Over mezze, tabouleh and fatoush, with river traffic buzzing back and forth, as it has done for centuries, Crabbe, new Middle East manager for Scottish Development International (SDI), reflects on a long career of doing business in the Gulf, mainly in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
A natural salesman, whose product used to be medical kit for Johnson & Johnson but which is now Scotland itself, he voices his conviction on how, through a “concerted push”, Scottish businesses could hitch a ride on one of the world’s fastest-growing areas.
Dubai is at the commercial crossroads of what, in modern economic terms, is still a young region. Crabbe explains how -- even if it doesn’t know it yet -- the Middle East wants or needs a lot of what Scotland has to offer, from advanced oil and gas expertise, to healthcare, to food and drink, to Scottish education: Heriot-Watt University has a thriving campus here, the only non-franchise offering in the UAE.
“Scottish companies which are able to solve a problem or answer a need, whether they are in oil and gas or business services, and who have a key USP, will succeed here,” Crabbe says.
Until recently SDI merely dabbled in the Middle East through sporadic trade missions, a lack of focus that mystifies some local private sector observers. After all, the area is stuffed with successful Scots, and the rise of Dubai in particular has been one of the transformative economic stories of the past two or three decades.
That disengagement has ended. SDI now has a fully functioning Dubai office staffed by Crabbe and his colleague Moira Bibb, contained within the British Embassy compound. Ironically, the Saltire is finally being hoisted just as the over-expansive emirate is recovering from a property-derived financial cardiac arrest, but reports of its death are much exaggerated. Crabbe and his Middle East-focused SDI colleagues, Anne MacColl and Mackay Smith, glad-handed local businesses, potential partners and the media at the official opening last week, fired with the sense that there is all to play for.
Think about it. Local crisis notwithstanding, the Gulf region as a whole is on a 5% growth path that mature Western markets can only dream about, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE leading the way. Scotland produces many of the products and services required for the next stage of development. Scots business people encountered last week are all but universally convinced that, if we promote a unified brand message to a susceptible and increasingly prosperous population, we can reverse a situation in which too few people outside the traditional elite have heard of the Scottish proposition.
British exports to the region grew by 30% in 2008 and held steady last year, despite the drama surrounding the suspected $109 billion (£76bn) hole in Dubai’s finances. It is SDI’s belief that we can and should be increasing Scotland’s 6,000 exporting businesses to 8,000 or 10,000, and that the Middle East region can soak up £1.1bn of their exports within three years. From 2002-2007 Scottish exports to the UAE alone grew from £175m to £275m. Since then they have increased to around £360m, but competition is constantly heating up, and complacency is not an option.
Crabbe reports: “In four-and-a-half months, I have had 100 enquiries from Scots companies eager to do business here.” He is also adept at tactfully exploiting the GlobalScot network, the expatriate big beasts of business, willing and able to help new entrants in particular markets with advice and introductions. He is also looking for ways to access the sovereign wealth of the region to support major infrastructure and other projects in Scotland.
Now living in the shadow of the mighty Burj Khalifa tower, Crabbe is a commercial animal who learned his understated but persuasive sales techniques by close observation of the Arabic way of doing business early in his career, and by building up local distribution networks for his division of J&J.
The son of a rubber planter in Malaya, he attended Edinburgh’s Merchiston Castle school and Napier University, where he studied chemistry. He always intended to live and work in overseas markets, starting in Africa, followed by the UAE and Saudi. That market knowledge of how Middle Easterners like to do business, and what interests them, will make him a valuable mentor and sounding board, who can quickly distinguish between propositions that will grab local attention and those which “need more work”. An initial phone conversation is usually helpful.
“It’s not a prescriptive thing, but I need to assess how ready they are, as I really don’t want to waste people’s time, theirs, their prospective contacts or the GlobalScots’. The questions companies have to ask themselves are: Why are they looking at business out here? What problem does your product solve and who has that problem? If there isn’t a USP, then they should think again.
“Gone are the days of people coming out here [on spec] for a jolly, and playing a bit of golf and hanging out by the pool.”
As well as the capacity to make the right introductions, Crabbe will do everything to ensure that companies do the right thing by local standards: “Respect and politeness are very important here, and there is a lot in what people say about business being based more on relationship building than on contracts. But the Arabs are traders. They respect people who move on through the courtesies to doing business and who have purpose, a goal.”
Crabbe and his SDI colleagues in the field are themselves part of an increasing trend to have operators from business, not bureaucracy, who realise that time is not exactly on Scotland’s side, and who are working all the angles to the country’s advantage. Some GlobalScots mutter that Scottish officialdom still sees structural faffing around as somehow an end in itself, and that there is still too much fragmentation of the message, but there have been huge strides taken in bringing the private and myriad public faces of Scotland plc closer together.
As he describes it, Colin Crabbe will enjoy building on that: “If you get a win for a company you’ve helped, there is a tremendous feeling of achievement. After a while, it’s addictive, particularly with smaller companies, when you’ve been able to do something that in their terms counts as a big win.
“But there are a lot of similarities between what a company is trying to do and what a country is trying to do. You still have the same challenge of a room full of people [to persuade] and a lot of buzz. I find it really good fun.”
SDI in The Emirates
SDI’s Dubai office will focus on the Gulf Co-operation Council states: UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, with support for other ME countries coming from UK Trade & Investment. The sector focus will be in energy (oil, gas and renewables), professional services, education, food and drink, life sciences/chemicals and financial services. Meanwhile, inward investment attraction will focus on tourism and construction, renewable energy and “general financing of investment potential”.
