Kenyan Kmart

Atul Shah is following in the footsteps of Sam Walton by starting a retail chain inspired by Kmart — in Kenya, report Will Connors and Sarah Childress in the Wall Street Journal (5/26/10). It was while visiting Florida in the 1980s that Atul, "a former mattress salesman, wandered into a Kmart and marveled at its cleanliness. He was so impressed at how the store sold food, household goods and furniture under one roof that he hung out there for hours a day for eight months."

After returning home to Kenya, he formed Nakumatt Holdings and opened "a small shop that offered food and some household wares. The shop was clean and had wide aisles for easy browsing, unlike the cramped stores that populated his home country. Each year he added a few more product lines, including furniture." He now has a total of 24 stores that "appeal to a middle-class that wants Kenyan-made products as well as imports from Europe, the U.S. and Asia. Revenue last year was about $350 million, up 76 percent from 2006."

Atul has opened "five new stores in just the past three months" and today Nakumatt "is the dominant supermarket in Kenya." Nakumatt is actually just one of a number of "home-grown companies … expanding aggressively across the continent, eager to accommodate a growing middle-class among the billion-person population." Others include Spur Corp., a "348-restaurant chain" that "has opened in seven other African countries." Growth is however limited by "cumbersome trade tariffs" and because "the majority of people in African countries live well below the poverty line."