Forget the usual group buying discounts on restaurants and pet grooming, a new daily-deals website is being launched in the UAE selling Ferraris, apartments in the Burj Khalifa - and it will even pay your Dubai utility bills.
Uniqueauction.ae, which is to be launched on Monday, is a daily-deals website that will auction off an expensive product each day for less than 1 per cent of the retail price.
"We give you luxury items at 99 per cent discount," said Arif Mirza, the chief executive of Uniqueauction.ae. "We're getting a free Ferrari to give away, so somebody is going to win that for about 1 per cent the value. We have an apartment in the Burj Khalifa [being auctioned] for less than Dh30,000 [US$8,167]."
The website is also expecting to auction university fees, skydiving packages and electronic gadgets such as smartphones and tablet computers.
Uniqueauction.ae joins a growing market for daily-deals websites after a flood of entrants in the past 18 months in the UAE. More than 20 websites now offer daily deals on a variety of products including electronics, pet grooming and massages.
The advent of this nascent market has increased the profile of e-commerce in the UAE, with shoppers forecast to spend $270.9 million online this year versus $226.8m last year, according to the research and information consultancy Euromonitor.
Signing up to Uniqueauction.ae is free of charge, but each time a user places a bid in an auction the bidder must pay a fee, which will be Dh1 "90 per cent of the time", Mr Mirza said.
The auction process is complicated, but the winning bid in an auction is guaranteed to pay less than 1 per cent of the retail value of the product or service being auctioned.
Mr Mirza expects to sign up 100,000 users in the first two months and expects to make Dh20m to Dh30m in sales from advertising fees and additional charges to participating businesses in the first year, with profit margins greater than 50 per cent.
He originally launched the concept Uniqueauction.com in Canada in 2005, but in a different form: anyone could sell something on the website. He now aims to launch the new concept in the UAE and market Uniqueauction.ae throughout the Middle East.
rjones@thenational.ae
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
Tips for used car buyers
- Choose cars with GCC specifications
- Get a service history for cars less than five years old
- Don’t go cheap on the inspection
- Check for oil leaks
- Do a Google search on the standard problems for your car model
- Do your due diligence. Get a transfer of ownership done at an official RTA centre
- Check the vehicle’s condition. You don’t want to buy a car that’s a good deal but ends up costing you Dh10,000 in repairs every month
- Validate warranty and service contracts with the relevant agency and and make sure they are valid when ownership is transferred
- If you are planning to sell the car soon, buy one with a good resale value. The two most popular cars in the UAE are black or white in colour and other colours are harder to sell
Tarek Kabrit, chief executive of Seez, and Imad Hammad, chief executive and co-founder of CarSwitch.com
The biog
Year of birth: 1988
Place of birth: Baghdad
Education: PhD student and co-researcher at Greifswald University, Germany
Hobbies: Ping Pong, swimming, reading
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
