High-End Fit Out Contracting: Dahan General Trading and Contracting Co, A Leading Luxury Retail Contractor in Kuwait

Interview with Eng. Sameer Al-Dahan, Founder and Managing Partner of Dahan General Trading and Contracting Co

What is the state of Dahan currently?

Dahan is a fit out contracting company. We are contractors, we build, and we anticipate client approaches with this design. We build retail spaces, shopping centers, clothing stores, restaurants, cafes, etc. This sector has been progressing, even before Corona, for the past six to seven years, with the opening of malls and the new trend of people thinking of the actual approach where people now appreciate going into malls, appreciate going into different places. Kuwait has been a country where entertainment options are limited. So, it is the habit for people to go to malls to go shopping or to cinemas or cafes. We do not have pubs or any of these other kinds of entertainment. This mindset is progressing in the retail environment in Kuwait. Also, the Kuwaiti mentality has changed from previously approaching brands and getting franchises to now tailor-making custom branding. For my business, we have continued to grow. For the past five years, I have increased my staff, I have increased my manpower, we became a more structured business and gained more of a delegating capability. This business was part of me as a one man show, and I was having difficulty delegating and giving over to staff which made it difficult for me to grow. But it came time now that I felt that I have to let go, I have to start delegating to get the business bigger and to start being able to get more projects and expand now on what we have done. And so far, I have been blessed by the team that I have. I treat them more as family. We are like one family- we do not have any kind of hierarchy or anything. This model works very well in the structure of the business. I always say to my staff or team or anyone that I am working with that my asset is them and the suppliers and the market. We need to maintain each other and maintain the supply chain. The structure of my business is now very stable and we have no complications. I am also a very conservative person. I do not go into loans or banking support. Call me ignorant, call me old fashioned, call me whatever you want to call me, but it made me run the job in the manner where I am not worried if something goes wrong. I do not have a bank following me. I do not have a chain of loaners that are claiming things from me. So, it gave my business a very healthy position. If there is a project that I can go over and do and commit and afford, I will take it over. If not, I will just refuse and decline. Although, I have been approached on almost a monthly basis by banks and other loaning facilities.

How big of a challenge is finding the right employees for the right job?

It is definitely much better now. I was very fortunate to be approached by a Senior Project Manager who has been with me almost five years now. He taught me how to delegate, taught me how to let go, taught me how to start giving away responsibilities. I am still on top of the business, but I am giving him the privilege to actually act as a decision maker. So, I do not sit with any people, I do not interview people. I do not like people coming to me directly for a job thinking that I would hire them and just overtake the other person as a senior project manager or people that are working with us already. In hiring people, there is always a plus and a minus. You can hire three, one of them will succeed. You can hire five, maybe two of them will stay. It is not always 100%. But again, you have to test them and see where they will reach. For the past five years now, we have been a team of 50 between project management, site foremen, and our administrating team, and more than 250 staff, carpenters, and craftsmen. So, we are very stable now in terms of the staff.

What are the major challenges that you are facing today in order to develop your business? What are the next steps?

Last year, we changed our position from being a regular fit out contractor to moving into luxury brands. We have worked with brands like Hermes, Dior, Gucci, Balenciaga. Working with these high-end brands has really changed our position in the market to a high-end fit out contractor.

The next step is to start taking on bigger projects. Doing a lot of small jobs is almost equal to doing one big job in terms of the time it takes. Unfortunately, the Kuwaiti market is very limited with such expansions. I am very happy with how we are doing. I would love to improve and sustain the business I have built. The past three years were magnificent because they actually staged us in a better position in what we do because we executed high-end, prestigious spaces. Doing this positioned us in the market in a very strong level. For example, we have done an Hermes store which is almost 2000 square meters. And building an Hermes store is not a simple project. Building a Fendi store is not a simple project. Building a Dior store is not a simple project. We were fortunate to execute a couple of the really high-end stores in Kuwait, which really positioned us in a new market sector. As of the beginning of this year, we have also succeeded in creating a two-floor hospital center within an existing building. One floor is a complete operating theatre, and the other floor includes a rehabilitation room, sleeping rooms, disinfection, etc. It a complete hospital, just smaller. This also gave us a new opportunity to penetrate a new type of market and reach a new type of client that is different from what we are used to. I hope things just keep progressing the way they are.

What is the status of doing business in Kuwait?

Though I am Lebanese, I consider myself Kuwaiti because I was born here and I have spent most of my life here. Kuwait has a healthy business environment platform, but you still need a 51% Kuwaiti sponsor to establish a business, which makes many businesses avoid coming here. I personally have many of my friends in my business. They are very good and I trust them and I am sure that they will not do anything bad. But I still need to renew my residency every couple of years. I am acting as a foreigner, which I should not. For any other investor that would want to come and invest in Kuwait, this is a difficulty. Plus, the actual Kuwaiti status is not as open as Dubai or Saudi or other countries. We can get a lot of people coming into Kuwait, have the population higher, have the business growing better. But it is a closed market and they are not really giving us the chance to open it up. Maybe we need tourism and maybe we need people to come in for exhibits, international fairs, etc. For example, I participated in The Big 5 two years ago. Unfortunately, the whole wing of China did not open because they had visa issues after the wing of Turkey was not given the okay to send their product. So, we have some logistics problems as well. Imagine an event like the Big 5, and you are not able to bring in the exhibitors with visas and entry issues? So yes, we still have room to work. If they actually did open these doors and started loosening things up, maybe it would be a stronger business environment.

Are you interested in attracting investors or partners? Is this part of your development plan?

To be honest, I do not want partners or investors in my business. I have been approached by a lot of investment companies that wanted to acquire percentages of the business. To me, it is more of a family business. If anyone is invited for shares in the business it will be the people that are working on the staff, the team. They are entitled to actually sustain the business and own shares into it. The contractor business requires working with ethical people. We rely on the fact that they actually give you this advance payment, interim payment, and progressive payment. Although, we have been suffering with payment problems. This delay in payments is a new trend that we have been seeing in the past, even before coronavirus.

Have you seen an increase in the need for pushing the digital side of business? What is the impact of digitalization on your business?

Today, government related documentation that we have to maintain for renewing our business has been made much easier. It is great in terms of legalities and documentation. In terms of the business itself, there is no way I can actually operate digitally. But we have been doing Zoom meetings with clients. Sometimes they cannot come to Kuwait and see the project being done. Eventually, though, the actual execution has to be done on site. There is a digital communication process that has been happening between design and the end client in certain areas. Even before coronavirus, we were using this digital method because we deal with people internationally. Rather than having support people coming all the way here to see a simple map, we can show them digitally and rectify it. And the more we make it less of a headache for our clients to see things and finalize things, the better for us. We have done the job without creating more hassle for them.

What are some of your success stories?

Last year, we changed our position from being a regular fit out contractor to moving into luxury brands. Dealing with high-end luxury brands is quite complicated and difficult. It is prestigious, educational, and definitely gives us the wow impact once it is finished. We have worked with brands like Hermes, Dior, Gucci, Balenciaga. Working with these high-end brands that we have built for over the past year and a half has really changed our position in the market to a high-end fit out contractor. This does not mean that we do not still build a Starbucks or H&M or a Body Shop. We still do all of that, but this change gave us a beautiful position in the market. We are capable of doing proper documentation, proper communication skills, proper scheduling, proper timetables, and delegation and follow up on site. These luxury brands are demanding that we have a weekly conference call with a weekly schedule on what is happening, pictures, cameras that are planted all over the store for them to actually see on a daily basis what is happening. It gave us a very different approach and position to where we were. Even the actual papers that we created were made very beautifully and up to their standard. I am proud of building for these names.

What are your short-term projects for the next few months?

We are now building a 3000 square meter Trampoline playground. The initial concept of that space is arcades, SMB spaces, seating spaces, rooms for parties and birthdays, etc. This is a beautiful, interesting project in a new mall that is opening in Kuwait called Assima Mall. It will be one of the biggest malls in Kuwait City downtown. This is now ongoing and this is where the heavy mass retail building is going now. Building such a big space is the same value of doing maybe another 200 small stores. We have also built over 12 stores for the Japanese coffee shop brand, Arabica, here in Kuwait and we are considered their sole fit out contractor. We are also building them two new stores in Saudi. I was originally against going out of Kuwait, but because of that specific client, and because of the loyalty they have for us and the appreciation they have for our end result, they pushed us to go and build up their space in Saudi which we are doing now. We are currently doing three stores for a telecommunication company called VIVA. We also are working for a small retail cosmetic store called Kiehl’s. We have a clinic called NeoCare which is also in the Avenues. We actually have about 15 projects going on now.

What is the status of the organization of the company?

We have over hired over the past year and a half and we are now at our peak in terms of hiring and staff. Actually, we cannot afford hiring anymore. I want the ones that we have just hired to get into the actual mood of the business itself. I have not cut any salaries, even during Corona. The business was actually shut for three months. But I had to still maintain the actual fees and salary just to accommodate the business for our employees and their lives. So, at this stage, we will not be doing any hiring or expansion.

What is your projection for the medium to long term, three to five years’ time?

I want to sustain. I am very pleased and blessed to be where we are today. All I ask is to sustain the business as it is. We just need to do more projects and sustain doing more projects and not fail. I look at companies that are like us, fit out companies. They fail and close and shut down. So, sustaining the business is really much more difficult than growing. I have grown it so far and it is in a better position at the moment. All I look forward to is to maintain just the revenue and money outcome. I am not a money driven person. Money is only something that we need to sustain our living situation and life. I am blessed enough to say I could retire and sit without working, but I only want this business to progress and move for the sake of the brand, the name, the exposure we have, but especially for the passion that we have for it.

What are your competitive advantages? What do you bring to the industry that is unique?

What makes Dahan stand out is the quality. I am not the only the only carpenter in Kuwait or the only car park shade fabric supplier in Kuwait, or the only fit out contractor in Kuwait. The only uniqueness we offer is that we make sure that we get your job done on time. We make sure that you can find us when you need us- for after sales service, maintenance or repair, or whatever follow up that you need. We commit to it. We actually admit our mistakes if there were any. We do not turn our backs and blame others. This transparency and this approach gave us this edge. To be honest, we have a lot of competition. But we stand out because we are trying to show that we do the job in the best way possible.

What was the inspiration for you to start this company? What drove you?

It goes back to the guy behind the scenes: my dad. My late father passed away six, seven years ago. My dad was a very difficult guy. At the age of 11 or 12, he taught me how to use all types of tools, from craftsman, blacksmith, anything, you name it. I was a very good handyman at the age of 15 or 16. I was pulling cables, electrical conduits, doing switching, a lot of things. This kind of started the passion. My dad used to be an HVAC contractor and an engineer. Of course, after graduation I came back and worked with my dad. It was not easy because he had this temper issue. And I was a 21 year old guy who did not want to take my dad’s attitude or nervousness or shouting and yelling. So, this is where I had this dispute with my dad, and he threw me out of my house. I had to stay at a friend’s place while I started looking for a job. This was in 2000. I got my first job as an engineer in a company for 250 KD, which is less than $1,000. I stayed with this company for a year and a half. The last salary being paid to me in that company was almost 4300 KD, which is about $15,000. I was doing very well and I was actually controlling the whole business side of it. But the only reason I left is that one night at 11pm, I was in the office and some incident had happened in one of the Starbucks stores that we had previously built. It was raining and there were some leaks in the store. So, the owner of the company called me on the phone, and he was a little bit aggressive over the phone. I said, “It’s 11pm. I’m in the office. It’s raining outside. I’ve already spoken with the guys to go and check. What do you expect me to do, just go and hold an umbrella out over the store? There’s nothing I can do.” So, it created this conflict, which I suddenly found that there was something wrong. The next day, I saw him in the office and I told him that I wanted to be a partner or shareholder in this company. He declined that. So, I signed my orders and I gave him my resignation. Him being a guy with some attitude, he signed them. This was the starting point of me leaving that company and I began thinking of establishing Dahan. All I had saved back then was in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 KD. I was on good terms with my dad back then and things went back to normal. I was fortunate to find a Kuwaiti sponsor and together we established the company in Kuwait in 2003. This was when Dahan started. You needed to invest 30,000 KD as an initial investment to put in the government and withdraw it after a week. It is like presenting a bank statement stating that you actually have this much capital to establish a company, which I did not have. So that Kuwaiti sponsor of mine was the one that put up that 30,000 KD for me. I started the company in a very small office, two by two square meters. I had a part time secretary. I was doing all my documentation myself. My brother was my purchasing manager. God blessed us and we grew and grew.

At the end of the day, when you look at it, you can compare the two situations, the one with your father and the one with your first boss. Is that a business personality advantage?

I sometimes think maybe it was me, that I could not be controlled. I learned in every job that I had with that company. I actually learned a lot from them. And I never denied that with my dad I also learned a lot. I should maybe call it a fortune that I was given the opportunity to go through that path. It was not easy, but it was fortunate. What hurts me the most, what makes me think the most, is that I have been living most of my life in Kuwait and giving back to the community. I do not just turn my back the community. I support the government of Kuwait. I support every institute that I am capable of supporting in the in the means I can. I am running a company that has a good name, with all due modesty, and giving an end result that reflects Dahan and reflects the Kuwaiti image all over the world. We still reflect that Kuwaiti image to these international companies and countries. It is sad that I am still a foreigner. I am still someone that needs to stamp my residency every year. That is something that I hope the government will change. I hope the government will consider looking into different aspects. Just yesterday, it was announced that you can actually start a company with no sponsor. You can own 100% of the company as a foreigner established a company. They did that to encourage investors to come and start opening businesses here.

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