It’s not a secret that the Bahraini market is irrational and even wacky sometimes. All it takes is a quick trip in any busy road to see the endless yellow signs of “Karak” Tea shops and cafeterias. The same phenomena exists in the rather uninspiring eCommerce landscape that lurks within unnatural online services such as Instagram and Whatsapp. Cakes, cupcakes and the rest of the usual businesses that are expanding like wildfire.
We thought that we’ll go for a quick fact finding mission in a random road in Riffa called “Deebal Avenue”, equipped with my smartphone that is strapped into a cheap Chinese car dock. The results of my short trip was later on dumped into a spreadsheet for further analysis.
The entire trip took three minutes and twenty four seconds, including the time I had to maneuver between cars and trucks parked in way that makes your blood boil.
In my eventful 3 minutes trip, I came across 107 businesses, including small and relatively large shops. The actual road was just 608 meter long. Most shops were squeezed into a block that hosted from 2 to 10 of them.
Now let’s dive into the hardcore facts:
There were 32 kinds of shops ranging from selling Bahraini Abaya or “Dafa” to cafeterias to car mechanics.
53 out of the 107 shops we looked at were selling Abayas! That’s an astonishing 49%!
In the last 135 meters, we saw 20 Abaya shops in a row!
4 large and medium business were providing car cleaning and windows tinting services, the shops are located in the middle of the road, the distance between them was less than 135 meters!
We also found that people had to choose from 4 laundry shops located in the middle of the road.
Somehow, the men in the area needed a haircut more than the national average. We saw around 6 gent saloons.
The distance between the first and the fourth stationary shop was around 250 meters!
There were only 12 shops selling something uniquely different, like a traditional baker “Khabaaz” or a gift shop.
I’m not sure how did that happen but a shop was selling herbal medicine and preparing research papers for students!
I’m quite surprised if there’s any business logic behind opening an Abaya shop in the middle of 19 other shops. If fact, why would someone think that his lackluster shop will manage to attract all the local girls.
Why would someone think to open a shop right in the middle of action, while there were tens of choices that are far more better?
In a recent discussion with Fayadh Al-Dosseri, the owner of the Tea Club, we spent a substantial amount of our interview talking about positioning your business and how other cities like Dubai, have regulations and restrictions on the type and location of each business in premium locations. We also discussed the rigid and awkward regulation that prevented business from serving highly populated areas and restricted the growth potential of great opportunities.
What we need here is some business sense and some kind of regulation, maybe by municipal councils, to find out the needs of people and educate new business owners on what kind of business is required. What we also need from concerned institutions like Tamkeen is to provide awareness and training for entrepreneurs and small businesses on the basics of doing business, instead of focusing on the motivational seminars people are attending to render a few days out of office with the benefit of lunch in a hotel. Not to mention the lack of information and statistics available to the business savvy entrepreneurs to understand the size of a specific market.
During the past five years, there was an influx of ideas, enablers and tools that could be used to revolutionize the entrepreneurial scene in the country. We did not take advantage of any of them. And even in the rare occasions we did, we saw the same mistakes shifting from the physical to the digital world.
The numbers don’t lie, I would just like to know one thing,
