Building materials wholesale and retail supplier group The Building Company’s theme for this year, showcased at its 2025 exhibition being held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, was “intelligent growth”. So highlighted group executive: marketing Lesego Moagi, in an exclusive interview with Engineering News, on Tuesday.

“Growth means exactly that – we want to grow our market share, our store footprint, and our product range,” he explained. “But you can’t grow by just setting up new stores or adding new products arbitrarily. You need to do your research, first, and, for example, locate new stores intelligently. We want to saturate a local market with an existing store, before opening a new one.”

Such an approach could deliver surprising results. For example, on the West Rand of Gauteng province, research resulted in a new store being opened only a matter of minutes’ drive from an existing, larger, store. Far from cannibalising the existing store’s business, the new store added new business. Despite their geographical closeness, the new store tapped into a new and distinct market, which had not been served by the larger, existing, store.

He elucidated that the group supplied sub-contractors in the building and construction space, not contractors. It was composed of nine subsidiary companies, each of which had its own brand. Each of these companies/brands served distinct customer types. Two of these companies were focused on the retail sector, namely BUCO and Timbercity. The exhibition was focused on these retail brands.

“This is the fifth exhibition that we’re doing and its purpose is to allow our top suppliers – 110 of whom are attending the exhibition – to interact with our leadership, including all our BUCO and Timbercity store managers from across South Africa and Namibia,” he pointed out. “And our suppliers have sent their leadership to the exhibition. This is our biggest exhibition so far, and every supplier attending it has helped fund it, which shows their commitment.”

The sector had been depressed since the Covid-19 lockdown. Political uncertainty, following the lockdown, and preceding the outcome of last year’s elections, had kept the space depressed. The growth in the exhibition did not reflect growth in the sector, observed Moagi, but rather The Building Company’s success in growing its share of the existing market.