Out With the Boring; in With the Bling

DHAHRAN, 6 May 2008 — For years I’ve been writing about how underserved the youth market is in the Kingdom when it comes to technology. Companies bring the basic products — notebooks, handsets, MP3 players — but that’s as far as it goes. There’s nothing really unique and personal in regards to digital devices in Saudi Arabia, even though in other geographies it’s common for consumers to specify a PC’s assembly from the processor to the skin.

So this is a wake-up call to all the dinosaur distributors out there who keep insisting that Saudi consumers will have boring tech or nothing. Two young Saudi entrepreneurs, Hanan Al-Demerdash and Sawsan Al-Khadhra, have decided to bring teenagers the tech accessories that they know they want. Their company started out with word of mouth marketing and now with business booming, they have moved on to participating in expos, setting up a Facebook group, (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2402847249) and even have a basic website (www.s-and-h.net).

“Tech is the main thing in our lives and it must show a person’s individuality. We’ve got funky notebook covers and cool cases. We offer earphones decorated with Swarovski crystals and we can style handsets or iPods with the crystals too. If you want to personalize your notebook, then cover it with a customized skin or give us a graphic and we’ll paint the notebook for you,” said Al-Demerdash. “We think technology should be a personal experience and we help our customers express their inner fashion sense.”

Since the word “fashion” has just come up, don’t get confused and think that Al-Demerdash and Al-Khadhra are offering “girls only” products. Their customers are almost evenly split between the sexes. What is really compelling though about their business — S & H, are the demographics of their customers: fifty percent are teenagers and 30 percent are adults under the age of thirty.

“We don’t sell anything formal or stuffy,” said Al-Khadhra. “The established shops only bring tech accessories in black, brown and gray. So we don’t need to offer those. Our accessories are trendy, exciting and good quality — imported from the US and Europe. We’ve got bright colors, feathers, animal prints and lots of sparkle. Business is great and we’re so excited.”

S & H started out a year ago with Al-Demerdash and Al-Khadhra, who come from middle class families, using their credit cards as seed funding. They both have day jobs and attend university as well, but they wanted to create “something of our own,” so they took the risk.

“Starting out was hard. We were both really stressed. We’d sleep and dream about it and then talk about our plans over the phone. We have a lot of imagination and ideas. In a month we’d planned it, and then we took a leap. Actually, we had Plan A, Plan B and Plan C,” said Al-Demerdash laughing. “Maybe if our company had been funded by our fathers, like some of our friends have done, we wouldn’t have been so anxious. But really, at first, if we failed, we’d lose everything we’d saved and be back at zero.”

Al-Khadhra believes that the reasons behind their success are providing the right products combined with excellent customer service.

“We deliver free throughout the Eastern Province and Bahrain and for other places people pay the actual shipping, not more,” she explained. “We help people perfect the designs for their personalized skins or notebook cover paintings. We have products for different budgets — a skin costs less than a durable paint job, but both personalize the notebook cover. Girls feel comfortable doing business with us and they are really happy that we offer products that they find attractive. And we always have something new.”

Young people are extremely interested in hot products so Al-Demerdash and Al-Khadhra have made innovation a priority. When they heard about notebook cover painting, they bought the machine to do the process, even though they were already selling skins. They claim not to be worried about competitors because no other company has as comprehensive an offering as S & H.

“We’ve heard of some guys in Jeddah offering laptop skins, but nothing else. We’re sure some companies will start to offer similar products to what we have now, but we move quickly to new things,” said Al-Demerdash. “We aren’t interested in selling the same products as everyone else. That’s the common mentality in the Saudi market and it’s not the way to be a big success. We’ve learned. We aren’t afraid to take risks anymore. We plan to travel to the Far East and our big dream is to open our own shops in each of the Kingdom’s major cities. We love our grandmothers and our mothers, but when it comes to business, we aren’t like them. We can be creative and compete with anyone.”