Ghawali cuts across channels

Luxury retailer Chalhoub Group’s oriental fragrance brand Ghawali believes in interacting with its always-connected, social media savvy audience across channels – in its stores, online as well as via social media platforms.

A little more than 1.5 years ago, oriental fragrance brand Ghawali was launched with an aim to offer a culturally-rich yet contemporary fragrance to young, and affluent, regional audience. Ghawali’s target audience falls under the 25-35 years age bracket, constituting 65% of people purchasing from the brand.

Today Ghawali has four stores in the UAE, two in Saudi Arabia and one in Bahrain. Within the next four-six months, the plan is to touch the 13-store mark, opening more branches in KSA and foraying Kuwait. Ghawali also launched its online platform a little more than a month ago. In addition, it strongly leverages social media to engage with customers, while promoting the brand.

“Instagram is the most effective channel that we use to engage with our customers. In Saudi Arabia, Snapchat is also big, which we use to chat with our customers there and, in turn, they use the same platform to talk about Ghawali,” shares Anees Abdullatif, general manager, Ghawali. “Omnichannel is not simply a buzzword, it must be followed meaningfully to engage well with today’s consumers, and that’s what we have been doing at Ghawali.”

“Developing online presence wasn’t a choice for us; it’s a must considering our audience,” he adds. “We have seen a dual effect from our omnichannel strategy. A bulk of our customers prefers to visit our stores. But when we leverage social media to inform them about our online presence, they check us online. They contact us through a phone call, WhatsApp messages and direct messages on Instagram to discover Ghawali and also buy from us. Again, there is a set of clients that purchase in our stores and use online for repeat buying. It cuts across channels.”

Read the full story in our June edition.