In 1961, an 18-year-old Irishman, Colm McLaughlin, landed on the coast of England to "try his luck." Over the next eight years, the young man gradually became deputy manager at Woolworths, the largest department store chain store, located on London's luxurious Oxford Street.
Many of us would stop there. However, this was not the restless and restless Colm, who at the age of 26 was politely called "Mr. McLaughlin." Arriving on a vacation to his homeland in 1969, unexpectedly for all his colleagues and acquaintances, he got a job as an assistant manager in the duty-free shop of Shannon Airport, a hundred kilometers from his hometown of Galway. The history of this store is rooted in the distant 1947, starting from which a number of goods, including alcohol and tobacco, began to be imported and exported from the airport without paying taxes and fees. So the idea of duty free trading was born, which the whole world soon learned about.
Now anyone would envy Mak-Loklin: he got into the very first (and most famous) store of its kind, soon becoming its general manager. On this, it seemed, one could summarize the nomadic life of a young Irishman. However, fate decreed otherwise.
Desert airport
Young McLaughlin would have been a little surprised to learn that in adulthood he would tear himself away and go to a distant little-known city on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Moreover, in the sixties in Dubai there was not only a duty free store, but even an airport. Old planes from the Second World War landed on narrow salt marshes. This continued until 1971, when a modern (by then standards) international airport was opened near the city. After a few years, it underwent modernization - and it turned out that the new airport capabilities far exceed the existing flow of passengers. Therefore, Mohidin bin Handy, who then held the post of Director General of the Dubai Department of Civil Aviation, began to think about how to attract transit passengers to Dubai from the long routes connecting the East with the West. “What to do,” he mused, “so that people would like to have a transplant in Dubai?”
By accident, Bean Handy caught the eye of an advertising brochure of Aer Rianta, which operated the duty free store in Shannon. The Irish experience seemed tempting - but was the game worth the candle? Do I need a large modern shopping center in a half-empty airport, lost among the sands?
Mohidin bin Handy decided to consult with specialists. In the summer of 1983, Michael Henraan, manager of the Irish airport finance, flew in from Dubai to Shannon to Dubai. Together with him, the 40-year-old McLaughlin left the plane, who left the world's first duty free store.
Harsh weekdays
Friends managed to convince Bin Handy to decide on an experiment. Aer Rianta signed a contract, pledging to create a duty-free trade store at a Dubai airport within six months.
In September 1983, ten energetic specialists arrived in Dubai, intending to turn a deserted trading room with sellers who were bored of small shops into the best duty free store in the world. This team also included Colm McLaughlin, general manager of the future trading giant.
Initially, plans diverged from reality. After all, it was the first store of its kind in the Middle East; everything had to start "from scratch" - even training for sellers. Many young men and women who came from India and the Philippines had no idea what dollars and pounds look like, not to mention dirhams. Mak-Loklin had to go to the exchange office at the Golden Bazaar and buy up almost all the banknotes there. (By the way, half of the first sales staff still work in the store, proudly bearing the honorary title of The Pioneers.)
The manager and his assistants worked for seven months without days off, leaving them to sleep for 5-6 hours a day. However, most tourists still had no idea where in Dubai. It didn’t even help that McLaughlin and his wife Brida handed out tons of leaflets at various tourist exhibitions and conferences with their own hands.
First reward
One such conference was held in May 1984 in Hong Kong. McLaughlin listened attentively to the chairman's report, Julian Fox. It was about the fact that private duty free stores in Europe are increasingly tearing up prices, scaring away customers. “If this goes further,” the speaker said, “these stores will turn into an unnecessary fifth wheel.”
When it was time to ask questions, McLaughlin had the courage to stand up and introduce himself, riveting everyone's attention.
“In Dubai,” he said, “the duty free store belongs to the government.” Working only six months, we found a way to make the "fifth wheel" useful and necessary.
As he expected, a short speech made a lot of noise. A few months later, Julian Fox published a four-page report on a new store in the International Tax Free Trader. This was followed by publications in the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. Time magazine said the Dubai store is "better than in Amsterdam."
In November 1985, three hundred guests of honor gathered in the banquet hall of the Dubai Hyatt Regency hotel in order to congratulate the small store with the first award. It was an Oscar in the Best Operator nomination, awarded at the Frontier Awards held in Nice.
Staying yourself
In the first year of its existence, the store earned $ 20 million. His incomes increased all the time; sales growth was accompanied by the reconstruction of the air harbor itself, which in 1987 again underwent a massive modernization. At the same time, the second duty free opened in the arrivals hall, and in 1995 the third - in the new terminal of the Dubai International Airport.
By 1990, store revenue compared with 1984 has quadrupled. After 10 years, when a new Sheikh Rashid terminal with another store was put into operation at the airport, this figure reached $ 217 million. In July 2003, duty-free trade reached $ 1 million per day (!), Which brought the Dubai store to the level of giants such as duty free Singapore, Amsterdam, Paris and London Heathrow Airport.
In the first six months of 2005, Dubai Duty Free earned $ 283 million. Representatives of 27 nationalities work here. And this is not the limit - after all, another terminal is being built at the airport. The store management expects to increase the staff from 1300 to 2000 people and achieve a turnover of 600 million dollars.
Meanwhile, McLaughlin is experimenting again and again. Having become the managing director in 1994, he laid the foundation for the famous Millennium Millionaire and Car Draw lotteries, and also made the store a sponsor of sports events. The restless nomad received a well-deserved recognition. The organizers of the Frontier Awards announced him "Person of the Year." In 2000, Decision Makers magazine made McLaughlin a member of his Hall of Fame; then the government of Dubai awarded him the highest award in the Excellence Program.
However, McLaughlin would not be a real Irishman if his whole life was spent in the office. In his spare time, Grandpa Colm loves to fly his small plane. He headed the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai for a long time and still prefers to spend his weekend on the golf course. However, he does not forget the hometown of Galway and is an active member of the Dubai Irish Society. That is his Irish character.
