The sales figures for Dubai Duty Free, the biggest airport retailer in the world, are impressive.
But it is not the monetary amounts that are most staggering. It is the sheer volume and variety of the items it sells.
On average, something is rung through the tills every two seconds, adding up to about 74 million products a year.
In terms of weight, the powdered fruit drink Tang tops the list with 1,471.46 tonnes sold last year, or about 5.8 million individual servings.
This is closely followed by nuts, of which 1,037.24 tonnes were sold last year.
Despite their low value, their high sales figures contribute to the more than Dh6.61 billion the airport shopping chain is expecting to see by the end of this year.
It is understandably a huge source of pride for the company’s executive vice chairman, Colm McLoughlin, 70, who is still holding the reins 30 years after DDF’s inception in 1983, when he was one of just 100 staff.
The Irishman, who came to Dubai on a six-month contract from Shannon Airport, is very honest about how he has managed to last so long in a country where few expatriates live for more than a couple of years.
“I’ve got freedom from my boss, Sheikh Ahmed [bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of DDF and president of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority] Mr McLoughlin says. “He’s a superstar and he doesn’t interfere.
“That’s something I got by building up trust over the years. We are highly respected in the duty-free industry.
“As staff, we talk straight to each other. We’re not fighting or back-biting. We air everything and we don’t hold grudges. I have great fun at work as we are all trying to kick with the same foot.”
Mr McLoughlin is well known in Dubai’s business world for being a unique sort of boss, at least in this part of the world.
He set up sports clubs for the 6,000 staff, holding annual competitions open to all. There are glass cabinets containing dozens of gold and silver trophies lining the walls of the headquarters.
The staff accommodation in Discovery Gardens has flats dedicated to online learning, and others hold gym equipment for the exclusive use of DDF staff.
Mr McLoughlin also prides himself on his open-door policy and makes a point of stating that DDF has not filled a manager position from outside the company in 13 years.
“We don’t fire people,” he says. “We sack people if they steal. That’s the only reason we’ve ever terminated a contract.”
Of the 100 pioneers, as they are called, who set up the company from scratch just 12 years after the formation of the UAE, 44 remain.
One of those is Mr McLoughlin’s right-hand man George Horan, now the DDF president, who also arrived on a short-term contract from Ireland in the 1983.
After a bumpy few first months when he failed to tell his wife he had accepted a permanent job here – someone let it slip at a St Patrick’s Day party, leading to “almost divorce” – he made a home here and raised his two children, one of whom is now an A380 pilot for Emirates airline.
“My proudest moment is when my work was recognised and I was appointed president three years ago,” he says.
“I think Colm and I are a good combination. He’s quite an extrovert and I’m the opposite. I’m not saying we couldn’t function without the other, but we understand each other’s peculiarities.”
Aside from appearing to be thoroughly pleasant gentlemen, Mr McLoughlin and Mr Horan are clearly incredibly skilled businessmen.
This year DDF is expecting a turnover of more than US$1.8bn. Obviously it is not just Tang and Nido powdered milk that contribute to this.
The company has also moved 2,676 kilograms of gold, 14.5 million cigars, 7 million bottles of liquor, 2.9 million bottles of perfume and 25,000 Apple iPads.
In the early days, says Saba Tahir, who joined DDF as a sales supervisor and is now the vice president of purchasing, buying stock for the stores was a very different experience to today.
“I used to work very closely with Colm,” Mrs Tahir recalls. “We used to go to the electronics souq and to the showrooms in Deira.
“At 1pm they used to close so I’d say, ‘shall we go get a Wimpy?’ We’d go eat, then again at 4pm when the lights came on, we’d go and do it again. We were new in the market. We didn’t know about pricing and agents back then.”
Mrs Tahir now runs the purchasing department with its staff of 43, making sure the stores have access to every item, including thousands of tonnes of Tang.
The stock is stored in a 27,000-square-metre warehouse operated by man and machine.
There are on-site policemen and Customs officers who X-ray all of the pallets leaving the warehouse before they travel into the airport. About 60 trucks, each with up to 450 pallets, travel out the store area each day.
Another pioneer who has worked her way up is Lata Bhardwaj, 62, who began her career in a DDF textile shop as a sales assistant. At the time, the staff would eagerly await passengers in transit.
“There were some Iranian flights,” Ms Bhardwaj says. “They used to come straight away in a big group and buy the Iranian military-looking jackets. In a half hour they would buy between 50 or 100 jackets. And they used to buy bananas.”
At the time, when English was much less commonly spoken, communication between the staff and passengers was sometimes tricky, she recalls.
“We managed to communicate somehow, and then we started learning some words and phrases.”
Now Ms Bhardwaj can speak English, Arabic, Tagalog, and her native language, Hindi.
She is the manager of operations at the concourse area of Terminal 3.
For another of the pioneers, Nida Ponce-Santos, now 60, her 30 years at DDF has changed her family’s life forever.
“I am very lucky. I have given my son a very good life here. Not all Filipinos here can say that they are so lucky.”
munderwood@thenational.ae
