State of the Marketplace, Q3 2026: Takealot growth slowed in September, and it slowed for almost everyone
Gadjet's quarterly read of the Takealot marketplace for July to September 2026: sales down 9% on August across the same group of sellers, the catalogue up 23% in a quarter, page-one prices flat, a third of page one out of stock, who the biggest sellers are, and what to do about it. Every number says how it was measured.
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TL;DR. Across the same group of Takealot sellers, September 2026 sold 9.3% less than August and 73% of sellers fell. Year-on-year growth is still positive but halved from +33% in July to +13% in September. The catalogue grew 22.6% in one quarter, page-one prices did not move, and 35% of page-one listings could not be bought at the end of September. The softness is the market, not any one store. Hold price, hold stock into the fourth quarter, and defend rank in pets, beauty and toys. This is the first quarterly State of the Marketplace from Gadjet; every table says how it was measured.
The quarter in one line
September was down 9.3% on August across a fixed group of sellers, and 73% of them fell.
If your September was down somewhere between 5% and 12%, you moved with the market. The quarter still grew on last year, but the pace halved between July and September.
-9.3% September vs August, cohort sales (GMV, incl. VAT)
73% of sellers whose September was below their August
-10.2% median seller, September vs August
Cohort sales index, March 2026 = 100
| Month | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales index | 100 | 94 | 119 | 115 | 136 | 133 | 121 |
A fixed group of sellers with sales in every month March to September 2026. Cancelled lines excluded. GMV is the selling price, VAT included. Data as at 14 October 2026.
Same quarter, year on year: sellers trading in both 2025 and 2026
| Month | July | August | September |
|---|---|---|---|
| GMV growth on 2025 | +33% | +22% | +13% |
GMV growth on the same month in 2025. Units follow the same path: +39%, +21%, +15%. The first two weeks of October are running at September's level.
Catalogue growth
The catalogue grew 23% in a quarter. Nine in ten categories got more crowded.
Across the 1,670 categories Gadjet tracks weekly, listings rose 22.6% between early July and early October. 1,538 categories grew. The median category added 21.4%. That is more competition for the same, slightly softer, demand.
| Department | Categories | Growth, Q3 | Categories that grew |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pets | 39 | +57.9% | 39 of 39 |
| Beauty | 80 | +35.6% | 76 of 80 |
| Toys | 92 | +33.6% | 87 of 92 |
| DIY, tools & machinery | 62 | +31.0% | 57 of 62 |
| Automotive | 81 | +30.3% | 79 of 81 |
| Computers | 95 | +26.6% | 88 of 95 |
| Office & stationery | 209 | +24.6% | 191 of 209 |
| Home & kitchen | 322 | +22.2% | 300 of 322 |
| Health | 77 | +14.5% | 72 of 77 |
| Baby | 41 | +5.7% | 35 of 41 |
| Fashion | 95 | -4.3% | 76 of 95 |
| All 21 departments | 1,670 | +22.6% | 1,538 of 1,670 |
Pets, beauty and toys are where new sellers are arriving fastest. Fashion is the one department that shrank: fewer listings on page one is an opening for sellers who are in stock.
Method. Books, Music, Movies and Vouchers are not included. Takealot lists some products under more than one category, so absolute counts overstate distinct products; growth rates are unaffected because the same duplication is in both windows. Ten departments with growth between +5.8% and +28.1% are omitted from the table for space and included in the total.
Price
Page-one prices did not move. This is a volume story, not a price war.
Gadjet followed 105,612 listings that held a page-one position in their category at both the start and the end of the quarter. The median listing's price changed by 0.0%. 28% cut price, 23% raised it, and the rest held.
| Department | Page-one listings tracked | Cut price | Raised price |
|---|---|---|---|
| TV, audio & video | 1,274 | 38% | 27% |
| Automotive | 3,186 | 37% | 30% |
| Cellular & GPS | 1,203 | 37% | 25% |
| Computers | 4,204 | 33% | 28% |
| Home & kitchen | 14,363 | 32% | 23% |
| Beauty | 5,315 | 19% | 19% |
| Health | 6,003 | 17% | 19% |
| Household, food & beverages | 2,219 | 15% | 24% |
| All departments | 105,612 | 28% | 23% |
Electronics and automotive are where discounting is most common. In health, beauty and groceries, as many sellers raised price as cut it. Nowhere did the typical price fall, which means the September softness was not caused by a round of cuts and will not be fixed by one.
Method. Buyable listings on page one of their category only.
Where the volume is
The ten biggest page-one categories by estimated monthly units.
Gadjet estimates monthly unit sales for every category from the rank of listings on page one and known sales at known ranks. These are estimates and are labelled as such. They show where demand concentrates, not where it is easiest to sell.
| Category | Department | Est. units, 30 days, top 36 | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eau de parfum | Beauty | 18,300 | High |
| Hair extension & wig accessories | Beauty | 15,900 | Medium |
| Minerals | Health | 15,600 | High |
| Creatine | Health / Sport | 15,500 | Medium |
| Cellphone chargers | Cellular & GPS | 15,200 | High |
| Tick & flea | Pets | 14,900 | High |
| Dishwasher and cleaning tablets | Household | 14,400 | High |
| All-purpose cleaners | Household | 14,100 | High |
| Ink cartridges | Office & stationery | 13,900 | Medium |
| Treatments | Health | 13,400 | High |
Method. Gadjet estimate of units per page-one position for each category, summed across the 36 positions. Categories shown only where the fit is high or medium confidence. Quarter-on-quarter change for this table will appear from the Q4 edition.
Brand concentration
Page one is closing up in six of the ten biggest categories.
Share of the 36 page-one positions held by the three biggest brands, start of quarter against end. A rising number means the leaf is harder to enter; a falling one means space opened.
| Category | Top 3 brands, July | Top 3 brands, September |
|---|---|---|
| Eau de parfum | 83% | 86% |
| Hair extension & wig accessories | 92% | 83% |
| Minerals | 44% | 47% |
| Creatine | 42% | 43% |
| Cellphone chargers | 83% | 86% |
| Tick & flea | 100% | 92% |
| Dishwasher and cleaning tablets | 56% | 64% |
| All-purpose cleaners | 64% | 58% |
| Ink cartridges | 78% | 78% |
| Treatments (health) | 56% | 64% |
Tick and flea, wig accessories and all-purpose cleaners opened up during the quarter. Cleaning tablets and health treatments tightened. If you sell into a leaf where three brands hold more than 80% of page one, your route in is a keyword those brands do not own, not the category page.
Method. Brand of each listing in the top 36 organic results. Same ten categories as the volume table above.
Stock-outs on page one
More than a third of page-one listings could not be bought at the end of September.
35% of listings holding a page-one position were not buyable in the last week of September, up from 32% in early July. That is competitors running out, and it is the clearest opening in this report for sellers who hold stock before Black Friday. Stockouts compound, for them and for you.
| Department | Not buyable, July | Not buyable, September |
|---|---|---|
| Fashion | 68% | 68% |
| Cellular & GPS | 39% | 46% |
| Home & kitchen | 33% | 39% |
| Toys | 31% | 36% |
| TV, audio & video | 29% | 35% |
| Computers | 29% | 33% |
| Automotive | 24% | 31% |
| Beauty | 27% | 27% |
| Health | 18% | 19% |
| Household, food & beverages | 12% | 14% |
| All departments | 32% | 35% |
Automotive, cellular and home and kitchen lost the most stock cover in the quarter. Fashion is structurally out of stock because size and colour variants hold positions while individual options sell through.
Method. Whether each top-36 listing could be added to a cart. Not buyable includes out of stock, lead-time only and pre-order.
The biggest sellers
The top 100 storefronts hold 35% of all Takealot reviews and grew 21% in a quarter.
Gadjet tracks 2,413 active Takealot storefronts with a review history. Reviews are the only public measure of a storefront's volume, so they are the yardstick here. The market is top-heavy and getting more so.
35% of all storefront reviews held by the top 100
52% held by the top 10% of storefronts
78 reviews on the median storefront
| Fact | Top 100 storefronts | All other storefronts |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews needed to be in the group | 758 or more | — |
| Review growth, July to September | +21% | +45% in total, median storefront +19% |
| Share of all new reviews in the quarter | 43% | 57% |
| Storefronts with no new review in the quarter | 2% | 20% |
| Average storefront rating | 4.41 | 4.16 |
| Shows a VAT registration | 47% | 28% |
| Offers on the storefront's first page | 169 | 106 |
| Share of those offers where they are the only seller | 49% | 54% |
Three things separate the top 100 from everyone else. They are rated a quarter of a star higher. They carry 60% more range. And they are more willing to sell on shared listings: half their page-one offers compete with other sellers on the same product, against 46% for the rest. Scale on Takealot is built on contested listings won on price, stock and rating, not on owning unique products.
The other side of the table matters as much: one smaller storefront in five sold too little in the quarter to earn a single review. Only 62 storefronts on Takealot have passed 1,000 reviews.
Method. Public storefront pages. Current standing uses every active storefront with a review count. First-page offers and sole-seller status are from the storefront's own listing page. No storefront is named.
Order quality
Returns steady, cancellations down, average ticket up R10.
| Measure, fixed seller cohort | Q2 2026 | Q3 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Return rate (share of shipped lines) | 4.60% | 4.71% |
| Cancellation rate (all causes) | 1.60% | 1.35% |
| Cancelled by customer | 0.88% | 0.54% |
| Average unit price, incl. VAT | R370 | R380 |
| Orders by region: JHB / CPT / DBN | 58 / 32 / 10 | 59 / 32 / 10 |
Customer cancellations nearly halved, which usually means better stock cover and shorter lead times across the board. Returns are flat. If your return rate is above 6%, the gap is yours, not the market's.
Search
What South Africans started searching for more this year.
Sustained product searches by South African shoppers that are up at least 40% on last year, from Gadjet's search-volume index. Search leads Takealot sales by one to two months, so these are the Q4 demand signals. The method is the same one behind keyword research on Takealot.
| Search term | Department | Searches a month | vs last year |
|---|---|---|---|
| airpods pro 3 | Cellular & GPS | 301,000 | +306% |
| apple watch ultra 3 | Cellular & GPS | 135,000 | +50% |
| glp 1 | Health | 90,500 | +124% |
| wall box | Computers | 90,500 | +49% |
| he man | Toys | 60,500 | +306% |
| the amazing digital circus | Toys | 49,500 | +398% |
| magnesium bisglycinate | Health | 49,500 | +49% |
| 3d printer | Computers | 40,500 | +83% |
| world cup | Sport | 27,100 | +400% |
| tubing mascara | Beauty | 9,900 | +236% |
From the Q4 edition this section will also list the phrases that appeared in Takealot search for the first time during the quarter.
Method. Gadjet search-volume index, South Africa, product-intent terms with a sustained trend, mapped to a Takealot department by Gadjet. Branded device launches are included because they move whole categories (cases, chargers, straps).
What shoppers want
Baby, cellular and cameras have the most wanting and the least buying.
Wishlist adds are counted per product and shared across every seller on the listing, so they are a marketplace signal of intent. Set against units sold, they show where shoppers are saving products and not buying them. A high ratio means demand is waiting for a price, a review or a stock position.
| Department | Wishlist adds per unit sold, 30 days | Wanted but not selling |
|---|---|---|
| Baby | 10.1 | 12% |
| Cellular & GPS | 7.5 | 16% |
| Cameras | 6.6 | 5% |
| DIY, tools & machinery | 6.2 | 13% |
| Toys | 5.8 | 9% |
| Camping & outdoor | 5.4 | 9% |
| Beauty | 5.2 | 15% |
| Home & kitchen | 4.5 | 12% |
| Health | 1.2 | 10% |
| Pets | 0.9 | 2% |
Pets and health convert almost every save into a sale. Baby and cellular do not: one product in six in cellular has 20 or more saves and no sale in a month. Those are the listings to put on promotion first.
Method. Thirty-day wishlist adds per product (collapsed to one row per product line) against thirty-day units sold on the same products by sellers on Gadjet. "Wanted but not selling" is the share of products with at least 20 adds and no sale. The ratio mixes a marketplace count with a Gadjet count, so read it as a ranking, not an absolute.
What the fourth quarter usually does
Last year the fourth quarter sold 30% more units than the third.
Across sellers on Gadjet who traded through the whole of the second half of 2025, October to December moved 30% more units than July to September. The lift was not even. Use this table to size inbound by department before the Black Friday cut-off.
| Department | Q4 2025 units vs Q3 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cellular & GPS | +118% |
| Sport | +116% |
| Fashion | +98% |
| Toys | +72% |
| Office & stationery | +54% |
| Pool & garden | +47% |
| Home & kitchen | +38% |
| Automotive | +28% |
| Health | +25% |
| Pets | +25% |
| Household, food & beverages | +10% |
| Beauty | +5% |
| Cameras | -27% |
| All departments | +30% |
Beauty barely lifts in the fourth quarter despite being the department that got most crowded this year. Sport, cellular and toys double. If you sell beauty, Black Friday is a margin event, not a volume event; plan accordingly.
Method. Units sold by sellers on Gadjet with sales in every month July to December 2025, mapped to department through the product's page-one category. Only products that appear on a category page are mapped, so departments with few page-one products are omitted. Cancelled lines excluded.
Where stock sits
Johannesburg holds 45% of in-stock listings. Durban gained a point.
Where marketplace supply sits tells you where your own stock should sit. The national split barely moved in the quarter: Johannesburg 45%, Cape Town 39%, Durban 17%. Durban gained one point, most of it in beauty, pets and office.
| Department | JHB | CPT | DBN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fashion | 50% | 43% | 9% |
| Automotive | 49% | 40% | 12% |
| Cellular & GPS | 48% | 40% | 12% |
| Home & kitchen | 48% | 38% | 15% |
| Computers | 47% | 40% | 13% |
| Toys | 42% | 38% | 19% |
| Beauty | 42% | 38% | 21% |
| Household, food & beverages | 42% | 37% | 21% |
| Health | 41% | 39% | 20% |
| All departments | 45% | 39% | 17% |
Fashion, automotive and electronics are Johannesburg and Cape Town businesses. Beauty, health and groceries are the departments where a Durban allocation is worth the stock-transfer fee.
Method. In-stock listings by Takealot distribution centre, from the regional facet on each category page. Liquor is excluded because its regional counts overlap.
Takealot's category tree
162 categories added, 79 retired, most of it housekeeping.
Takealot added 162 leaf categories and retired 79 during the quarter. Many names appear on both lists (USB cables, converters, travel bags, plush toys, pet feeders), which means the category was re-keyed rather than created. Names that are genuinely new include reloading equipment under camping and outdoor, dry food under household, and sweaters under sport. Oxygen concentrators, under health, appears only on the retired list.
A new category is a new shelf. If one of these is yours, check that your listings sit in it; Takealot's own validator will tell you which attributes it now expects.
Fees and policy
Success fees range from 4% to 18% across 3,226 categories.
Takealot's published success-fee table, as at 2 August 2026, has 3,226 categories at 13 distinct rates between 4% and 18% of the selling price. From the Q4 edition this section will list every category whose published rate changed during the quarter.
Marketplace activity index
Reviews across tracked storefronts slipped 6% from August to September.
The headline section measures sellers on Gadjet. This index measures the marketplace. Gadjet tracks the review count of the same panel of Takealot storefronts every week; new reviews trail orders by two to four weeks, so this is an independent read on whether the market as a whole slowed.
New reviews per week, fixed storefront panel, July 2026 = 100
| Month | June | July | August | September |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Index | 77 | 100 | 100 | 94 |
Average new reviews per week across the same set of Takealot storefronts, June to September 2026. First published reading of this index.
The marketplace-wide read is softer than the Gadjet cohort read: down 6% from August to September rather than 9%. Both point the same way. The gap is consistent with reviews lagging orders, and will be re-checked in the Q4 edition when September orders have fully turned into reviews.
A worked example
What this quarter looked like for a home and kitchen seller doing about R400,000 a month.
Take a seller in home and kitchen with sales of about R400,000 a month including VAT in July. On the figures in this report, September would have come in near R365,000. Their category added 22% more listings in the quarter, 39% of page-one rivals were out of stock at the end of September, and page-one prices did not move.
The reading for that seller: the R35,000 drop is the market, not the store. Holding price and holding stock into the fourth quarter, when home and kitchen typically sells 38% more units than the third, is the move. A price cut now would have cost about R20,000 of margin a month to chase volume that the price data says is not there.
Note. This is an illustration built from the department figures above, not a client. No seller is named or identifiable in this report.
What to do this week
Five moves for the fourth quarter.
Benchmark before you react. A September 5% to 12% below August is the market. Treat anything worse than that as yours to diagnose: stock cover, buybox, listing quality, in that order.
Do not cut price to chase volume. Page-one prices did not fall. A cut buys you margin loss, not share, unless you are in the electronics or automotive aisles where a third of page one already moved.
If you sell pets, beauty or toys, defend rank now. These departments added a third to a half more listings in one quarter. Rank is won on listing quality and sponsored placement before the Black Friday traffic arrives.
Buy Q4 stock on your own velocity, not on hope. Year-on-year growth is still positive but has halved. Plan inbound on the last eight weeks of sales with a replenishment formula, then add the rising-search categories above where you have range.
Keep lead times tight. Customer cancellations halved across the market, so a slow lead time now stands out more than it did in June.
Frequently asked questions
Is the September slowdown specific to my store?
Probably not. Across the same group of sellers on Gadjet, September was 9.3% below August and 73% of sellers fell. An independent read of review activity across Takealot storefronts slipped 6% over the same period. A September between 5% and 12% below August is the market.
Should I cut prices to recover volume?
No. The median page-one price across 105,612 listings changed by 0.0% over the quarter, so the softness was not caused by discounting and a cut buys margin loss rather than share. The exceptions are electronics and automotive, where roughly a third of page one already moved.
Which Takealot categories got most crowded in Q3 2026?
Pets (+58%), beauty (+36%), toys (+34%), DIY and tools (+31%) and automotive (+30%) added the most listings. Fashion was the only department to shrink, at -4%. Nine categories in ten grew.
How does Gadjet measure the marketplace?
Marketplace figures come from Gadjet's weekly read of Takealot's public category pages and storefronts. Seller figures are shares and percentages across a fixed group of sellers on Gadjet, never counts and never any one seller's numbers. Rand figures include VAT at 15%. Every table in this edition carries its own method line.
When is the next edition?
The Q4 2026 edition is due in the third week of January 2027. Managed accounts and invited sellers receive the digest by email; the full edition is published here.
Your question for next quarter
What should the Q4 edition measure?.
Reply to this email with one question about the Takealot market you want answered with data. The most useful question becomes a section in the next edition, with the method shown.
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