Retail Insider accepts contributed analysis from people working inside South African retail, e-commerce, FMCG and logistics. These guidelines set out what we accept, what we reject, and how commercial content is handled. Pitches that ignore them are declined without review.
For Contributors
Who we publish
- Operators: retailers, brand owners, distributors, logistics and fulfilment specialists, payments and retail technology practitioners.
- Analysts and researchers with primary South African data.
- Consultants and agency specialists writing about their discipline, not about their client roster.
- Communications and PR representatives submitting client news, subject to the disclosure rules below.
Pitch first
Send a 150 word outline to ed****@**************co.za with the subject line “PITCH: [working title]”. Include the argument, the evidence you will use, and one line on why you are qualified to make it. We reply to pitches we intend to run. Do not send finished drafts unsolicited.
Format requirements
- 900 to 1,600 words for analysis. 400 to 700 for news and commentary.
- Google Doc or plain text. No PDFs, no formatted Word files with tracked changes.
- Subheadings every 250 to 350 words.
- Author biography of 40 words or less, a headshot at 400 by 400 pixels or larger, and a LinkedIn URL.
- Any charts supplied as an image plus the underlying data in a spreadsheet, so we can verify and re-render them.
- Rights: you keep copyright, you grant Retail Insider a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to publish, edit and syndicate the piece. You confirm it is original and not published elsewhere.
Evidence and Expertise Standards
These are the criteria an editor applies before a piece is scheduled. They map to the experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust signals that search engines and readers both look for, but the reason they exist is that unverifiable industry commentary is worthless to the operators who read us.
1. Original insight
The article must contain something the reader cannot get from a press release or a competitor publication: proprietary data, first-hand operating experience, an original analysis of public figures, or named-source reporting. Summaries of existing coverage are declined.
2. Verified South African data
- Every statistic carries a named source and a date of publication.
- Source the original, not the article that quoted it. Stats SA, SARB, BankservAfrica, the Information Regulator, JSE SENS announcements, company annual reports, Nielsen, Trade Intelligence, Ipsos, and comparable primary publishers.
- Global figures may be used for context but must not be presented as South African market conditions.
- Where a figure is modelled or estimated, state the assumptions and the sample.
- Outbound links to the original source are expected and will not be removed.
3. Transparent disclosure
- Declare any commercial relationship with a company named in the article, including clients, employers, shareholdings and paid advisory roles.
- Declare if any party reviewed or approved the draft before submission.
- Declare if payment, in cash or in kind, was received for the piece. A declared payment does not automatically disqualify an article. An undeclared one ends the relationship permanently.
4. What we reject outright
- Articles written primarily to place a link. If removing the links removes the reason for the piece, it is an advert and is handled under the commercial policy below.
- Unedited or lightly edited AI-generated copy. Using AI to research, structure or tighten your own work is fine. Submitting generated text as original analysis is not.
- Anonymous or pseudonymous bylines, and articles attributed to an author who did not write them.
- Claims about a named competitor that are not independently verifiable.
- Recycled content already published elsewhere, including on a company blog.
Sponsored Content Standards
Retail Insider carries commercial content. It is kept structurally separate from editorial and is labelled so that no reader can mistake one for the other.
Labelling
- Paid articles carry a “Sponsored” or “Partner Content” label above the headline, in the article listing, and in the social card.
- The sponsoring organisation is named in a standing disclosure box at the top of the article.
- Sponsored articles are excluded from the Top Story slot and from editorial newsletters.
Links
- All commercial links inside sponsored or partner content carry rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow”, in line with Google’s link spam policy.
- We do not sell dofollow links inside editorial articles, and we do not retro-fit links into published editorial for payment.
- Requests to insert links into existing articles are declined.
Editorial control
Sponsors may review their own factual and product claims. They do not have approval rights over editorial framing, headline, or any other article on the site. Editorial coverage of a company is never contingent on, or precluded by, a commercial relationship with it.
Rates and enquiries
Media kit and rate card requests go to ed****@**************co.za. Commercial enquiries sent to editorial staff as article pitches are treated as advertising enquiries and answered accordingly.
Editing and Publication
We edit for accuracy, length, clarity and house style. Substantive changes to your argument are sent back to you before publication. Headlines and standfirsts are set by the editor. We schedule publication and do not guarantee a date at commissioning stage.
Retail Insider reserves the right to decline or withdraw any submission, and to remove published content that is later found to breach these guidelines.