The Store Makers – Middle East (SMME) are uniting JWP, HDD and umdasch as three strong brands under one roof since 1 January 2022. This forms a new powerhouse that is one of the largest and most renowned companies for Retail Interiors in the Middle East.
With almost 70,000sqft (~6,500m2) manufacturing space and more than 200 dedicated Store Makers on the ground, our regional manufacturing hub in Dubai supplies the entire GCC region & beyond with bespoke Premium Retail worlds and also Lifestyle Retail solutions since more than 15 years as a sustainable & reliable partner for Global Brands, Regional Operators and Local Concepts. In Dubai we employ a very diverse & dynamic team of more than 15 different nationalities to mirror the local market, out of which already almost 65 team members have been dedicated to the business for more than 5 years, around 25 of them longer than 10 years and actually a third of those even more than 15 years.
Also after having project experience in Saudi Arabia since more than 35 years with one of the first projects being the Luxury Department Store for Al Fitaihi in Jeddah back in 1987, we also have a new office now in Jeddah again led by our colleague Michael Ripfl who actually already lived there in the early 90ties as well.
From small POS Displays & medium sized Shop-in-Shop’s, over to full Stores & Boutiques and large-scale retail environments, SMME is creating some of the most prestigious retail spaces across the region.
Large scale one-off millwork projects like for the Robinsons Department Store in Riyadh (~7,000m2), Duty Free Stores for the new North Node Expansion at Qatar Airport (~2,500m2), entire Travel Retail Worlds for the yet to be opened new Midfield Terminal in Abu Dhabi (~8,000m2) and other major Airports like at Dubai, Bahrain, Muscat, Amman,… are a testimony for professional execution in complex environments.
In the Premium & Luxury Segment we work for various Maisons that are part of Richemont Group (Piaget, IWC, Cartier, Alaia,..), oversee the construction of Boutiques for LVMH brands (Chaumet, Tag Heuer, Fred, Givenchy,…), build stores for brands part of Kering Group (Pomellato, Stella McCartney, Ulysse Nardin,…) and are crafting high-end furniture for independent Luxury Watch Makers like Patek Phillipe. At the same time we also handle rollouts in the region for dozens of Kering Eyewear Concessions, make around 5-10 complete stores per year for brands like Breitling, Karl Lagerfeld, Diesel,… and do even bigger rollout volumes like 35-40 stores per year for Magrabi Optical – a regional market leader in the Optical Lifestyle Retail segment. Local value generation, shorter & more efficient transport routes, utilizing raw materials from the region and recycling of our waste are not just ways of reducing the carbon footprint but also make commercial sense for our global customers in the Middle East.
