Dubai: The upmarket sanitary-ware and homeware retail brand Milano is eyeing more store opening in the UAE and Gulf markets as demand from projects and homeowners continue to grow. The brand recently opened a B2B showroom in the Mussafah, Abu Dhabi, which is a key building materials market in the emirate.
“It is a proven fact that the country that hosts the Expo sees a steady growth in the months to follow, and UAE will be no exception,” said Anis Sajan, Vice-Chairman, Danube Group. “Milano grew by 20 per cent over the last year, because of the strong trader network, the Danube Home showrooms, a basket of high quality and reliable products, project sales going up because of Expo, and most importantly the export market which we were able to cater to.”
Milano, which started off with sanitaryware, 14 years ago has now diversified into tiles, electricals, water purifier, water heater as well as professional tools making it a one stop shop for all home improvement needs.
Last year, the brand started offering incentives to export customers, offering them free tickets and hotel to visit the B2B Milano showrooms, which helped increase business volumes. The advantage these export customers had by buying Milano products was they could take mix containers of hardware, sanitary, electricals, water purifiers and tiles “without paying any duties from Jebel Ali Free Zone warehouse”.
“Since there was a shortage of goods around the world, Milano took this this opportunity and reached out to different buyers around the world,” said Sajan.
This happened at a time when a lot of business were apprehensive about imports and stocking up, because of increase in price of raw material and freight. “Most of the competitors downsized because of the high freight, which gave the brand an opportunity to reach out to their customers,” added Sajan.
“2021 has been a year of learning and recovery for all the businesses globally, with people adapting to the new normal. The lifestyle preferences of people have changed over the past couple of years. They now prefer to be indoors, thus giving the ample time to think of ideas for refurbishing their homes.
“The home improvement segment has seen a significant growth in the last year. Our biggest strength is our basket of products and our dealer network across the world.”
