Organic growth of the Edgars and United Retail brands (Jet, Smiley's Wearhouse, Sales House and Cuthberts) is expected to add another R2bn in revenue to the group over the same period, he said.

Ross was spelling out Edcon's growth strategy following the restructuring process the clothing retailer has been going through over the past few years.

Aside from the restructuring, the group has securitised its Nedbank book valued at R1,3bn, and its own book, valued at R1bn, allowing it to pay off its debt.

The selling off of its debtors book also gave it a pile of cash that proved to be useful when it came to buying CNA.

Ross said the CNA stores that Edcon bought out of liquidation were either profitable or, with the right infrastructure, would become profitable. There was a range of different problems to address at the stores, including operations, customer service and the low level of stock turn, which indicated that CNA was holding a large portion of unproductive stock.

Edcon had set up an integration team drawing on Edcon's experience in running operations, information technology and distribution to improve CNA.

'The first step in an acquisition is to make sure that you have a game plan for assimilation that is beneficial to the acquired company and is nondamaging to the acquiring company,' he said.

Edcon had no intention of renaming CNA, which was a 106-yearold brand and had considerable value, but it needed to be 'dusted off' and 'polished up'.

Ross said there were some possibilities of running CNA boutiques within certain Edgars stores. Over the next few months Edcon would be monitoring aspects of CNA such as footfall, spending per customer and how long customers spent in the store per visit.

He said the challenge for CNA would be to turn the number of people just passing through its stores into shoppers at the stores.

Ross said Edcon planned to grow organically through increasing the number of brand's it offered and also expanding its product offering in homeware.

Unlike other retailers, which have expanded into homeware, Edcon will not be opening up a new chain to sell these products.

In spite of reducing its trading space over the past few years, Ross gave a firm indication that new stores were in the pipeline.

He said the group had nothing against opening up new retail space, but will be more selective about new space, only opening up space that was profitable.

Although acknowledging the retail opportunities across Africa, Ross held the view that there were still plenty of opportunities in retail in this country.