Furnishing his vision: David Sussman’s retail revolution

From working as an assistant receiving clerk in the Joshua Doore Boksburg warehouse to taking over Joshua Doore stores as part of his own retail group, David Sussman has always dreamed big. Now retired, Sussman, the founder and former chief executive officer and executive chairperson of the JD Group, reflects on his business journey and on those who helped him along the way. 

“I was always ambitious,” he says. “I had this dream, and I wanted to make it happen.” Yet, despite all his professional accomplishments, Sussman, this year’s Investec Jewish Achiever Awards Business Icon Award winner, says his main claim to fame is sharing a birthday with the state of Israel. Now 77, Sussman looks back on his career with pride and gratitude. 

His first job in the retail space was in the head office of Ellerines. “They called me the personnel manager, but I was really the pay clerk because I had to verify the attendance register,” he recalls. “Being responsible for attendance registers put me under the eyes of Eric Ellerine, who was quite a formidable boss.” Yet Ellerine became a good friend and mentor, and was one of the first to call Sussman and wish him well when he started his business years later. 

Always interested in merchandising and marketing, Sussman was aware that he wouldn’t be able to work in these areas at Ellerines. So he persuaded the then managing director of Russells who owned Joshua Doore, to give him a job. 

“I was fascinated by the concept of Joshua Doore, which was very different,” Sussman says. “I loved that high volume hypermarket-type operation. It became an obsession.” 

Yet, starting at the bottom wasn’t easy. “At the time, my wife, Ros, and I had one child, she was a teacher, and she used to drop me off at the corner of Corlett Drive and Louis Botha Avenue in the morning. From there, I would hitchhike to get to work.” Having just built a house, his R200 monthly mortgage payments meant that Sussman had to sell his car. 

Yet due to his notable work ethic, he rapidly climbed the “corporate grease pole”, and within two years, he was second in command at Joshua Doore. The position came with a company car. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” Sussman says. “Working at Ellerines and then Joshua Doore served me well, because they were both well-run, publicly listed companies. Coming from a boys’ boarding school in Kimberley, I also understood the importance of discipline, which stood me in good stead.” 

In 1979, Sussman was approached by a head-hunter who offered him a position at listed furniture company, World, at ten times his existing salary. “I wasn’t interested in moving from Joshua Doore, I loved my job,” he says. On a subsequent tour of the United States which included meeting the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Sussman asked his rabbi to ask the Rebbe two questions. One was whether he should stay in South Africa, and the other was whether to take the job. His reply? “Stay where you are.” 

So he did. A few years later, having become disillusioned with Joshua Doore’s management and ready to fulfil his dream of running his own store, Sussman revisited the idea of joining World. It was always his plan to start his own DIY business, and World’s management agreed to help him do so while he worked for them and developed a template. Yet once he had done so, they wanted to keep him at the company. 

“That’s when I decided to go on my own,” Sussman recalls. “My father-in-law offered me the seed capital, and my wife’s brother, a qualified accountant, joined me. It suited me because though I recognise the need for administration, I’m a people’s guy who likes to be in the field.” Having grown up in an agricultural village, Sussman refers to himself as a country boy, which is where his affinity for dealing with people was nurtured. 

Sussman’s business interests soon grew. “Every opportunity that came my way was through the good offices of people who wished me well, from my supply base to investors,” he says. Soon seeking capital to grow the business, Sussman met Arnie Witkin, who had just started New Bernica Limited, the first formalised private equity company in South Africa. Witkin agreed to take a stake in the business, and introduced Sussman to Mervyn King, who at the time was chairperson of Kirsh Industries, which owned the Russells group that included Joshua Doore. 

“I persuaded Mervyn to sell us Joshua Doore, which necessitated us listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1986,” Sussman recalls. Their growth was exponential. “Every time we made an acquisition, it doubled our size.” Along the way, they also purchased World and Bradlow’s. “The Russells group, which we took over in 1996, was the crowning glory,” Sussman says. Guided by attorney Michael Katz, Sussman and his partners signed the deal at midnight, exactly 10 years to the day that they had opened their first shop. 

Continuing their growth trajectory, the group took over Profurn in 2000, and later Incredible Connection. “In about 2010, we bought the motor retail division and Timber City from Steinhoff. Steinhoff in return landed up with about 27% of JD Group,” Sussman says. 

Along his journey, Sussman was also involved in community projects, particularly education. “I became aware of how rotten so-called “Bantu education” was when we were interviewing customers applying for credit,” he says. “One was the deputy head of a high school in Soweto who was semi-literate.” Sussman knew he had to make a difference. 

“We started our first school in 1985 in the admin section of our small warehouse close to Soweto. The authorities at the time tried to shut the school down, but we prevailed.” The school moved into bigger premises as its popularity grew. Called the Freedom Centre, it drew the attention of Chris Hani and later Nelson Mandela, both of whom summoned Sussman for meetings. 

In 2013, Sussman’s wife was diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening autoimmune disease. “It became clear that if we were to beat this challenge, which we eventually did, it would have to be properly managed as a project,” he says. And so, at the end of 2013, Sussman retired from the business he’d started. 

Offering advice to entrepreneurs, Sussman says, “The two most critical things are believing in yourself, and being committed to achieving your dream. I had this unquenchable thirst, I was driven. I had all the right counterbalances by being surrounded by the right people who all became mentors to me. It was all a bracha from Hashem.”