fashion insider
DIA-STYLE.COM By Rasha Khouri
This month ABODE interviewed Rasha Khouri, founder of DIA-style.com, a new e-commerce fashion site for the Middle East in English and Arabic, offering a uniquely comprehensive shopping experience for the luxury consumer in the Middle East. Necklace Shourouk Heels Valentino
Bag Burberry
Blazer Balmain
You launched your career as an investment banker at JP Morgan in New York, how come you decided to venture in the fashion world instead? A: I always had a passion for fashion, business, technology as well as the Middle East and have been fortunate to be able to bring all of these elements together in DIA-style.com. I always had in mind that I wanted to be able to shape and create my own business so being an entrepreneur was a natural progression from the corporate world.
E-commerce is getting bigger and bigger. How is your new business responding to the demand? A: E-commerce has increased worldwide and reports from VISA and Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) predict that by 2015 the online retail market in GCC countries will have
grown to $15 billion, compared to $3.3 billion in 2010. I saw that no one was focusing on the online luxury market for the Middle East in Arabic and English and that there were no websites purely catering to the region for on-season, on-trend luxury fashion. Not even the global brands have websites in Arabic.
Are residents in the Gulf Peninsula shopping online regularly or do they still prefer a more personal service in boutiques? A: There is a place both for online and as well as physical stores. Since our launch we have seen an increasing amount of customers buying from our site. We offer a very personal customer service via our stylists who are available online and over the phone. We have heard that
YOU CAN FIND SOME AMAZING ITEMS ONLINE, pieces
you may not be able to get hold of in boutiques or stores where you live! Sign up for newsletters and Facebook and Twitter to make sure you know about special offers.
some of our customers enjoy the online shopping experience more because they can shop without sales assistants hovering around them. We're launching an online live chat service in a few weeks to further enhance the customer experience.
How do you make your website stand out from the myriad of other e-outlets? A: We offer the largest selection of luxury designers and products that ship quickly to the Middle East. We put together the products from the top luxury e-tailers worldwide, including NET-APORTER, Harrods, my-wardrobe, matchesfashion, brownsfashion, mytheresa, Boutique1 and Stylebop. You'll find all their products in one place on our site so that you can easily see the latest deliveries from all of them, or see everything available from a particular designer or sort the product by type of garment or accessory. All of the products on DIA-style.com come direct from the designers, so we can 100 per cent guarantee that everything on the site is authentic.
21
ABODE June - m26-.indd 21
5/27/13 6:13 PM