If South Africa is mentioned in casual conversation these days, the 2010 FIFA World Cup is likely what comes to mind. However, in travel retail and tourism circles, any discussion of South Africa would be incomplete without mentioning Tourvest.

Gulf-Africa Duty Free recently spoke to Eric De Jager, Tourvest’s CEO Retail Merchandising, to get a sense of the company’s successes during the first half of the year, and especially during the World Cup. His words reveal that while Spain may have taken home the trophy, it certainly wasn’t the only winner this summer.

Perhaps the most exciting development for the company in H1 2010 was that just prior to the World Cup, Tourvest was awarded the tender for a new souvenir shop at O.R. Tambo. Tourvest opened a temporary store within a week of being allocated the space. The location was originally stocked with US$105,000 worth of goods, and in just 19 days during the World Cup, the company did US$263,000 in sales.

Also located in O.R. Tambo is the company’s biggest shop, Out of Africa, which measures 450-square-meters. Add to the above stores in Cape Town and in well-known destinations such as Robben Island, the V&A Waterfront and Kruger National Park, and a bigger picture in relation to the company’s sales during the World Cup begins to emerge.

“In terms of souvenirs, we sold 1.2 million individual items,” says De Jager. “Top sellers included vuvuzelas and what has become a local icon—the Zuma scarf. Our President Jacob Zuma wore the scarf to an official function and it became a bestseller overnight.”

Over the four weeks of the tournament the company sold 48,310 vuvuzelas; 57,152 African animal plush toys; 49,768 t-shirts, the most popular of which was chocolate-colored and featured the African continent on the front; 125,025 pieces of costume jewelry, mostly ethnic in style and composition; and 44,559 fridge magnets, the most popular being the South African flag.

Tourvest also sold an impressive amount of decorated ostrich eggs— 6,705 in total, to be exact. Of these, 75% were decoupage eggs retailing at R380 (US$50), meaning that the company sold over US$250,000 worth of this item alone during the World Cup.

“Trading patterns changed over the time of the World Cup,” notes De Jager. “The purchasing was male-driven and sales at the souvenir stores grew by over 80% year-on-year. In terms of traditional duty free merchandise, the focus was on ‘guilt purchases’ such as jewelry and ladies’ watches.”

As an in-flight promotional item during the World Cup, Tourvest launched the Telefunken tv-enabled mobile phone, which proved very popular with African customers. Other items that sold well during the tournament were cosmetics and liquor, with sunglasses performing beyond expectation.

“On South African Airways our fastest growing category is sunglasses and the top-selling brand is Carolina Herrera. A new product that is doing well are Polaroid sunglasses,” comments De Jager. “In terms of precious jewelry, tanzanite earrings, rings and gold maps of Africa are doing particularly well. Furthermore, the new Michel Herbelin watch has doubled the sales of this brand.”

On Kenya Airways, Tourvest reports that sales of the Breo watch are particularly impressive: “Precious jewelry is performing better than costume jewelry as a result of changing spending habits,” says De Jager.

Historically, World Cup host countries experience double-digit growth for at least three years after the event, and this combined with Tourvest’s already successful business gives De Jager a distinctly positive outlook for the near future: “The spectacular success achieved by South Africa as the host nation bodes well for the future of our tourism industry.”