See the ingredients in th pic, i can see my self telling the dude “abee manga, ow frawla bas fresh haa!! ow ebser3a”  but still there is a possibility of a market or to sell such products. Remember when entering most co-ops you see this disgusting bin filled with ice that sells fresh bottled juice? ahhhhhhh. Their is a market, will talk about it in later posts.

I would push forward a strategy to make taw9eel.com price competitive maybe or service competitive, but when i researched its price and made a comparison i have found out that they are 30% higher than the market. Market here is defined as the normal Co-op, so the other questions is, is he buying directly from the co-op or is he buying from the suppliers and making even a higher profit margin, which is his 30% and plus the margin of the supplier. Below is the table of prices that shows the difference,  some may argue that he delivers for free but lets say you bought from taw9eel.com  goods worth for 130KD if you had went to the coop you would have saved 30KD. Now is the 30KD wasted is it worth going to the co-op, now you can see the added value question being answered.

Nothing against taw9eel.com and i think they do have a good business model, but needs a competative advantage which i cant see, meaning any one can come and copy their business and open it elsewhere.

After aramex started to charge really high fees on any packages that comes to Kuwait i started to hesitate to buy online, i’v bought a book for 7 dollars on amazon and got it to be sent via free delivery. But when Aramex delivers the book to me, i get charged 9KD. So you can see the difference how business runs in the states and compared us here in Kuwait from a price perspective. There are reasons why but i will not get into them because i need a different post by itself. Anyways so i got hit by an ad about audie books and said lets check out the site. Then i started thinking would listening to a book be any different than from reading it. From a usability perspective its much better, i cant run on the treadmill and  read a book simlataneously, but surly can listen to one.

The Book

Its about behaviorural economics and one interesting subject i never knew about, when i started listing i got hooked fast. The book is called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and its about how economies behave based on our hardwired thinking process. Give the book a try, you wont regret it.

Non Kuwaiti companies ownership rules

Back to the post,  after reading the book and after remembering my economic classes at KU which i failed strongly, i noticed how important it is today to understand Kuwaits economy. One major part i have many questions for is job creation. I’ll post one day about the cupcake and khalajeen economy we are building now. So like many developed economies they run more efficiently by utilizing the private sector, and we all know from a broader understanding why, due to profit making and searching for better markets to make more profits using efficent means. Then i started thinking about the Kuwaiti labor force and how we are not up to the job due to lack of skills. To create a better job market and increase levels of skill acquiring, we need to open the market to foreign companies. Some will argue that this will demolish our local companies, but remember how competitiveness makes us learn more and become creative. Because our local companies our working within a semi closed economy, our companies are not even close to international standards from a efficiency perspective. Why? because they only compete locally. So now imagine the law opens to non Kuwaiti companies and staffing should be done by 50% Kuwaitis,  the international skills will filter down to Kuwaitis resulting in creating more jobs for Kuwaitis and higher learning curves.  But the question here, why is Kuwait not opening up?? doing so would employ many Kuwaitis and create a better and more efficient work force. A small example would be the telecoms sector, now you can see how Viva blow the prices out of proportion and the influx of employees moving between these companies. The newly established telecommunication commission to regulate these companies is a result of Viva entering the market. Because of Viva now you have the option to switch your provider without changing your phone number. I really would like to ask such questions in the parliament instead of giving a holiday for the last 10 days in ramadan or if the Persian gulf should be recalled to the Arabian gulf!

Why, because some products sell them selves.  I have seen many products but some like the one am going to talk about surely are winner, from my opinion of course. 

I’ve always noticed products that are used in bathroom (its not that i like being in bathrooms;p) i just notice stuff.  Why, because some products are used in most bathrooms which means they are successful and add more value to the user. But usually in Kuwait we dont use air blower or dryer, we usually go with tissue and alot and lots of tissue is wasted. Of Course your thinking that the air blowers are slow in drying your hands thats why we dont use them often but this is why I’m posting about this product. To really appreciate it you got to try it out. I’ll explain how it works, and its kinda weird looking too. You slip you hands into a socket and the blower starts, and you just slowly take your hands out of the socket, do it twice and your done. Remember when you wash your car, then the car gets dried by this huge machine that blows the air away, something. Check the product out the dysonairblade.  I think but not sure that they have no suppliers here in Kuwait.

I’ll explain both and for you so you can see why I perceive business from such a perspective. The second which is the business from a success factor is what I majored in (entrepreneurship) and based on its success the first factor becomes important.

Let me put the idea into perspective, if you own logo design company and started out with yourself as the sole employee and then started to make more money and required more employees you start to employ expatiates, why because their salaries are much cheaper then Kuwaitis, off course you have to include the knowledge and expertise factor in the picture because some Kuwaitis do not have that knowledge at the first place. But again let’s see the flow of money from the logo design company; you start getting more orders from Kuwaiti companies, your wealth increases due to transaction increase, you staff expats, so you created jobs. These jobs by themselves create extra wealth for the Kuwait economy. You see economies run by having money spent in them, which increases the KD value because there is more KD dinar moving around the economy or in economics terms, multiplying. Now multiply this logo company by Kuwait and see how many people are opening business and creating jobs, and these jobs create more jobs because they create demand for more supplies, like food, banking, insurance and rent. But the major flaw in this cycle is that the KD is being transferred outside Kuwait and going into a different market, hence the expat sending money abroad, hence banking, insurance and real estate outside Kuwait. Thus your KD dinar cycle gets reduced and losses value. So as much as we try to create a better economy or a work force we end up draining the cash in the system.

Don’t get me wrong, even for a company that I will be starting closely, I will be staffing expats. I point out this because when discussion occur in a  Diwaniya and the subject is that small Kuwaiti business are creating a better economy it’s not true, surely it is creating wealth to the Kuwaiti owner but not the economy itself.

I always wondered about the wine industry and how big it is, and how many compete because they got the oldest barrels or a better taste. But the whole thing was intimidating to me, why? because it was hard for me to comprehend. Many brands, many tastes from different countries, why are the older ones more expensive, why wines grown in Italy or France seem more genuine? questions that cant be answered only if i ‘am a wine taster or work in such an industry, and closed only for a certain elite (because it  is expensive compared to other drinks). If you traveled abroad and passed by the wine section you would go crazy just from the different choices available to you. So reading one day i came up with a smart company that created a wine brand called Yellow Tail. Yellow tail answers the question that many people fear, “shall i ask about wine or would i look stupid not knowing what to order?”. It has a simple branding look and comes with easy labeling, does not claim being proud about what vines they own or how old it is. This company to me found out that people are intimidated by the wine industry and that it gives you a feeling that you got to have a certificate to order a good bottle of wine:p but Yellow Tial simply made wine choices easy for the general public and in such a case most wineries thought that Yellow tail demise was foreseen, not knowing that the company took a huge market share and cant stop growing since.  After all its a new commer to the wine market and all the way from down under:P (Australia) not a wine destination from a history sense. But yet again simplicty prevailed, remeber that this may not be the answer for your business needs just an insight to my part of the consumer market.

Back to business, to me a slogan of a company is important and reflects the direction and assumption of the customers. Before i continue, a small tip: never come up with your start-up company slogan at the beginning try to start operations and work it from there. See who are your customers and if that you have reached your target audience. But with well established companies its a must to have a correct reflection of your business. Ya3ne a stupid example would be the Oula Fuel Marketing Company slogan, its says “We are changing”. simple thinking will make you say ok! yes you have taken over the government fuel station and have been changing them, but you will change them till when? Is this an eternal change? So you can figure out that this is a stupid slogan done by idiots. But now lets go to the World Olympics( the one held every four years): and their slogans goes like “Celebrate Humanity”. In a sporting event all countries of the world come and compete, you are talking about Muslim, Christien, Jewish, Non Believers, Communist, Socialites countries that all come together. So in the Olympic games all of the world comes to play their best, hence the slogan makes perfect sense.

Another slogan i personally love, its not a company its a TV Channel but their slogans still reflects their purpose, it goes like this “Question Everything” again when watching Discovery Channel you do get the feeling that they provide shows that many of us would like to know the answers too. Such slogans make you think and their meanings reflect the institutions purpose. I always question myself when will we stop adding “increasing shareholders equity” in our missions statmemts and why cant we come up with sensible slogans that really reflect our internal processes. I will broadly answer the question: Wasta, i know its not only wasta, but because we do have many wrong people in the wrong places. The only good thing that may come out of this recession is that related idiots to certain board members will not run most Kuwaiti companies anymore because of their inabilities and the right people should be put in their places because in bad times you need visionaries to run companies not spoon fed kids.