We are trying to promote the concept of embracing culture and tradition into everyday life, be it an Iranian carpet in your living room, a Saudi dagger on the wall of your office, or a Moroccan lantern hanging in your backyard. Established in 1990, for many years the store was seen solely as a souvenir shop by most people. We are trying to change that image, to show people how their homes, offices and surroundings can be enriched by a few traditional pieces. To be able to share this concept with a wider audience, Desert Designs has taken to the World Wide Web, showcasing our work via our website, www.desertdesigns.com, and various social media networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook, we have created three Pages for different aspects of our business, the Desert Designs Art Gallery, Cafea Arab, our Coffee shop, and of course, the Desert Designs showroom itself. We need to point out that in the real world, all our operations are housed in one building on King Abdullah Street.

The Facebook Pages not only showcase our heritage items and projects, but we also use them to advertise our art shows and are able to interact with customers if they wish to buy anything online. The showroom’s Facebook Page is great for informing people about updates in the store, be it new items on display or sales. On the Desert Designs Art Gallery Facebook Page, we have posted photos of a wide selection of art pieces by Saudi artists, male and female, so they may be appreciated by a global audience visiting our virtual gallery, and there are also photos of our art shows. We want everyone to know that there is a thriving art community in Saudi Arabia. We have sold paintings solely through Facebook and e-mail, and having an online presence has allowed us to attract new and upcoming artists who want to hold exhibitions in our space.

On Twitter, we try to be more personal, sharing day-to-day happenings, a happy family shopping together or the sun falling perfectly on a corner in the store, making it a great picture! We have just recently started tweeting and are quickly getting quite a following. We noticed that we have reached new customers in Riyadh through our tweets. It’s worth mentioning that we do all our social media interaction in-house. It’s not some contracted company tweeting on our behalf.

Another important aspect of how information technology helps grow our business is our extensive e-mail database of customers. Through the database we can connect with thousands of customers much faster than via SMS or phone calls. We send e-mails out when new shipments are received and we send out art show invitations as well. We also keep lists of customers looking for specific items and e-mail them when the items are received. Every customer who visits Desert Deigns is asked for his contact information, such as e-mail address and phone number. Then we add this information to our database. It is very hard to keep the database updated, but we always encourage our customers to update their information if there are any changes, so that they can regularly receive our latest news.

I’d like to give everyone an example of how all these different technology elements work together to enable us to be one step ahead. Right now, Desert Designs is hosting a solo exhibition featuring the work of internationally renowned Saudi artist Zahra BuAli. The show opened on Tuesday evening and by using our database, were able to send out invitations to all our loyal customers by e-mail. Of course we gave a glimpse of the show in advance through our Facebook Pages and website and sent out tweets about the exhibition’s creation as well. On Tuesday night we took digital photographs of the exhibition’s opening and those photos are to be uploaded to our Facebook Page and in fact one of them accompanies this article. We will continue to publicize happenings at the exhibition through our various online channels until its close on Jan. 26.

And don’t think that we are using ICT only to promote our business and interact with customers. Even though we are a small, family-owned business, we use IT extensively to run all aspects of our operations. An outside company customized three solutions to handle the activities of our inventory, accounts and sales departments. The agreement for the implementation of these solutions included customizing, training, maintenance, trouble shooting and updating. Our connectivity is through a LAN, complemented with wireless technology and our systems are updated in real time for each transaction or stock movement. ICT helps us to stay on top of all the financial aspects of the business.

What was it like before we had access to all these technologies? It was more difficult and time consuming to run the business and we couldn’t stay close to our customers. Helping people to see, admire and love our traditional designs through modern technology is nothing short of extraordinary.
 
— Farid Bukhari is general manager, Desert Designs