Bloomingdale's Dubai: launching a New York icon into the Middle East

Bringing a heritage brand to a new market is one of the hardest jobs in marketing: honour what makes it iconic, while making it belong somewhere entirely new. When Bloomingdale's opened its first store outside the United States, in Dubai, leading that launch was my responsibility.

The challenge

In 2010, Bloomingdale's chose Dubai for the first store in its history outside the United States, a landmark moment for the brand, for Al Tayer Group as operating partner, and for Dubai's standing as a global retail capital. The challenge was considerable: protect the equity of a celebrated New York department-store name while making it genuinely relevant to Dubai's mix of local, regional, expatriate and tourist customers. It also had to launch into a cautious, post-2008 retail climate, where a 200,000 sq ft luxury opening was as much a confidence statement as a commercial one.

The approach

I led the marketing and launch of Bloomingdale's first international store at The Dubai Mall. The strategy was to treat this not as a store opening but as a market entry: preserve the unmistakable Bloomingdale's identity, the New York heritage and the “best of America” positioning, while curating the assortment, service and experience for the regional luxury customer. Anchored inside The Dubai Mall, the launch combined a three-level, 146,000 sq ft fashion, beauty and accessories store with a dedicated 54,000 sq ft Home store, roughly 200,000 sq ft of lifestyle retail, inaugurated by Sheikh Mansour bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Every element of the launch was built to make a global icon feel both authentic and at home in the region.

“The brief was not to open a store. It was to bring a New York institution to the Middle East, and make it belong.”

The results

A landmark market-entry launch that established the first Bloomingdale's outside the United States and gave The Dubai Mall a defining luxury anchor. Set inside a destination that welcomed 47 million visitors in 2010, up 27% year on year, the launch introduced the brand to one of the world's largest retail audiences and reinforced Dubai's emergence as a global luxury retail capital. The strongest proof came later: by 2014, Macy's Inc. and Bloomingdale's leadership publicly described the Dubai operation as a “standout success”, citing it as the platform that gave them the confidence to expand further in the region. A heritage American icon had not just arrived in the Middle East; it had taken root.

Investment, scale and visitor figures are as publicly reported by Macy's Inc., Al Tayer Group and The Dubai Mall. The 47m figure refers to total Dubai Mall visitation in 2010.