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Nabeel Perfumes: A legacy ahead of its time

The brand has actively tapped into the pulse of its consumers to offer solutions beneficial for all during the Covid-19 pandemic

Established in 1969 in Yemen, Nabeel Perfumes Group of Companies has built its expertise in crafting some of the most enchanting Oriental fragrances for nearly five decades. Perfecting the art and craft of perfumery with passion and innovation with aromatic, fresh, earthy, invigorating scents, the team at Nabeel realises that well-crafted fragrances say a lot about you and your personality. 
From oil perfumes, spray perfumes, incense bakhoors, oud, deodorants and air fresheners to toiletries, gift sets and sanitisers, Nabeel strives hard to present a variety of the finest fragrances that allow you to reflect your true self.

Talking about the brand portfolio, Asghar Adam Ali, Founder and Chairman of Nabeel Perfumes Group of Companies, said: "The group consists of four brands, which cater to different segments covering the entire spectrum of fragrances. The parent brand Nabeel Perfumes is renowned for its Oriental range of premium fragrances, bakhoors, oils, aerosols and gift sets. Likewise, The Spirit of Dubai Parfums is an ultra-niche brand with modern Oriental fragrances, bakhoors, lotions, oils and gift sets. The Chris Adams brand is the French line of masstige fragrances, deodorants and gift sets whereas Nuvo is a mass market French brand."

He added that Nabeel Perfumes has been in the forefront of innovations in fragrance products and creative packaging. "Each product offering is unique and the quality standards are very high without compromise. The finest ingredients are sourced from across the world to deliver a great product. Innovation, uniqueness, high standards of quality differentiate Nabeel, making it a true 'value for money' brand. In March 2019, we also launched the world's most expensive perfume 'SHUMUKH' that won two Guinness World Records."

As the brand marked its 50th anniversary this year in March, Mustafa Adam Ali, Vice-Chairman of Nabeel Perfumes Group of Companies, revealed that at the beginning of this year they were optimistic about the launch of many projects this year. "Unfortunately, the Coronavirus pandemic struck and the world came to a standstill. This was very sudden and there wasn't time to prepare or react to this never-before-seen crisis. With the world under lockdown, closing of stores and a pause in the commercial activities, we had to immediately work on our short-term plan to manage business continuity and navigate through the situation. Our key priority was to support our key stakeholders, employees and customers. We restructured the operations while protecting our workforce across the globe, taking all safety precautions while keeping business operational."
Moving forward
Nabeel Perfumes Group of Companies has put in place a dedicated crisis response team to derive short-term and long-term plans to pivot through this unprecedented challenge. The immediate focus is on managing the situation in hand, cash flow, revenue-related activities, managing fixed costs expenses, reviewing contracts with critical suppliers - liability and exit clauses, reviewing current inventory, operating in agile ways - adapting remote work practices- and at the same time put the business in a position to address longer-term realities to sustain and opportunities to grow. Thus, the idea to manufacture sanitisers that could combat the Covid-19 spread.

Asghar Adam Ali said: "Since we are a perfume manufacturing business, we had the resources, raw materials, capabilities and manpower to repurpose our business to the demands from customers for sanitisers. We repurposed our production lines from producing perfume to making hand sanitisers. We were among the first few in the UAE to launch our Active hand sanitiser range of sprays and gels. We also redirected our marketing strategies in digital channels to adapt to changing consumer shopping habits. There was a spike in the online sales across our brands, which gained traction with increase in followers on social media channels. The Holy Month of Ramadan showed good demand in online bakhoor sales, while our luxury brand has seen online sales boost with new customers trying our discovery sets in lack of testing perfumes in-store.

With retail stores closed, we reallocated the sales staff to adapt new sales initiatives from WhatsApp marketing to telemarketing, which helped us stay connected with our customer and build some new relations. Repurposing our business helped us keep production lines running in times of low demand of our core products and generate some revenue to stay afloat for a while."

Mustafa Adam Ali mirrored the chairman's thoughts. "As a company, we have shown resilience during this pandemic so far. Now we are redirecting our efforts on recovery. The focus is on key areas like building up cash reserves, analysing the customer demands and buying preferences, reviewing our product and service portfolio, reinventing and rethinking our business approach, being innovative and creative with product offerings and increasing communication with our customers. We will refocus on digital channels and work on connecting the brand to customers while being relevant."
Change for good
The pandemic is fundamentally changing how and what consumers buy and is accelerating immense changes in consumer goods industry. Post-Covid-19 era,
Nabeel Group will continue to reshape the business in multi-fold ways from the way it designs, communicates, builds and provides customer experience.

"There is an opportunity to pivot digital commerce, expanding existing offerings and creating new lines of service like 'contactless' delivery and buy online pick-up at store services for consumers. These digital strategies will capture new marketplace opportunities, digital customer segments and help us to emerge stronger and a more valuable business," Mustafa Adam Ali added.

Asghar Adam Ali continued, "Once we emerge from the Covid-19 crisis, we will be experiencing a new normal world. We cannot anticipate what and how it looks like, how behaviours would change and how the approach to business will modify? We still are figuring out and it is too early to conclude, but what we have learned from the crisis is to be nimble, a technology-enabled business, adapt, rethink as situation changes and keep human factor a priority.

"We need to access the impact of crisis and its short-, medium-, and long-term implications across geographies as we have built a strong presence worldwide. We need to identify which markets recover from crisis early and still remain attractive for business as well as start ideating now to identify future drivers of competitive advantage. But what seems to stay and grow further is online and we will be definitely reallocating the marketing budgets on this to build our customer data base and to stay connected throughout. We reimagine a future wherein environmental sustainability, eco-friendly, clean approach to health and well-being will set the tone for the future. This would also mean for us to prioritise the most relevant product categories, reallocating current resources to actively in demand or next potential product categories."

Nabeel Perfumes and its brands are currently available in over 110 countries.