Browse films

Good Business

Robert Schermbrucker
2015, 25 min.

In English with English subtitles.

Good Business: The Story Of A South African Retail Giant tells the career-tale of Raymond Ackerman, a successful Cape Town entrepreneur who went against the political and social tides to do good work that benefitted people of color during segregated times. In 1967, Raymond Ackerman, with the support of his wife Wendy, bought four stores of a South African retail chain called the Pick n Pay and ignored the laws of apartheid, promoting people of color and providing them jobs in management and behind registers, even when they were not allowed to touch money, or work in white neighborhoods. Ackerman fought the government and cartels on price fixing at every turn to make food affordable to all people. Ackerman was a visionary with a business philosophy grounded in love, compassion and forgiveness. This is exemplified in Ackerman's table metaphor with one leg representing each administration, merchandise, social responsibility/sustainability and people. The consumer sits on the table's top. Pick n Pay also has a business incubator with 100 empowerment projects where new business leaders are encouraged to create products sold through the chain. The Ackermans and their management team have grown Pick n Pay from four to 1,200 stores, in six countries with 60,000 employees, 400 franchisees of color and $6 Billion in sales.

Director's Statement

In 2009, we were facing a global financial crisis and a general economic downturn. My wife and I needed some good news, some inspiration to then, from a creative perspective, capture and share with the world. At that time, Pick n Pay, South Africa's leading food chain store founded in 1967 by Raymond Ackerman, used the tagline "Inspired by You". This seemed like a good place to start. Without a clear directive as to what it actually meant, it left me to interpret through my own filters what the phrase held for me. Almost 20 years since Nelson Madiba Mandela stepped into his office as president, I am part of a nation of individuals, united only by the fact that we all live together on the piece of dirt at the southern-most tip of Africa, conveniently called South Africa. At the helm of this new democratic country, navigating toward freedom, health and collective happiness, we are striving to leave the shores of separation, segregation, anger, hatred, apartheid and ignorance. On a subconscious level, my personal history and relationship to the country resonated in the Pick n Pay tag. I am inspired by the people of this nation and their ability to rise above the historical injustice and difficult present-day circumstances to embrace a future while clutching the promise of change, reconciliation and freedom. These ordinary people represent what is good about our country, and the world. When Miranda Magagnini approached me with her "assignment" from the Fetzer Institute to create a film about a company whose values of love, compassion and forgiveness, mirrored their own, the Ackermans' Pick n Pay story was a natural fit. We began our journey looking through the lives touched by the Pick n Pay family, ordinary people now doing the seemingly extraordinary. Not only were our eyes opened to the extent of the transformational endeavors being directed by Pick n Pay, but we also saw a glimpse of why it was so important to the Ackerman family. They had been fighting for their consumer for years. They had been fighting forms of injustice for years. They genuinely seemed to care for this nation. Yes, "doing good is good business" but "social responsibility" seemed to be in their DNA! We interviewed person after person who had received an empowering intervention of some kind from the Pick n Pay family, and had taken that opportunity and converted it into something that would impact, not only their own lives, but those of their entire community. They all seemed to have this sort of "responsibility DNA" that formed part of their business ideology: using business as a tool to transform at the community-level. Our production team left the project very inspired and extremely intrigued by this "responsibility DNA." What is it and where does it come from? What motivates these business people to want to change their nation? What fuels their enthusiasm and compels them to succeed as they transform communities? We started to hear words like love, forgiveness, compassion and began to wonder what they had to do with business? In this short documentary film GOOD BUSINESS, we explore what these words and concepts mean for the people who have been significantly transforming their communities and this nation.

Category: Documentary.
Themes: Africa, World Cinema, Biography, Social Justice, Business.