Jean Ramia: Lights, camera and a lot of action

If you live in Dubai, it is likely Jean Ramia has sold you a cinema ticket or bucket of popcorn at some point in his career.

That is not particularly surprising, given that Mr Ramia, 33, heads Grand Cinemas, the Gulf's largest cinema chain.

But what is unusual is that he has worked in the cinema business for more than 20 years - at one point selling popcorn to cinemagoers.

Sporting designer stubble and glasses with thick black-plastic rims, he certainly looks like he belongs in the film business.

But Mr Ramia once worked as an usher - and there isn't a job in the cinema business he doesn't know how to do.

"I did the ushering job, I did the popcorn-seller job, I did the projectionist job," says Mr Ramia. "Basically, I was on the floor doing everything." But this is not exactly a rags-to-riches story. Mr Ramia began his career working for his father, Selim, in what was then a family-run business.

Mr Ramia was born in Beirut, just a few years after the start of the Lebanese civil war.

Though he does not remember the early days of the conflict, it certainly had an impact on him and the rest of the Ramia family.

"You couldn't travel and you have to live with it," he said. "We were stuck in Lebanon and my father was in Dubai. So it was so tricky."

His father had gone into business with the Iranian Golchin family, launching a film-distribution company called Gulf Film in the late 1980s. It launched its first cinema a few years later, followed by the Grand Cinemas brand in 2000.

None of this particularly interested the young Mr Ramia, who imagined himself more on Wall Street, rather than cooped up in the projectionist's box.

"I never saw myself in the [cinema] business. It wasn't my passion. It was more that I had to do it because it runs in the family," he said. "I saw myself maybe in the States, on the stock markets, as a broker or in investments."

All this changed after he started visiting his father in Dubai, on long summer breaks from studying in Lebanon. This developed his love of the cinema business and strengthened his bond with his father.

In the late 1980s, he started doing odd jobs for the family's film-distribution company. In 1992 Gulf Film set up its first cinema, the Hyatt Regency Galleria. Mr Ramia started working there, too.

"When you're 10 or 12 years old you need to have some pocket money to buy your toys and games, back in the days of Nintendo," he says.

Nintendo was soon replaced by nightlife during Mr Ramia's summertime jaunts to Dubai. He saw a gap in the market in the Dubai club scene, as he says the choice of venues and music on offer was limited. After he moved to the city from Beirut in 2001, Mr Ramia built up his own events company called Fluid Production.

The firm put on corporate events and, starting in 2003, the Peppermint Club nights, which were held in different venues each week.

While Fluid Production is no longer running, Mr Ramia still puts on the occasional Peppermint night, as he is reluctant to let the brand die. In recent years he has brought some of the world's more famous DJs - including David Guetta, Carl Cox and Paul Van Dyk - to Dubai.

Mr Ramia also built a career at Grand Cinemas, a subsidiary of Gulf Film. He was appointed the operations manager in 2001.

This role was later expanded to group operations director and last July he was appointed the chief executive of Gulf Film. Grand Cinemas now has 158 screens and is expanding across the region.

Both sides of his career - cinema and clubbing - provide similar satisfaction, Mr Ramia says.

"I like to entertain people. It gives me pleasure to see happy faces whether it's in the cinema ... or at the events."

As the chief executive, Mr Ramia rebranded the cinemas under the tagline "Why not?". He is now spearheading an expansion plan in the GCC and possibly beyond, which he says will cost up to US$50 million (Dh183.6m).

Not many people who started their career selling popcorn now drive a Ferrari, as Mr Ramia does.

He is quick to brush off any charges of nepotism, saying he has earned his position leading Gulf Film and the cinema business.

"You always have to justify what you are doing, and to prove what you are doing is the right way," he says. "I think I've done it with my own will, and not because of what my dad has done." While studying in Beirut, he took a job as a security guard in clubs and other venues - even though he didn't need the money.

"I was cashing $30 per day for eight hours, which is nothing ... Just to get the taste of working hard to earn a penny," he says.

"If you really want to succeed you need to do it the hard way."

In his four years working as a part-time security guard, Mr Ramia gave away his wages to a colleague whose daughter had leukaemia, he says.

Despite not needing the money, or even liking the job, he felt he had to do it to prove he could support himself financially.

"I didn't really like it. I was doing it just for the sake of accepting any job, in case I don't have the luxury any more of what I used to get from my family," he said.

Andy Fordham, a project director at Gulf Film and Grand Cinemas, says Mr Ramia has had to prove himself at the firm, despite being one of the founder's sons.

"Nobody in this company gets anywhere without the blessing of the father, whether you are related or not. You basically have to prove yourself," says Mr Fordham, who has worked for Jean Ramia for four years. "He learnt the business right from the beginning, as the person that served the popcorn. He's done every job in the cinema. It's not like he's a boss that comes in to run the cinema but has never done the hard graft."

In any case, the fact is Gulf Film is no longer run as a family business.

Mr Ramia says QMedia, owned by the Qatari government, has acquired a controlling stake in Gulf Film, about which an announcement will be made later this year.

Mr Ramia's father still runs a separate business in the Levant, which operates a Grand Cinemas chain in that region.

New ownership means Mr Ramia's management skills will be even more important. John Chahine, the general manager of the UAE branch of Italia Film, a rival film distributor, has known Mr Ramia since 2003. "I think the management part is new for him. Because before, he was managed by his father and partners. Will he succeed? I think he will," says Mr Chahine.

Mr Ramia is no pushover. In a recent meeting, staff complained about the workload, he recalls.

"I heard one of the directors saying 'Jean, … we don't have the time and we have vacations.' And I said. 'Listen, I don't care.' I'm very friendly, very easy going. But when it comes to deliverables, this is a priority for me," he says.

Mr Fordham says his boss does not wait before putting an idea into action. "He's not a procrastinator. He's not someone that wants to sit on an idea for a long time, he wants to keep momentum."

But how long Mr Ramia will sustain this momentum at Gulf Film and Grand Cinemas remains to be seen. He hints he may step aside from the chief executive role after Grand Cinemas' expansion plan is complete. He says he wants to do an MBA and work for himself - and has some perhaps surprising ideas. "In five years' time, definitely I'm going to be my own boss. If I move back to Lebanon for good, possibly I'll have a small pub," he says.

"I see myself maybe investing in new ideas and in new industries. It could be anything ."

As he sits in his Dubai office, his BlackBerry phone continually buzzing, one feels it may be even harder to get an appointment with this former popcorn-seller in the future.

"I live by challenges," he says. "Anything I wish to do, I have to do."

bflanagan@thenational.ae

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