CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA (09.24.2020) – PlanetWorld is a proactive 12volt distributor with 3 location in South Africa. Their newly expanded facility in Cape Town joins the Johannesburg and Durban locations.
David Glasgow, Kicker International Sales Manager for that part of the world, coordinated this article with PlanetWorld’s Rayno van Heerden. This article, in Rayno’s own words, details obstacles that caused time consuming delays in preparing the building for their operation. Then the COVID-19 Pandemic hit the world and that resulted in a complete shutdown of the country for 2 long months.
The new PlanetWorld facility in Cape Town is now complete. The images in this article definitely showcase the new state of the art facility. A Grand Opening event will be scheduled for a date in the near future.
Words from Rayno van Heerden:
“Having run out of space quicker than expected, I urgently had to start looking for new premises as soon as we re-opened from summer holidays in mid-January. After viewing many different options I eventually settled on a building in close proximity to the airport. It was only a shell but this suited us perfectly as it allowed the flexibility of turning it into what we wanted.
We officially moved in on 1 March and because of a technicality at our electricity supplier, the premises was without electricity for the first 2 weeks. – yes, 2 weeks! As I’m sure you can imagine, renovating and remaining operational with no electricity is far from ideal however we somehow managed using extension cords and generators.
Within 4 days of moving in, disaster struck again when one of the construction staff left a tap running wide open overnight. The next morning I arrived to flooded upstairs offices with water seeping through the floor, dripping into the warehouse. This delayed all operations by 10 days as we had to allow time for dehumidifiers to dry everything out before we could continue.
Just as we were starting to make some progress again Covid19 hit and on 26th March the country went on full lockdown. This hard lock down was to remain in place for a full 2 months in which time no renovation could take place. We only re-opened again on 1 June at which stage we could continue with the renovations and business.
Expecting the worst, we were bracing ourselves for what the car audio landscape would look like post lock down. We were ecstatic to find that there was still a good market demand which lead to sales surpassing our expectations. Our shoot-the-lights-out brand was Kicker. To our surprise we’ve managed to maintain a year on year growth of 25% on the Kicker brand since reopening in June. I guess not even a hard lock down and plummeting vehicle sales were enough to stop folks Livin Loud with a Kicker sound.
“PlanetWorld is doing a terrific job growing the Kicker brand throughout their region. The entire PlanetWorld Team works to support their dealers and keep them informed about the latest Kicker products” David Glasgow stated.
Renovations were fully completed and offices officially opened on 7 September. Due to continued lock down rules we’ve unfortunately not yet been able to host a launch party yet but the offices are operating in full swing sporting facilities such as our Jim Morison board room, SONOS lounge, cinema listening room, speaker and radio display walls as well as open view technical department.
Despite the difficulties we faced, the PlanetWorld team pulled together, persisted and managed to pull off something we’re all very proud of. That is what I call living life amplified!”
Visit www.planetworld.co.za for more.
99 Aviation Cresent, Airport City, Cape Town
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