Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

You’ll find a huge listing of companies in the UAE on www.kompass.com

Put in United Arab Emirates as your global search parameter and browse away!

You will need to subscribe to get very detailed information, but if your project is important, you can buy credits for a few $$ or simply look up those with a bold listing for free and migrate to their websites.

They are coded into manufacturers and distributors and in their detailed listings, they state whether they manufacture there or elsewhere, whether they are a subsidiary of another company and their website will have their corporate waffle stating whether they are manufacturing led, sales led or marketing led.

As company ownership in the UAE is governed by the Emirate’s Law, almost all concerns will have a local holding company, which confuses things a little, making a lot of apparent manufacturing concerns little more than a sales office which is 51% owned by a bloke with a Mercedes S600!

Here are some examples:

Precision Dies & Tools Manufacturing Co. L.L.C. for one which is manufacturing led

Bearing Sales Company for one which is sales led

Jacobson’s Direct Marketing Services LLC which is marketing led, but employs some tough sales guys – they are also in my industry (CRM) but lead their sales activities through pro-active marketing.

More importantly the Kompass site will allow you to look up almost every company in the UAE and some diligent research via the listed company’s websites and some exploratory phone calls will allow you to establish which are truly manufacturing, sales or marketing led. When it comes to these terms, especially in mission statements, take care. The reality is rarely what it says on the tin.

Good luck – I’ve opened a number of outlets in the UAE in the B2B arena for industrial process businesses and their descriptions of what they actually do vary widely from the reality. I’ve found that liaising with middle managers, who are often from the Indian Sub-Continent, is the best way to get at the truth but be prepared to be very diplomatic and polite. These guys are highly educated and often very status conscious – they get paid reasonably well for the area but their main job is to earn pots of money for the owners who often don’t want to have hands on involvement.

Regards

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions