Popular South African giant discount retail company, Game, has announced it’s exiting Nigeria by December 25, 2022.
This was disclosed in a letter signed by the Vice President of Merchandise at Game, Neville Hatfield, dated October 26, 2022.
As seen in the letter, the company noted that it had notified its business partners about the imminent exit from Nigeria earlier this month.
AMBusiness reports that the company will empty all its stores through a stock clearance sale as against its previous plan to devolve all Nigerian assets to Xanderwill Limited. This is coming after the company announced the closure of its Kenya branch.
The letter read, “On October 4, 2022, we notified you that we had initiated potential Game store closure consultations with our staff members in Nigeria. These consultations follow a decision to discontinue the process to sell our Game Stores in Nigeria to Xanderwill Limited.
“We also committed to providing you with a further update as soon as we had clarity on the way forward, following consultations with our staff, which have now been completed. Unfortunately, in the present circumstances, we feel that there are no reasonable alternatives to store closure. This has been an exceptionally difficult decision to take and we recognize that it will be a source of disappointment for many. In the case of Game staff members, our undertaking is to provide severance packages in recognition of their service to our company.
“Similarly, we will meet our outstanding commercial commitments to our business partners in Nigeria. In terms of immediate next steps, it is our intention to initiate a stock clearance sale in our stores in Nigeria.
“We anticipate that the last trading day for Game Nigeria will be on 25 December 2022. We will contact you within the next few weeks to finalize commercial expectations and arrangements with you. Thank you for your service to Game Nigeria, we are so sorry that we have been unable to continue our operations in your country.”
