The story begins

Alan Hellmann and Jack Schaffer first met while at Primary school in Durban where they both attended DPHS and went on to DHS where they matriculated before attending University in Durban at what is now known as University of Kwa Zulu Natal, or UKZN.

Alan attained his B.Com and Jack his CA SA.

I was working at Moshal Gevisser (a Wholesale Company) in the Men’s Clothing department under Manager Mike Woodley in 1966 when I received a phone call from Jack Schaffer asking me to go and see his friend Alan Hellmann at a new store called Grants in Smith Street, Durban.

At that time, Jack had a business called Friendly Christmas Club that was situated a few blocks from Smith Street in Pine Street. This business catered for lower-income people who wanted to buy decent gifts for family/friends or just treat themselves to something nice but couldn’t really afford the good things. Products varied widely from Bed Linen, Towels, Kitchen Appliances and Radios and of course a whole variety of other items which featured in their catalogues. Customers would select the items they wanted and then buy stamps each week/month from Friendly Christmas Club all through the year and when they had paid in enough to buy the item they simply went in with their book of stamps and claimed their goods. This business did well in that it received money all year and only handed over the goods once all money had been received.

Alan was at this time working in Rustenburg for his family business which was very vast with department store and everything that a country store was and always had a dream to open the discount stores, much against some of his families' wishes, but Alan and Carole bravely left Rustenburg to go to Durban and join with Jack - the rest is history. Alan was a marketing genius and ahead of his time.

Jack had seen an opportunity to start a business catering for people who had cash. There were no credit cards in SA in the mid 60s other than Diners Club and American Express, so you either had the cash to buy everything or you bought on the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) system. Durban Municipality used to have what was called the “Corporation Scheme” whereby you could buy any Electric Large Appliance and simply pay it off on your electricity account at a very low interest rate.

The problem with all this is that there was NO benefit to a person who had cash to pay for Large Appliances, Hi-Fi, Small Appliances and Furniture. The large department stores and furniture stores monopolised all this business. Everyone paid the same price and interest rates were not prohibitive, particularly if you bought on the Corporation Scheme. Jack had kept in contact with Alan all this time and suggested he come back to Durban and help him start a Mass Merchandising company as he (Jack) had all the contacts necessary for such a venture. They had been reading up on many such ventures that had started up in the USA and even in Johannesburg where Dion Friedland had started a company called Rave and Tony Factor had started Downtown Furniture but Durban was waiting.

Alan and Jack had found this huge empty place which was previously “Sons Of England Hall”, or SOE Hall a Hall in Smith Street, situated at the top end of Smith Street across the road from what is now Durdoc Centre between Broad Street and Russell Street, and was away from the main shopping area of down-town Durban.

When I arrived there for my interview after having gone past it twice before seeing it, I walked in to this cavernous place with very high ceilings, a few fixtures filled with some pots and pans, Electrical Small Appliances and a couple Fridges, Stoves and a Freezer. There was a wooden screen across the width of the store set up about a quarter way down into the “store” and just in front of the screen sat Alan Hellmann. He asked me to sit down and tell him about myself and asked if I could sell.

Being young and confident I told him most definitely, “YES”. So he took his packet of Texan cigarettes out of his top pocket and said, “Sell this to me!” After looking at him and spluttering something not too confident he said to me, “this is how you sell.” He then proceeded to show me all the techniques on selling that have remained with me to this day. He had me holding the pack and smelling the fine Rhodesian Carlton Tobacco Company aroma and I almost started smoking that day. He was that good and his knowledge and enthusiasm rubbed off on to anyone who was near him and was a lesson for anyone in the selling game.

I accepted his job offer immediately and so began my friendship and association with Alan, which extended until the day he died so tragically.

We started advertising a bit through pamphlets and in the newspaper “CLASSIFIED” advertising. By then our friend Dennis Jacoby had joined us and I’m not sure if it was his flat or another person’s flat in the Albert Park area that was used, but our adverts in these CLASSIFIEDS of the Daily News had items like Baby Cots and other items that we could advertise and schlep there to sell as “Private” sales. You see, Alan reckoned that people looked in the CLASSIFIEDS “For Sale” section after the Births/Deaths etc and people just accepted that these would all be bargains even though we sold these items at the same prices as we sold them in our store. I can remember once selling a cot which had paint that had not dried properly! 

Grants’ advertising was quite cheeky, controversial and eye-catching. We even had a few parking bays behind the store which was unheard of in those days for a store in the centre of the city. Our advertisements emphasised this by the line in all our adverts, PARKING FOR 100 CARS, 10 AT A TIME! There was a Spar store close to our premises and one of our friends who was involved in Spar in those days, Robin Burnill, recommended to us that if we wanted to succeed we needed to stand out from the rest of the other retailers. Spar was successful for their THEME promotions and hence our “DIRTY DOZEN” promotion declaring war on high prices was conceived and implemented. We bought a job-lot of assorted paint and mixed all the colours which we painted in the horrible colour on the outside. We (Alan, Jack, Dennis and I) all dressed in military uniforms and loud military music blasted out from the front of the store to everyone who passed our store. Anyone who walked or drove past knew the promotion was on!

Our customers were from all walks of life and we never ever refused a sale. If we didn’t have the item in stock, we took the customer’s name and through all our contacts we would obtain the product(s). We didn’t have any proper systems in place and I remember an occasion when one of our regular customers came in and approached Dennis Jacoby who was with me busy assembling some item and we were sweating there trying to figure where all the pieces went. This particular customer asked Dennis cheerfully, “Well, did you receive it yet?” and I could tell from Dennis’ reply that he didn’t have a clue what the customer was referring to, “What colour was it again?” The customer just stood there and stared at Dennis and said, “It’s black with a hole in the middle!”  You see, we even had a source to order LP records!

Alan and Jack were both hard workers but they also had a fun side to their personalities. I remember one Saturday after work at Grants when we had some Post Office technicians there doing something to our phone lines and after they’d finished, Jack asked them if they’d finished for the day and they told him that they still had to go to the almost-completed mansion in La Lucia belonging to the Oppenheimer family. Jack, with a glint in his eye, asked if they could tag along as their “apprentices”. They quickly found 2 white dust-coats and some screwdrivers and off they went with the real technicians and had a really good look at the Oppenheimer house and gave us a full report on Monday. They never missed out on any opportunity!

Another time, also after work on a Saturday afternoon, we were sitting around and Jack picked up the phone and called the DURBAN COUNTRY CLUB. In those dark days, this club wouldn’t admit Jews as members. They also never admitted people of colour. Well, Jack asked the operator if he could speak to one of the members there, named Mr Hymie Cohen!!! We all waited for a response but the operator asked Jack to hold on while he went to look. After about 5 minutes, the operator returned to say there was nobody there by that name. Upon enquiring with the operator how they knew, he was told that someone walked about the lounge area with a board and a bell on the top with the name clearly written on it. So Jack told the guy to please go around the WHOLE indoor area plus the veranda as he was certain that Hymie Cohen was there! Well, after about 10 minutes he returned to give us the news that Hymie Cohen was NOT there and we could not stop laughing while we imagined the scene playing out at the Country Club!!!

We used to have to buy most brands of appliances, small and large, through third parties as the manufacturers would not sell directly to us because they were petrified of the likes of Greatermans, Beares and OK Bazaars. Joe Pestana was a huge help and so was Ismail Kajee. I remember phoning Ismail once to enquire where our delivery was of stoves, fridges and other large appliances. He then told me that his driver had to “park off” at a movie as he was being tailed by a manufacturer who was obviously trying to trace where Kajee’s sudden increase in purchases was going to!

What we learnt in those days from Alan and Jack was that we never gave up and we always had a yearning to learn more and more from whoever would be prepared to share with us. I decided that I definitely needed to learn a bit more about selling and marketing and enrolled at the Technikon to do a 1 year Marketing and Sales Diploma course which was done after hours. When it came time to write the exams I decided NOT to write them as I reasoned I’d absorbed and learnt so much that I didn’t need the actual diploma. Alan and Jack called me aside when they heard about this decision and said that if I wrote and passed the exams, they’d refund me in TOTAL for the course costs as well as the exam costs. I passed and they were true to their word – that is how they were. Both of them. No big announcements or anything but quietly went about things and just DID things.

The second significant thing that Jack and Alan did for me resulted in a turning point in my life. Grants was so new and very successful. Everything we learnt was from hard work, lots of reading and good team-work and policies. We used to read USA newspapers and magazines and Alan and Jack were very friendly with Dion Friedland (Rave, Ansteys and later Dions). Alan, Jack and I asked Dion if he could organise that I work in a discount store in the USA to gain some experience and after many months of waiting and anticipation, nothing happened. Grants was eventually sold to Rave and then Rave and Ansteys/Greatermans joined so I decided to arrange things for myself and left Durban to work in New York City. This was a few weeks before Game opened its doors.

After leaving Grants, Alan, Jack, Erna, Barry, Trevor and Chris Burlock began planning their next venture, un-named at that stage.

Alan always preferred a 1-syllable word, easy to remember. He also fancied the name “TWO GUYS”, an obvious reference to him and Jack. This was the name of a very successful store in the USA which I visited at Alan’s request while I worked there in the USA. It was actually named “Two Guys from Harrison, New Jersey” but abbreviated to just TWO GUYS. We ended up using many of TWO GUYS’ ideas.

I got a call one day to meet Jack and Alan privately. They asked if they could help me by meeting with Nedbank to arrange a Credit Card for me to use in the USA. I never had to sign anything with them but they in turn DID sign as guarantor with Nedbank for my Gold Amex Card. There were no conditions attached – they just said I should use it responsibly for entertainment and an occasional good meal!  The only reference to paying it back to them was that I could pay them as and when I was able, on my return to SA. They paid the account each month!

Incidentally, even though the Amex card was used for my private use as well as business expenses, when I asked Alan and Jack how much I owed them, they just kept saying that they’d work it all out and let me know. They eventually said that I didn’t have to pay them back. They were really good people.


I’d been in New York working (for no pay) at a large discount store (EJ Korvette) and was in touch, by means of old-fashioned letters, with Alan and Jack. Game had been open about a month and they had sent me adverts and progress reports so I knew they were progressing well when I had a bet with a work colleague at Korvettes that Game was as well known as Korvettes, even though Game had only been open just over a month!

I cut out Alan’s face from a Game advert, stuck it on an envelope and stuck the “Game” logo on the envelope, then wrote Durban, SA and posted it with an enclosed letter on a Friday in Manhattan. On Monday, three days later, I heard them paging “Telephone call for Mr Bernard Shapiro” but I ignored it as there was another Bernard Shapiro working there and thought it couldn’t be for me. After about 5 minutes of repeated paging they announced “Bernard Shapiro from SOUTH AFRICA!” so I took the call and it was Alan excitedly telling me they had my envelope and letter and he asked if I’d like to work for them as a Merchandiser when I returned. (Alan HATED the term BUYER – we were MERCHANDISERS!) They wanted me to start a proper Auto and Tools Dept.

I then worked out a modus operandi and called them back a couple weeks later with my plan and they agreed to let me use my credit card to travel and find out everything regarding Auto, Tools, Hardware etc. I then spent the next few months meeting several leaders in the Auto and Tools segment of mass-retailing and got lots of assistance with ranges, adverts and other marketing information which I brought back to Game.