Exclusive Q+A: Simon Garrett, Nisbets

With Hotec just finished and Hotelympia underway in London, Hotelier speaks exclusively to Hotelympia exhibitor, UK-based catering supplier, Nisbets about the challenges of distributing to the Middle East.

What Middle East projects have you worked on?
We supply Hilton, IHG, and Marriott among others. We’ve done quite a bit of work with Qatar Airways and one of the big hotels owned by Qatar Foundation; it was a Qatar Luxury Group. We did about three restaurant openings for them about 18 months ago. I knew one of the executive chefs at the restaurants from back home in the UK so forging those kinds of relationships is really important to us.

What Middle East based distributors do you work with?
Our distributors here are Italia kitchen and laundry and then a couple of smaller ones, and we supply directly. Distributors take a degree of stock holding because a lot of people want to touch and feel the products before buying them so that’s the biggest problem for us. We work with anybody that’s in the local market who can go out and find business for us; we’re looking for people to bring business into ourselves. There are no exclusive arrangements really, it’s just as wide as we can make it, but we’re trying to find the right people to drive it forward as we would like to do ourselves.

Why are you targeting the Middle East market?
Getting involved in the Middle East market is a key vision moving forward, with Expo 2020 coming up and the Qatar Fifa World Cup. It seems like Qatar is really about to explode, like they’re waiting for the green light to go on.

Is timing and scheduling projects in the Middle East a challenge for you since you’re UK-based?
We don’t find that to be too much of an issue because of the range of products and stock holding that we have. We have a dedicated team that pulls all the stock together and consolidates it before sending it, and if that means bringing special order items in from outside or non-stocked items we’ll put it all together before shipping it.

So what is the biggest challenge in distributing to the Middle East then?
The main challenge is the specification of the product. People have very specific views and although we have a huge range it’s not always what they specifically want because the product range in the UK is far different to in the Middle East, so we’re finding very specific requirements, which means we have to go outside our normal range. This all adds time to the overall process. Also, getting the advice and the quotations back is not really as quick as it should be here – and when you’re relying on other sources that’s where the challenge is. There’s no problem in getting payments, it’s just getting the green light.

So being based in the UK, how do you establish loyal relationships with businesses in the Middle East?
I think really it’s trying to get in front of them and I believe that in this part of the world it’s about building that trust and perhaps it’s four or five visits before anything really comes off. By building those relationships hopefully you’ll be the first person they’ll call when they’re looking to buy things; but it is a lengthy process.