Silkor, Top Laser Medical Center in Lebanon, to Open Silkor One Day Surgery Clinic

Interview with Oskar Tarakjian, CEO & Chairman of Silkor Holding

Silkor is an industry pioneer not only here in Lebanon but also in the region. How is the situation here in Lebanon impacting your operations?

Silkor was established in Lebanon 16 years ago and it is truly very sentimental to me. The problem with Lebanon is that a lot had been going on lately and last year was a relatively difficult year. However, we pulled it off greatly thanks to our persistent team which never limited its focus on one specific branch. On the contrary, every aspect is viewed as a whole basket and the team works on ensuring that the 40 branches are doing excellently well altogether.

One of the difficulties Silkor faced last year was in recruitment whereby many Lebanese were aiming at traveling abroad for a “better” career. We realized it is very hard to retain good employees in Lebanon. The second issue we faced was purely political whereby one demonstration could easily affect business on that day. Nevertheless, aside these two issues, Silkor is doing much better in the market.

In 2012 you were recognised as the fastest growing company in the Middle East. What would you define as the secret to your success?

The main reason behind Silkor’s success is having a trust worthy and devoted team. They are my backbone and advise me well. All kinds of advice are taken into consideration and the final decisions are taken accordingly. This plays an important role in making the company move faster. We enjoy the ownership of the company and benefit from it by expanding fearlessly and aggressively, especially that we are a goal oriented group that strongly believes in our services. The effort we’ve put into licensing a new place in a new country has always been worthwhile, because once this step is done, the rest of the details are figured out perfectly.

In which way do you distinguish yourselves from the competition? Is it the products or the services?

I usually don’t like to talk about my company and let my customers spread the word of mouth. But in brief, it’s never about the products alone or the services. It’s more of a bundle of everything put altogether. First of all we have a very big portfolio of clients that really admire Silkor. For instance, 16 years ago, we had people doing laser work in our places when they were just 16 or 17 years old. Today, the same clients are 35, married and have kids! So you can see how this has been moving forward from one generation to another and basically, this portfolio of clients is what keeps us going. Also, another thing I’d like to point out is that Silkor learns a lot from the clients. For example, the reason why Silkor opened in Erbil is because many Lebanese clients informed us they were moving to Erbil and that Silkor should open up there. The same reason goes to our plan in opening a branch in London. In conclusion, after doing our detailed marketing research, we figure out all the markets we need to be focusing on. We count a lot on our clients to learn how to increase the number of our branches. After all, business is all about listening to the customer’s needs and behaving accordingly and not the other way around.

What about your presence in the UAE?

There are eight extremely solid branches in the UAE and what’s special about this region is consistency; there are no economic or political crises, no demonstrations etc. The market is very stable and this stability results in an approximate prediction of the future in that country. Unfortunately in Lebanon, that’s not the case and this is one reason that has driven Silkor to open branches in the UAE.

In addition to the branches, a chain of hospitals called Silkor One Day Surgery Clinic will be opened in the short run. All Silkor branches will then be able to transfer their clients there for surgeries. Up until today, what our team has been doing is transferring a laser or tattoo removal client to a hospital we trust in case they want to have a nose job for example. However, as of the beginning of next year, Silkor will be thrilled to have the first hospital in downtown Dubai, across the street from Dubai Mall, with two surgery rooms that will accept all Silkor clients from Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait! Afterwards, the same concept will be applied in Lebanon at the end of next year. In conclusion, Silkor’s main aim is to increase the number of branches and to expand as much as possible, along with the expansion of the Silkor hospitals in parallel.  

First of all we have a very big portfolio of clients that really admire Silkor. For instance, 16 years ago, we had people doing laser work in our places when they were just 16 or 17 years old. Today, the same clients are 35, married and have kids!

Can you touch upon the first branch you opened in Saudi Arabia?

Saudi is a challenging market and there’s the impression that money can be easily generated there. In fact, Saudi Arabia is a very difficult market primarily because the competition is very fierce. Secondly, the Saudis are always driven, on the go, they know what they want and they travel a lot to London or Paris .This makes them relatively more demanding and naturally they would always want the best service, best price, best treatments etc.  So basically this is the biggest challenge over there. However the positive thing about Saudi Arabia is that the population is very large. The population of Lebanon or the UAE means 1.5 million clients are being targeted but in Saudi Arabia there are about 12 million potential clients and the market is therefore much bigger. We just opened our first branch there this year in 2015 and it is doing very well so far. This branch will help us to promote and expand the business in different places across Saudi Arabia with an expectation of having 8 Silkors by 2018 in KSA.

How come there is no other local company doing that? What is the secret to your success?

We are not the only ones in the market and there are a lot of good companies doing a good job. However, the main secret behind Silkor’s success is a bundle of commitment, dedication and having a supportive, goal oriented and visionary team that is passionate about what they do and that has been with me for a very long time now. Keep in mind that maintaining such a great team is challenging when more than one branch is being tackled. For instance, when Silkor started with its first branch in 1997, the procedure was relatively smooth. It is not that hard to handle a start-up business if a stubborn and dedicated spirit among the team members prevails. However, when a second and third branch are being discussed, we talk about delegation and this is when the procedure gets more challenging because the latter requires a consistent follow up on treatments , a proper system and a reliable team.  In addition to the mentioned, understanding the rules and regulations of each country is a must to adapt properly to the target market. Getting the right machines for each country, choosing the smartest location, recruiting, finding the right human resourses to handle the finances etc… require perseverance, commitment and mutual motivation among the Silkor team members. One day another company might be doing all these, but so far Silkor has managed to be the only company that exists in every single country in the Middle East.

Do you have any expansion plans beyond where you currently are?

My family and I live in London, so I would like to open there and am currently working on it, especially that London is like Lebanon and Dubai, i.e. once you have the market there, it is so easy to expand to the surrounding countries, in this case the European countries. This is Silkor’s main challenge for the future in terms of expansion whereby the first branch is always the most difficult. But once it has been successfully done, the rest of it naturally gets easier since by that time, there already is an understanding team that has scanned the market well, has had contacts with the doctors and knows how to function smartly in that environment.

What about people who don’t want to travel abroad to get to your hospital?

We have started the hospital where people like to travel for this exact reason. If someone is from Saudi Arabia or from Kuwait, going to Dubai won’t require an effort. Many people go every other week to Dubai for vacation and the location of the hospital has been picked on purpose across the street from The Address Hotel. Let’s say a client decides to have her operation in Dubai, she can take her family with her and spend a week or ten days in Dubai on vacation. People already like to travel to Dubai for surgeries and we are trying to promote this concept with the Health Ministry in Dubai by increasing the awareness of having operations done in this region. The same scenario will be implemented in Lebanon. A lot of Syrian people don’t mind coming to Lebanon to have their operations. We have good doctors; Lebanese doctors are top doctors so taking advantage of this fact and guaranteeing their availability in one reputable center is likely to motivate people to travel.

Yes, medical tourism is booming.

We are very much involved in Dubai, specifically in medical tourism. Our team is working hard on that and hopefully by 2020 we will have lots of nice surprises for the UAE market regarding medical tourism.