Alshaya

Modernizing heritage

Diversifying a global family retail business

Challenge

Alshaya is a leading international franchise operator for nearly 90 of the world’s most recognized retail brands, including Starbucks, H&M and Mothercare. First established as a family business in 1890, Alshaya has grown to operate 4,000 stores across the Middle East and North Africa, Russia, Turkey and Europe, across seven sectors, with over 60,000 employees. To ensure further growth and success, Alshaya sought to diversify and globalize, better-serving customers through innovation, encouraging entrepreneurship and aligning with government bodies to serve and support local economies.

Insight

A review of strategic materials, competitor analysis and internal and external key stakeholder interviews allowed us to identify the organization’s core strengths and truth, which enabled us to uncover Alshaya’s true purpose—Pioneering progress of modern living to enrich societies and economies. We also developed the new brand promise—Inspiring growth in motion.

Answer

Shortly after the 2018 rebrand, Alshaya launched the Burj Alshaya complex, which housed its flagship hotel in downtown Kuwait City, the new Four Seasons. The partnership allowed the development of Alshaya’s hospitality business. Completing the Avenues Mall’s expansion, Alshaya ventured into developing new malls across the region and diversifying into construction and real estate. In 2019, Alshaya announced its plans to bring a vibrant mix of shopping and dining experiences to customers at Abu Dhabi’s new leisure destination—The Galleria Al Maryha Island.

The brand architecture was simplified to a monolithic model. This allowed us to create brand consistency across the divisions of the newly named, The Alshaya Group. Simply stating the name of the division wherever needed, enterprise segments are differentiated.

A new, modern website and best-in-class user experience elevated The Alshaya Group brand. By balancing the ability to communicate at a group level with independent communication around individual products, we brought clarity to the brand structure.

The unified brand that sits across the variety of products under The Alshaya Group brand created an opportunity to increase brand advocacy and loyalty through access to greater benefits and rewards.

This versatile design system offers enough flexibility to present the different brands under the Alshaya umbrella. The brand can sit at 100% for a complete Alshaya program, 50% for partial branding and vacant when the brand is a silent partner.