Retail of The Future in a V.U.C.A World

Biography

Fabiani was established by Arie's father Jeffrey Fabian in 1978. Arie returned to South Africa in 1998 after his internship at Hugo Boss to change and develop the Fabiani business model from that of a multi-brand retailer into the most desired premium menswear brand in Southern Africa. Bought G-Star Raw into South African, opening 2 flagship monobrand stores in key locations: V&A Waterfront, Cape Town and Sandton City, Johannesburg.  In 2011 the iconic Fabiani (along with the G-Star RAW monobrand)  was purchased by TFG. Arie was pivotal in changing TFG from a credit retailer to a portfolio of brands. Fabiani today is the fastest growing brand in the TFG portfolio. Arie’s passion for people, entrepreneurship and brands has lead him on an exciting journey of creative commerce. 20 years of "on the ground" experience  and an MBA in 'mistakes' has given Arie the tools to deliver creative solutions for entrepreneurs & brands. Arie has just completed an Executive MBA through The Berlin School of Creative Leadership.

Cate Trotter

Cate Trotter

Insider Trends
Head of Trends

Topic: Investing the Future of Retail

Biography

Cate Trotter is the Head of Trends at leading London retail futures agency, Insider Trends. She has been delivering trend presentations and retail safaris that focus on the future of retail for over 10 years, and has presented for brands such as Levi’s, Lego, Galeries Lafayette, Samsung, and Hermes. Cate’s experience of setting up two successful businesses in her twenties led to her being named one of the world’s top 50 influencers in retail for the past 3 years. She’s been quoted numerous times in Forbes magazine and is a RetailWire BrainTrust expert. LinkedIn named her one of the top 15 most listened to professionals in the UK.

Dr James Lappeman

Dr James Lappeman

UCT Liberty Institute of Strategic Marketing
Head of Projects

Topic: South Africa’s Top Million Households: An overview of the country’s biggest shoppers

Biography

James Lappeman the Head of Projects at the UCT Liberty Institute of Strategic Marketing. He has a PhD in Business Science (specializing in marketing and consumer behaviour) and also holds a Bachelor of Business Science and Masters in Religious Studies. James has taught and consulted for a number of institutions and companies, and has published articles in the news as well as in both local and international academic journals. Recently he co-edited a book, Marketing in South Africa, which was published by Van Schaik Publishers. James has a deep interest in marketing, business strategy and South African consumer behaviour. He has built curricula, supervised research, consulted to business and taught on the above topics to corporate strategy teams as well as to undergraduate and postgraduate students at UCT, UCT’s GSB, Henley Business School, Vega, Red & Yellow, GetSmarter and Educate24.

Fabrizio Valente

Fabrizio Valente

Kiki Lab - Ebeltoft Italy
Founder and CEO

Topic: Retail Disruption. Challenges and Opportunities for Malls and Retailer

Biography

Fabrizio has been dealing with retail for over 30 years, as a researcher and consultant for Italian and foreign companies. He is a frequent speaker on issues related to retail, innovation, change, motivation of the teams in conferences and conventions in Italy and abroad. He is president of the jury of the Innova Retail Award and a member of the juries that award the prizes of the World Retail Congress. In 2001 he founded Kiki Lab, a firm focused on Retail at 360° and works for Retailers and firms involved with retail channels in many different industries.  Kiki Lab is the only Italian member of Ebeltoft Group, a network of 22 companies operating worldwide and publishes worldwide researches on various topics: Retail Innovations, Horizontal Retail, Service @ Retail, Identity-Food in Risto-Retail, Store -Centric Cross-Channel, Brands go to Retail, The Trust Factor.

Femi Adebanji

Femi Adebanji


Business Speaker

Topic: Leading the Charge

Biography

Femi Adebanji is a sought-after international customer service speaker and organisational excellence speaker (Leadership, Change, and Motivation) with a passion for helping organisations transform their service excellence levels, build truly customer centric cultures, create high-performance business cultures and evolve into brands of distinction. With over 15 years of business leadership and customer strategy experience, he has consulted on numerous critical business performance improvement initiatives for companies in South Africa and internationally. He is Senior Customer Experience Strategist at Baines & Partners, a firm that specialises in Customer Experience consulting and Customer Service turnaround strategies. He is also Research Director at Pinnacle Consulting, a corporate learning consultancy that provides customised and off-the-shelf customer service training, and diverse skills development training solutions to organisations of diverse sizes across all industries. His expertise, knowledge and insights will not only transform the customer experience within your organisation.

Fifi Peters

Fifi Peters

CNBC Africa
Anchor, Content Curator & Producer

Biography

Fifi is a Financial Journalist who specialises in African markets.  She is an anchor and content producer at CNBC Africa. An economist at heart, Fifi obtained here BA Degree in Economics & Journalism from Rhodes University in 2010. She also holds certificates in Finance, Law and Media from the SA Institute of Financial Markets (SAIFM), the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), respectively. Fifi has worked in some of the most reputable financial newsrooms in South Africa including the Business Day and Financial Mail.  As a conference facilitator and MC, Fifi has moderated discussions for government entities and private sector companies such as MTN, IT Web, CABRI, Phillips SA, S&P Global and has facilitated discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She is currently studying towards a CFA Level 1 certificate.

Herculano Rodridgues

Herculano Rodridgues

Javelin Group
Associate Director

Topic: Technology, Improving the Retail Experience

Biography

Herculano Rodrigues is an Associate Director in the Locations & Analytics practice at Javelin Group, which is part of Accenture Strategy. He has more than 12 years of experience in retail strategy and consumer insight, working with leading international retailers and landlords to develop commercial insights to inform finance, marketing and strategic planning. Herculano is passionate about strategic innovation and technology driving the future of retail, and is helping clients deploy practical applications to help to unlock value and transform businesses. Over the past few years, he has led board-level engagements to embed customer insight and analytics to drive value from the merging of the physical and digital retail environments. Herculano is the chairman of the ICSC European Next Gen committee, vice-chairman of the ICSC Innovation committee, and is a frequent speaker at industry events.

Isana Cordier

Isana Cordier

Corporate and Investment Banking, Absa
Sector Head for Consumer Goods and Services

Topic: Consuming for a Purpose

Biography

Isana is an established banker with near 20 years of work experience in the financial services sector gained through her employment in various senior roles with the likes of Standard Bank, RMB and Absa. She currently heads up the Consumer Goods and Services Sector for Absa, and part of her responsibilities includes a deep understanding of the Sector to enable value added coverage and relationships both internally and externally that guides strategy and development within the organization whilst enabling partnership development with key strategic clients.  Isana holds a Bcom Honours degree from the University of Pretoria, as well as General Management Accreditation from INSEAD. In addition to passion and understanding of the consumer sector, some of her key strengths entail conception, development and execution of sales and business strategies as well as formulation of initiatives that enable revenue growth and profits.

James Beattie

James Beattie

Xanita
Founder and CEO

Topic: The Future of Retail Décor, Refurbishments and Beyond

Biography

Years of involvement within the digital print sector has given James a unique insight into all facets of the industry spanning geographic borders from South Africa, to New Zealand, to Australia, to India. With this knowledge, and with insights into forthcoming consumer trends and technology, James founded Xanita in 2008 with the vision of building a South African made global benchmark in sustainable and robust architectural features with a wealth of applications. By combining the latest technologies with unique design capabilities, James aims to leave the world a better place than he found it – one sustainable board at a time.

Kani Rajuili

Kani Rajuili

Research Director
Foshizi

Topic: How to leverage the use of community members as brand ambassadors in Peri-urban and rural areas

Biography

Foshizi, who are not new in the SACSC Research Conference, are research insights specialists into the black consumer market. Born eKasi in 2004 the company established a niche in the market as being amongst the few consumer insights companies that’s in touch and in the forefront. Their ground-breaking work can be summarised by the strategic output work they have done for clients like Nando’s, MultiChoice, Nestle, MassMart, Mr Price, Toyota, Shoprite, Flash Mobile, Virgin Active, Power Fashion, Nedbank and lots more. At Foshizi Kani is their specialists on Retail, FMCG and Banking sector and her responsibilities cut through designing of solutions for clients to delivery of the research. She graduated with a degree in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Witwatersrand.

Keillen Ndlovu

Keillen Ndlovu

STANLIB
Head of Listed Property Funds

Topic: The SA Economic Climate, Factors Affecting Consumer and Retail Market and Implications on the Listed Property Sector

Biography

Keillen manages one of the largest listed property funds in South Africa, the STANLIB Property Income Fund as well as the STANLIB Global Property Fund. After beginning his property career with Standard Bank Properties in 2004, Keillen transferred to STANLIB in 2005 as a listed property analyst. He became a fund manager in 2008 and was appointed head of STANLIB’s Listed Property team in 2010. The Listed Property team, with total assets under management of R15bn, has won numerous awards over the years for top performance. Under his tenure the team has expanded its listed property offering to global property markets. Keillen is a regular commentator in the media on listed and commercial property issues.

Kim Reddy

Kim Reddy

The Nielsen Company
Director: Consumer Insights

Topic: Unravelling the Complexities of Shoppers

Biography

Kim Reddy is current Head of Consumer Insights at Nielsen SA. She joined the business in August 2017 after spending the previous two and half years working in London. Kim has 20 years of research experience, having worked on both the research agency and client side. Before joining Nielsen, Kim spent eight and a half years in various roles at Millward Brown UK and South Africa. Prior to that she was the Group Research Manager for MTN and Research Manager for SABMiller Africa and Asia. Her experience extends across a broad category spectrum including FMCG, financial, telecommunications etc. and covers a wide variety of adhoc and custom-made research methodologies.

Lourens Snyman

Lourens Snyman

AfriGIS
GIS Specialist

Topic: Embracing Ever-emerging Technological Advancements to Support Facility Location

Biography

Lourens is a GIS specialist, product innovator and public speaker with a wealth of knowledge in GIS Data Analysis and Mapping. His love for people and a passion for maps have evolved over the last 20 years and have been instrumental in the growth of AfriGIS by providing various client specific spatial solutions to solve location sensitive problems. His career highlights include predictive modelling and trade area analysis in the retail industry, geographic accessibility studies and facility location analysis. He is currently managing the spatial data science team and serves as a project manager for a variety of AfriGIS products and solutions, including web and mobile applications. Lourens is a Professional GISc Practitioner who holds a Masters in Geography from the University of Pretoria and is currently furthering a Doctorate qualification at the same university.