Almost half a century of fuelling UAE’s literary landscape

Forty-seven years ago, a bookstore opened in Dubai’s Jumeirah area that would eventually become a central part of the UAE literary community. A brand built with an intent to serve and delight booklovers and therein fuel the UAE’s literary landscape. We are talking about home-grown bookstore chain Magrudy’s co-founded by Isobel Abulhoul that continues to be a happy place for many families.

Although its flagship shops in Jumeirah remain Magrudy’s “spiritual home” still visited by the same customers who shopped as children the brand has branched out in the UAE. Currently Magrudy’s operates in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Ras Al Khaimah. Over the past year Magrudy’s has opened three new shops as well as completely renovated its flagship shops in Jumeirah. With the new branches the brand has recorded a 38.7% increase in retail sales year-on-year and a 22.8% increase in net profit.

In an exclusive interview with RetailME Abulhoul spoke about Magrudy’s evolution over almost half a century.

What kind of challenges have you had to navigate over the years?

Navigating the decrease of in-store shopping during the pandemic was one of the biggest challenges we faced during the history of Magrudy’s. But this allowed us to streamline and focus on key values and product mixes which set us apart from other retail brands and what encourages customers to visit us loyally and enjoy their shopping experience. Implementing a new system across our business has also been an extremely challenging but necessary upgrade. Every single process across all parts of the business have been analysed and incorporated into the system in the most efficient manner to help us streamline tasks as much as possible. Of course, implementing a new system comes with many issues and errors during the initial phase of rolling it out but eventually it leads to much more organised and efficient running of the business.

What are your future innovation/expansion plans?

We would like to focus our expansion across the UAE within communities. We have seen a shift over the past decade of people preferring to shop in smaller, easily accessible malls within their community. These provide a much more family-friendly atmosphere and there is none of the time-consuming parking and walking around very large malls to visit a particular shop. Within community malls we also see a much larger amount of drop in customers who are walking past but pop in for a browse and end up finding something to purchase.

A large amount of time has been put into developing a brand-new website which will be launched very soon. Online is key to reaching more customers and providing a convenient shopping experience with fast home delivery. Our aim for our online presence has always been to complement our brick-and-mortar shops rather than take away from them. We are lucky in that with the mix of products we sell, there will always be an attraction to visit the physical shop. Who doesn’t love to browse in a bookshop? And nothing beats the excitement of visiting a toy shop as a child!

Please share three tips to build a resilient and sustainable business.

Always put the customers first: What do they want to buy? What kind of experience and feeling do they want to have when they visit? What can you offer to them that competitors cannot?

Numbers are key: Constantly analysing all outgoing costs and sales per day, week, month at each location and using these to make informed decisions on how to make the business more profitable. Treat each shop individually and look at their category sales. Using this information to adjust the layout and stock selection is key to both making your customers happy and maximising the space and in turn increasing profitability.

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On a bad day, where do you seek inspiration from?

Books provide endless inspiration! Whether it be business related or not there is so much you can learn or even walk in someone else’s shoes for a while through simply reading. Always returning to your ‘why’ in business is also essential. Why did the business start? What is the purpose and key beliefs of the business? Delivering your why, keeping your customers happy and providing unique products will encourage continued success and loyalty for the brand.