Article · By Lorenza Allan · · Updated
How Margaret Hirsch built Hirsch’s from R900
How did Margaret Hirsch start Hirsch’s Homestores?
Margaret Hirsch started Hirsch’s Homestores with R900 in severance pay, pooled with her husband Alan after she was fired five months pregnant. They repaired air conditioners at R45 a job, moved into appliances, and saved R100 a month to buy rental property. The business now has annual revenue close to R5 billion.
Once a month, GwenGo Collective members get an hour with a woman who has built something worth studying. Founders Insights brings successful women founders and entrepreneurs onto a members-only call to tell the real story behind the business. Then members take the hot seat and ask for advice on their own. You leave with ideas you can use the next morning and a few more women in your corner.
This month, that woman was Margaret Hirsch.
R900 and an air conditioner
Margaret was five months pregnant when her boss fired her. She started a shorthand typing business the same day.
She and her husband Alan pooled R900 in severance pay. No savings, no safety net. They repaired air conditioners at R45 a job, then moved into fridges, stoves and washing machines. When microwaves arrived in 1980, she tested recipes at home and turned the shop into a cookery school so customers would know what to do with them. Hirsch’s Homestores grew from there into one of the country’s best-known appliance retailers, with annual revenue close to R5 billion.
The second income
What stopped me was the engine running underneath the shop. From early on, they saved R100 a month to buy modest houses on Durban’s North Coast. Tenants paid the bonds. They reinvested. That habit grew into a billion-rand property portfolio here and another in the US. When COVID shut the stores, access bonds on those properties covered R15 million a month in salaries.
The year it went wrong
In 1988 she bought a competitor in Pietermaritzburg for R2 million. The books were dishonest. Overnight, she owed R5 million. She commuted every day for three years and rebuilt the capital, without lowering her standards to match the people who’d misled her.
Still a student
She moved to Johannesburg at 55 and lived in a flat above the new Fourways store. At 60 she enrolled at UNISA, redid matric maths, and finished an MBA at 70. At 76 she has passed her real estate broker’s exam in America and is about to start a PhD on African women entrepreneurs.
What I’m taking into 2027
Margaret’s mission is simple: every woman financially independent, free to make her own choices. She sees that as the route to ending gender-based violence.
When we got to my questions, her advice turned practical. Write your goals by hand, every day. Be specific to the point of feeling slightly ridiculous: not “a car”, but the model, the colour, the wheels, the upholstery. Put pictures next to the words.
So I’ve started. There’s a notebook covered in brown paper on my desk with 2027 written inside. I also changed my FNB app username. It now greets me with “billionaire now”.
What stays in the room
Margaret’s 4am routine and the exercise she gives every new staff member stay with the women who were on the call, along with the hot seat where members brought her their real business problems.
Want to be in a room like this? Join the GwenGo Collective.
