Fashionistas across the Arabian Gulf are increasingly buying online for their retail kicks as e-commerce stores predict the Web is now at tipping point for sales.
Namshi.com, Giordano and Souq.com all report growing numbers of shoppers looking for clothing, shoes and accessories online as the overall e-commerce market burgeons this year.
"The consumer is hungry for fashion retail online elsewhere in the world and there's no reason consumers here cannot be any different," said Hosam Arab, one of the co-founders and managing directors at Namshi, which launched late last year.
It is now selling more than 500 brands and up to 80,000 shoppers are clicking on to the website each day.
It delivers to the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which is Namshi's biggest market.
"[The Gulf] is a very retail-based market with big spending power, low competition and the right structure underpinning that to support e-commerce," said Muhammed Mekki, who is also the co-founder and managing director at Namshi. "We are a fashion mall that comes to your doorstep with a risk-free experience."
About US$36.2 million (Dh133m) was spent on fashion items online in the UAE last year, a tiny fraction of the overall clothing market, according to Euromonitor International, the research group.
Online shoppers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt spent $1.01 billion on internet retail sites last year, according Euromonitor, with that figure expected to double by 2016.
"For us we always saw this [fashion] category was growing but we thought presentation of this category required a lot more work," said Ronaldo Mouchawar, the chief executive of Souq, which earlier this month launched Souq Fashion, a separate part of the website that offers the latest clothing and live tips from stylists.
"Fashion shopping is more about browsing. There's got to be a lot more detail," he added.
Mr Mouchawar said the retail industry in the UAE was worth about $30bn but online made up less than 1 per cent of that figure.
Souq has more than 8 million visitors per month to its site and aims to convert more and more of those from categories such as electronics to clothing, shoes and accessories.
Fashion retail is often viewed as one of the most difficult segments of shopping to get right online, because customers are usually very particular about clothing and want to ensure that they get the right size.
But websites such as Namshi and Souq offer free returns for customers at no extra cost in order to entice them to buy.
"We can offer selection," said Mr Arab. "The majority of our brands are not available in the UAE, let alone in remote parts of Saudi Arabia and Oman."
Giordano, the clothing brand from Hong Kong, opened an e-commerce store in April for the Middle East to complement its stores throughout the region.
Ishwar Chugani, the managing director of Giordano Middle East, said the online store had been popular among shoppers looking for bargains, particularly since offering cash on delivery.
"It's growing. The hits are growing," he said. "People are using the website more and more."
rjones@thenational.ae
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
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Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
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The specs
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Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
Results
2.15pm: Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 1,700m; Winner: AF Arrab, Antonio Fresu (jockey), Ernst Oertel (trainer).
2.45pm: Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 1,700m; Winner: AF Mahaleel, Antonio Fresu, Ernst Oertel.
3.15pm: Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum handicap (TB) Dh200,000 2,000m; Winner: Dolmen, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar.
3.45pm: Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 1,200m; Winner: Amang Alawda, Sandro Paiva, Bakhit Al Ketbi.
4.15pm: The Crown Prince of Sharjah Cup Prestige (PA) Dh200,000 1,200m; Winner: AF Alwajel, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel.
4.45pm: Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 2,000m; Winner: Al Jazi, Jesus Rosales, Eric Lemartinel.
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
