What Would Change If Cashbuild Knew Every Customer by Name?

The Business Is Healthy. The Customer Relationship Hasn't Started Yet.

Cashbuild is well run. The latest interim results (six months to December 2025) show revenue of R6.3 billion, headline earnings per share up 18%, gross margin at 25%, and cash reserves of R2.1 billion. The Allbuildco acquisition is expanding the brand into higher-income segments through three Amper Alles stores. The Small Model Store format is pushing deeper into townships. Cashbuild Xtra is broadening the range. CEO Werner de Jager noted revenue in the first seven weeks post-period was up 8%.

The financials are sound. But underneath them sits a structural gap that gets wider every year: Cashbuild does not know who most of its customers are. The majority pay cash, leave no details, and cannot be followed up. There is no way to know whether someone is building a house from scratch, adding a room, or maintaining an existing property. No way to tell a homeowner from a contractor. No way to recognise that a customer has spent R80,000 over nine months and has never once been thanked for it.

Every one of Cashbuild's direct competitors has already started closing this gap. Builders has Builders+ and Builders PRO. Build It (a SPAR Group division) has its savings card. Meanwhile, Capitec gives its own cardholders 1% cashback when they shop at Cashbuild, and African Bank gives 1.5% in MyWORLD points. Both banks own the data and the relationship. Cashbuild provides the foot traffic.

What follows is not a proposal. It is a picture of what becomes possible when a building materials retailer decides to own its customer relationship. And the best part is that the most proven model in South African retail right now is also the simplest.

Start Where Dis-Chem Started. With a Discount.

In October 2025, Dis-Chem retired its 23-year-old Benefit Card and launched Better Rewards. The programme's foundation is not complicated. It is a simple, instant discount at the till.

Every Better Rewards member gets 10% off on 170+ participating brands across 11,000 products. The discount is applied at the till, on the spot. It stacks on top of existing promotions. The customer sees the saving immediately on their till slip. No points. No delayed gratification. No complicated redemption. You swipe, you save.

The critical design choice is who pays for it.

The brands do. Over 170 suppliers co-fund the programme. As CEO Rui Morais explained: "We used to pay a lot of money to participate as a brand in partner programmes. Vendors now co-fund with Dis-Chem directly. They see this as a market share opportunity." The brand pays for the discount. Dis-Chem provides the customer traffic. The customer sees value instantly. Everybody wins.

The results in 17 weeks: retail revenue up 10.4%. Pharmacy revenue up 13.7%. Volume growth of 5.2%. Participating brands saw revenue growth of 19.4% and volume growth of 20.9%. Non-participating brands also grew because more customers were walking through the doors. 550,000 new shoppers entered the brand. R410 million returned to customers. On track for over R1.5 billion in year one.

Now Apply That to Building Materials.

Cashbuild sells products from PPC, AfriSam, Cemza, Kwikbuild, Duram, Harvey Roofing, and dozens of other manufacturers. These suppliers compete fiercely for contractor preference and shelf prominence. Every cement brand wants to be the one a builder reaches for. Every paint brand wants to be specified by the contractor.

Imagine a Cashbuild loyalty card that works the same way Dis-Chem's does. A customer registers for free (in-store, on WhatsApp, or via USSD). From that moment, every time they swipe the card at the till, they receive an instant discount on qualifying brands. PPC cement: 5% off. Duram paint: 8% off. Harvey roof tiles: 6% off. The discount is visible on the till slip. The customer feels it immediately.

The supplier funds the discount. In exchange, the supplier gets something they cannot get any other way: direct, measurable access to identified buyers. PPC can see exactly how many bags of their cement were sold to loyalty members this month, at which stores, and how that compares to AfriSam. That data is worth far more to them than a catalogue advertisement. They would gladly fund a 5% customer discount to get it.

That is it. That is the entire customer experience. No app to download. No points to calculate. No voucher to remember. The saving happens at the moment of truth, at the till, when she is deciding whether to come back to Cashbuild next month or try Build It.

This is Layer 1. The foundation. It is the thing that creates the customer identity, captures the purchase data, gives the supplier a reason to co-fund, and gives the customer a reason to always swipe. Everything else builds on top of it.

Layer 2: The Banking Partner Amplifier

Dis-Chem did not stop at the supplier-funded discount. They added Capitec as an exclusive banking partner. When a Capitec cardholder pays at Dis-Chem, they get an extra 5% off on qualifying brands, on top of the base 10%. Total discount: 15%. The customer sees it on the till slip. Both brands are credited. But the programme is Dis-Chem's.

This is how the best retail partnerships in South Africa work. They amplify each other.

FNB ended its eBucks partnership with Checkers in March 2025 and made Pick n Pay its exclusive grocery partner. Pick n Pay customers who select PnP as their preferred grocer on the FNB app earn up to 30% back in eBucks on asap! orders and up to 20% back in-store. FNB's 6.4 million active eBucks members became a customer acquisition channel for Pick n Pay. Pick n Pay's store network became a reason for FNB customers to stay.

Shoprite responded by partnering with Standard Bank. Checkers already had Discovery Vitality, which gives up to 25% back on HealthyFood items at Checkers (boosted to 75% with Discovery Bank). BP rewards Discovery Insure customers with up to 50% fuel cashback. Shell does the same for Vitality Drive members.

The pattern is the same every time. A retailer and a bank form an exclusive or preferred partnership. The bank co-funds the reward. The retailer provides the customer experience. The customer gets a visible, immediate benefit for using both brands together. Both brands grow.

Cashbuild already has a Capitec relationship (1% cashback). It already has an African Bank relationship (1.5% MyWORLD points). But in both cases, the reward belongs to the bank, not to Cashbuild. The Dis-Chem model shows how to flip that. Instead of Capitec giving 1% into its own savings pocket, the partnership funds an extra 5% Cashbuild discount at the till. The customer sees "Cashbuild Rewards" on their slip. The loyalty lives inside Cashbuild's programme.

A restructured banking partnership turns an existing relationship into a competitive weapon. Cashbuild becomes the only building materials retailer where your Capitec card gives you extra savings. That is a positioning statement that matters in every township in the country.

Layer 3: Lifestyle Rewards That Match the Life

The instant discount is the foundation. The banking amplifier is the accelerant. But there is a third layer that creates the emotional connection. And it is the layer that makes Cashbuild's programme different from just another discount card.

When someone is building a house, they are sacrificing other parts of their life to do it. The family food budget gets squeezed. The children's activities get cut. The fuel bill hurts more because of the trips to the store. A programme that recognises this, and helps with it, builds a relationship that no competitor can copy with price alone.

The grocery voucher is funded by the institutional partner. The sports sessions are funded by a lifestyle rewards network. Cashbuild's cost is the technology and the relationships. The customer's experience is that Cashbuild cares about their life, not just their transaction.

For contractors, the lifestyle rewards match a different life. A R500 fuel voucher after the R100,000 spend milestone. A Steers meal for the team after a big order. A weekend away for the family after R250,000. These are not loyalty points. They are recognition that this person works hard, runs a business, and has been choosing Cashbuild when they could have gone anywhere else.

The SPAR Possibility

This is worth examining closely. SPAR Group operates 2,550+ stores across southern Africa, including hundreds of SaveMor and KwikSpar stores in exactly the communities Cashbuild serves. SPAR also owns Build It, a 397-store building materials chain that competes directly with Cashbuild.

On the surface, that makes SPAR an unlikely partner. But look at what happened with the banking partnerships. FNB left Checkers and moved to Pick n Pay. Shoprite responded with Standard Bank. Discovery had Woolworths, then added Checkers. These partnerships are strategic. They are exclusive. And they reshape competitive dynamics overnight.

A SPAR-Cashbuild partnership could work the same way. SPAR grocery vouchers become the lifestyle reward currency inside the Cashbuild programme. Every building milestone earns a SPAR voucher. The customer who spends R5,000 on bricks gets a R200 SPAR voucher. The family building a house one room at a time gets their groceries covered for a week, every time they hit a milestone.

SPAR benefits because it drives foot traffic to SaveMor and KwikSpar. Cashbuild benefits because its reward is the most useful thing in the customer's life. The customer benefits because building a house no longer means choosing between bricks and bread.

And here is the strategic kicker: if SPAR partners with Cashbuild, it creates a reason for Build It customers to switch. A homeowner who currently splits between Build It and SPAR might consolidate to Cashbuild because the Cashbuild programme feeds back into their SPAR grocery bill. The partnership does not just reward loyalty. It acquires customers from the competitor that SPAR itself owns.

Whether the right partner is SPAR, Shoprite, Pick n Pay, or another grocery brand depends on the negotiation. The point is that the partnership structure is proven, the commercial logic is clear, and the customer impact is immediate.

What It Takes to Make This Real

A programme like this does not emerge from a single department. It requires research into customer segmentation across Cashbuild, P&L Hardware, and the new Amper Alles format. It requires commercial negotiation with suppliers who will co-fund the discounts. It requires a banking partner willing to restructure the existing relationship. It requires an institutional grocery partner willing to provide the reward currency. It requires technology that works on WhatsApp and USSD, not just apps. And it requires a rewards infrastructure that can deliver vouchers, manage supplier settlements, and report on commercial outcomes across 322 stores and five countries.

That is not a software purchase. It is a strategic programme. Research. Strategy. Partner recruitment. Technology. Implementation. Measurement. A journey that starts with understanding the customer and ends with a self-funding ecosystem that grows with the business.

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