ITN NEWS: Lebanese salesman sets up agency to teach British retailers how to attract wealthy Arab shoppers
Having worked in marketing and sales in the Middle East and in Europe for most of his professional life, Lebanese Said Chaarawi saw a potential in sharing his experience and knowledge with retailers in London when he moved to Britain almost four years ago. A casual 'pilot' seminar at Harrods with colleagues led to consultancy work with the Royal Ascot, Britain's top equestrian event. This led to Chaarawi setting up his own consultancy agency called Understand Arabia, aimed at helping businesses maximise their ability to attract and satisfy Arab customers, especially wealthy shoppers from Arab Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Chaarawi is now close to signing deals with major retailers in London including Selfridges and jewellery retailer Boodles to start consultancy work for them next year. "The Middle Eastern customer in Europe is very valuable," said Chaarawi, who also works in the watches department at Selfridges. "To put it into figures, Arabs in 2007 for example, contributed about 35 percent of the turnover of the high-end retail in the West End of London, and 35 percent of the market is not something to ignore. European businesses, they do know that, and they know how much Arabs contribute to their business, but unfortunately they cannot understand what the Arab customer needs. And when they come to London or when they visit the boutique to buy something, a lot of mistakes happen from the sales people or from the way the business markets and advertises itself. This is where I saw the gap and I thought let's bridge it, let's bridge this gap and create an agency in order to help the European businesses understand the Arab tradition and try and target the Arab client more effectively," he added. Chaarawi says his work in the watches department at Selfridges helps him continue to gain knowledge about dealing with the Arab customers. As well as offering businesses seminars, Said also does consultancy work with businesses to advise them on what goods appeal to Arab clients and how they can market their products to suit shoppers from the Middle East. Chaarawi said that simple things like showing awareness of Arab traditions and customs can earn a business or lose them valuable customers. "If I am an Arab, quite religious let's say, and I have my wife with me and I came to buy a watch for her, I wouldn't be really happy if the sales person was a man and he tried to put the watch on her wrist. The Arab etiquette is to give the watch to the husband and the husband would help his wife. For me as an Arab I take all this for granted but I was surprised by the level of need for this, even simple information," he said. Having started out as a salesman in a chocolate factory in Lebanon, Chaarawi then worked his way up to specialise in sales of jewellery and watches. He dealt with many Arab clients while working in Lebanon, Dubai and in London, first for department store Harrods and now for Selfridges. The importance of the Arab customer is recognised by many retailers in London. Despite London-wide market figures on Arab shoppers being difficult to pin down, high-end retail store Selfridges have their own. Selfridges ranks Arabs amongst its top ten-list of overseas customers. Top spending countries within the Middle East group are Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, followed by Egypt and Bahrain. In 2008, Selfridges saw record spending figures from Middle Eastern shoppers. "The Arab customer is actually very important to us, and actually has been increasingly important over the last few years, I think now we have become a familiar brand to the Arab customer and they are starting to feel comfortable in our store," said Selfridges Marketing Director, Sally Scott. Scott added that despite knowing a great deal already about Arab shoppers walking through their doors, in the past few years they have been able to build on that knowledge. "I think it's been an interesting journey for us over these last years, learning how to work with the Arab customer, what they like, how they like to be approached and how they like to shop," she added. Unlike previous years when Arab tourists used to mostly shop in the summer break, in the past few years they have been coming more often to London and especially during school breaks, Scott said. In a seminar Chaarawi was holding for DM London which owns many of the watch counters in Selfridges, he spoke to salespeople and managers working on the shop floor and who deal with customers first hand. He talked to them about everything from the geography of the Middle East, the culture and customs, to the make-up of Arab society and what family names can say about an Arab customer. David Coleridge, the Chairman of DM, said that Chaarawi's work was helpful in making his business and his employees more sensitive to the needs of Arab shoppers. "As a retailer we want our customers to feel comfortable, we want them to feel at home, we can't replicate and we shouldn't try and replicate the shopping experience in the Middle East, we should offer them the London experience. But in doing so I think we need to be sensitive to their customs, we need to understand what it is that interests them in terms of products and to be able to pick up the messages they are giving us when we are selling products to them. So, yes I hope it (Chaarawi's seminar) will enable us to be far more efficient and to improve the customer experience and if they enjoy the shopping more they will come back more," Coleridge said in his office in Central London, where the seminar also took place. Coleridge added that the difference in currency exchange rate and the simplifying of the VAT claiming process for overseas shoppers has meant that the recent economic crisis has actually made London more attractive to Arab customers.