Gazzaz: Home of scents and silk
MY first reaction on entering the showroom of Gazzaz in the Balad area of Jeddah was to take a deep sigh of pleasure saying to myself “oh how nice.” The shop then was easily the best of its kind for perfumes, silk scarves and other accessories. Today, there are certainly many such stores but Gazzaz remains the largest in terms of number of branches and it can be said the one with the lowest priced fragrances. You can also be pretty sure that the products on display are genuine. They do not sell the fake ones.
Besides Gazzaz branches, at least those I have seen in Jeddah and Riyadh are spacious and ideally located for the prospective buyer. Not surprising since the brand has been around for decades.
It was established in Makkah by Hussein Bakri Gazzaz who has been guiding it until the present day with his usual finesse and business acumen. He made it the leading fragrance company in the Kingdom.
There are certainly many companies and showrooms for fragrances and luxury items since the two seem to go hand in glove. The lady customer buying a perfume would almost surely pick up a face makeup and a scarf or two.
Sheikh Hussein is now nearly 85, according to his bio-data but he looked fine when I last met him in his beautiful shop on Tahlia Street, which is officially known as Prince Mohammed bin Abdul Aziz Street. But as is the case with old names, they die hard and Tahlia remains the more popular with the masses.
He was full of joy about his new scents named after him reminding me of a publisher talking in his office about his various newspapers and magazines.
He left school in his teens and sought employment in the Ministry of Finance. He was right as he opened a small counter – not a shop-in a hallway in l942.
The breakthrough came in l946 when he became the agent for Ca Train De Paris, a French fragrance. Thereafter all doors opened to him to develop his passion for perfumes, cosmetics, gift items and other luxury goods. It was this passion that guided him to his first beauty shop in Jeddah. By the middle of last year he had 35 showrooms catering to women as well as customers like me. Watches soon followed and the last time I was in his Jeddah’s Tahlia shop I noticed a corner for lovely Chinese watches of which I bought one for myself for three hundred and seventy riyals or about one hundred US dollars. Strangely enough it attracted attention by many friends even those who were wearing Rolex watches. The sheikh was not there at the time since he has three-dozen shops to visit.
Sheikh Hussein grew up between the Kingdom and Egypt, Cairo in particular, where he enrolled in one of its schools at the primary level then returned to Makkah. While still in Cairo in the 1930s, he fell in love with the city’s beauty, which he says was the Paris of the East. That is quite true as the city, under British rule and earlier briefly under the French, boasted some of the finest shops in the Middle East. Those who visited it or studied in its great institutions were besotted with its vast shops some of which built and managed by Europeans including wealthy Jews.
When he returned to the Kingdom he nurtured a dream to open a beauty shop in which fragrances and silks would predominate. About his passion for perfumes, he told our sister publication Arrajol — the man — magazine is the fact that they form part of the personality and culture of the people here.
Quickly enough he began to expand and laid down a few principles for trade and advertising in the inside and outside the country. Indeed he is still one of the greatest advertisers in the Kingdom usually choosing the front pages of daily newspapers. When we started this newspaper in l974 he chose its front page to advertise his imports of the finest French perfumes and he is still an avid buyer of advertising space in almost all the local press, and has had a certain percentage of his budget for advertising until this day. In due course his budget rose as his products increased until at one time they formed eighty five percent of all international brands available in his 27 shops bearing the name Gazzaz.
Indeed, in due course his name became synonymous with great names and fine products in the realm of beauty products so that the name soon became another brand for perfume like other famous names indicated products like wonderful ladies bags and products that we have grown to use since our childhood like hoover to mean cleaning ones drawing room in England or Kolynos to mean tooth paste in our school days.
Even at this age he mixes his own fragrances and sends them abroad to manufacturers to make large-scale products.
Sheikh Hussein says he starts early morning for Fajr prayers, loves to eat home food made by his wife, used to like fishing and visit Turkey, at least in his younger days.
Almost every item in his shops has a price and a discount. The salesman would tell you that the price is so much before the discount but so much after it. The difference is usually thirty percent but why? There is no clear cut explanation but I guess that the effect on the buyer men and women is psychological because they would be pleased to know that they are getting a discount and would be eager to buy. It is still worth buying from Gazzaz because his prices are usually lower than those who sell perfumes and accessories even those who buy in bulk from him as a I could discover from his shop and one or two not far from it. Besides every now and then he would announce a discount in all his branches. In addition he will hand over gifts, nice ones but not expensive to add to the buyers shopping bag.
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