Image by JD Sports
JD Sports has opened a 1,030m² store at Mall of Africa in Midrand, its biggest on the continent, and started selling online in South Africa. It is the most visible step yet in a rollout run by The Foschini Group (TFG), which holds the JD franchise in the country and has now opened 14 stores in two years.
TFG signed the exclusive franchise in March 2024 and opened the first store at Canal Walk in Cape Town that November. The group has since put the target at 50 to 60 stores within five years, up from the “more than 40” it flagged at signing, with up to R2.5 billion in turnover by 2029.
Chris Rowan, JD’s International Franchise Director, said the flagship and digital launch show “the confidence that our global brand partners have in the South African market.”
JD’s appeal rests on getting product from Nike, adidas and New Balance that rivals can’t, and brands allocate their best lines to retailers with the floor space and sales data to justify it. A store this size, backed by an online channel, makes that case in a way a handful of mall units could not.
The group already owns Sportscene, Totalsports and Sneaker Factory, so JD sits above them as a premium, multi-brand option. The risk is that it takes sales from those chains rather than finding new spend, and South African households are still stretched.
Fourteen stores in two years leaves TFG needing well over a dozen openings a year to reach the top of its range. E-commerce helps cover regions that can’t yet support a store. TFG also trades in Namibia, Botswana and Zambia.
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