On one of my now frequent Jeddah trips, I seized the opportunity to call on Hani Rouhi Al Khatib, an old friend since my AUB days, who had settled in Jeddah after graduation. Hani was an honor list student throughout his four years at AUB, and a descendant of a well-known Palestinian family that has its roots in Jerusalem for more than 800 years; Hanis’ father, Rouhi Al Khatib, was the governor of Jerusalem till the time he was expelled by the Israelis to Jordan in 1968. Hani worked with the Saudi Olayan Group as a Regional Manager at General Trading Company (GTC), for the Western and Southern regions, and his office was at the heart of downtown Jeddah.
I walked into Hani’s crowded office and that allowed him the excuse to escort me to an adjoining room, whose door he closed, to welcome me with his traditional bear hug. Then he sat down to puff a cigarette while we chatted in peace. My first question to this old friend was how he had survived in Jeddah for so long. He who was such an adventurous person, and whose laughter and giggles had continuously echoed all over the AUB campus and Ras Beirut. Hani laughed his heart out, telling me how professionally rewarding his job had been since he landed here. The pay was good, allowing him non-stop travel opportunities for his family. The job also provided him with a small, cute villa with a swimming pool and a Sudanese butler, who cooked, washed, cleaned, and looked after the place. On the personal front, he continued to be very active with his hobby of stamp collection, and during this visit he laughingly told me that the peak of all this was the International Herald Tribune, which he got every Tuesday, since it announced international executive job opportunities.
The previous week he had spent three days in Geneva for a job interview. He had also been to Germany and England earlier in the year. Hani’s most passionate pastime activity was dreaming and planning his next trip to a city that he liked to take a short break in. But how he went about doing that was quite amazing. He first scrutinized job offers until he came across an opening in a city he wanted to visit. He then sent his impressive CV and awaited the usual telephone interview. This was normally always followed up by an invitation to travel for a face-to-face interview. He considered these interviews as regular overseas breaks to punctuate the boredom of life in Jeddah. In the end, when he received a job offer, he would apologize on the basis that he had just been offered a more stimulating posting.
After our second cigarette, Hani went back to what he had said about professional satisfaction, inviting me to join him for lunch at the popular Kaymak Glass restaurant, and then to accompany him on a market tour. He explained that this would help him demonstrate how challenging his job has been since he joined GTC.
While having lunch in an environment of young Lebanese, Palestinian and Egyptian business executives, all clearly enjoying Kaymak Glass’ popular plat du jour, Hani explained that GTC distributed the products of many global FMCG manufacturers. The product range kept expanding, which added another dimension of education to the classical marketing and sales responsibilities. This is what executives in his position in other markets usually don’t handle. The fact that they were located at the entrance of the Jeddah souk and Gabel Street, coupled with the fact that most of the wholesale trade was in the vicinity, allowed him to push many new product concepts into Saudi households via this route.
By the time we had eaten our lunch and each one of us had guzzled two bottles of alcohol-free beer, Hani got to our afternoon assignment. I was enjoying the popular ice-cream that gave its name to the restaurant, while Hani carried on with his briefing. He told me that the population of Jeddah – in the very old days – used to line up by the sweet water wells to take it in turns pulling up the bucket, filling their jerry cans and carrying them back home. Later, they discovered the convenience of running water at home, which they used for drinking, washing, bathing, and cleaning. Hani then explained that GTC had recently become the agency for a Lebanese bottled water brand called Sohat[1] (meaning health in English), which was proving to be very popular in Lebanon. For the past two month, he had been trying to push it via the wholesale market, but the traders remained adamant that the population of Jeddah would not replace their tap water with these funny bottles. Hani wanted to try a new trick that afternoon and invited me to be his witness.
After lunch, we drove to GTC’s warehouse and not to Hani’s office. Two trucks were being loaded with cases of Sohat. Hani had a mischievous smile on his face as he gave orders to his employees, while I continued to wonder what was going to happen next. I accompanied Hani in his car while the two trucks followed, quickly realizing that we were driving in the direction of Jeddah’s wholesale market at Bab Mecca.
As we arrived at the entrance of the souk, Hani ordered the trucks to park, whispering that we were parking in between the shops of the two largest wholesalers in the Kingdom. The laborers immediately began unloading and stacking the cases on the pavement between the entrance of the Bamajli and Sharbatly megastores. At that moment, the call to the early evening prayer (Al Aassr) echoed around the souk and the floodgates opened as all the merchants and their employees threw fish nets across their shop entrances and walked to the mosque. On Hani’s instructions, we jumped into his car and slowly drove away, watching this sea of people passing in front of the Sohat trucks and looking quizzically at the wall of Sohat cases as it was piling up.
At the first intersection, Hani turned around and we drove back to where we had parked. He jumped out of the car and instructed his workers to urgently load back all the cases into the trucks. I could see them using all their effort to obey his orders, while looking at their big boss with surprise. When the loading was completed, Hani gave orders to the drivers to return to the warehouse taking the opposite route, while we got back into his car and drove around the souk to watch the crowds coming out of the mosque and walking back to their shops. Several people who had just exited the mosque stopped by the pavement where the Sohat cases were piled and looked around. A few even peeped through the open doors of the Bamajli and Sharbatly stores.
I could not wait to reach the GTC office and to hear from Hani the reason behind all that he had done. In fact, Hani seemed to be even more excited, telling me that his salesmen had used every trick in the book to take orders for Sohat, but this new product just did not sell. Wholesalers refused to purchase even the trial orders that GTC had offered, saying that no Saudi family would ever pay for their drinking water or even try to drink water from bottles. Not even when GTC threatened not to deliver the popular Kleenex products unless five trial cases of Sohat water were accepted as part of that Kleenex order. Hani continued to explain that what we had done earlier that evening was the last trick in his book. Every trader in the souk, including the two largest, Bamajli and Sharbatly, would have seen a very large order of Sohat being delivered to one of the wholesale market merchants. Whoever had taken delivery of that consignment would have had his workers taking it into storage while all the souk people were praying. Hani concluded that if he knows his customers well, orders for Sohat would start trickling in the next day.
I rushed through my meetings at Abdel Latif Jameel the next day and went back to GTC to check on what had happened. Hani’s smile was so wide as he moved around the different departments, shouting orders. Seeing me signaled his cigarette break, so we walked to the same private room we had been in the previous day. He sank into his chair, lit his cigarette, and explained. As he arrived at the office early in the morning, the phone was ringing. The Bamajli general manager wanted to know to whom the Sohat order had been delivered the previous evening. Hani reacted curtly, reminding him that he had never revealed such information before, and he was not ready to do so now. The Bamajli manager reacted with a giggle, telling Hani that he was attempting to only pull his leg and placed a sizeable Sohat order requesting quick delivery. The day continued in the same manner with Sharbatly placing another large order and every merchant in the souk wanting to try and push Sohat down to the retail trade. Hani was elated, since his bold attempt at changing consumer habits had successfully taken off, as he was confident that the Saudi wholesale trade could sell ice to Eskimos.
Eighteen months after this fascinating experience, as I was chatting with Hani about the latest developments in his area of operations, he jumped. As if talking to himself, he said that the Lebanese Zoghzoghi Group was very happy with GTC’s Sohat sales, as it had given legitimacy to the investment, they had made in building the bottling plant at the source, which was in Falougha in the Lebanese central mountains. Hani’s tone changed as he explained that Binzagr, the well-known agent of Unilever in the Kingdom, had publicly declared his amazement with the dramatic change in Saudi water-drinking ways. This leading businessman was known to be tracking the fast growth of Sohat sales; to the extent that he was urgently building a water bottling plant close to Jeddah and was planning to launch his Sohtain[2] (which meant Sohat times two and is also a way to wish people bon appétit in Arabic) brand any moment now. Hani turned to me and asked if I would like to repeat the earlier experience and join the GTC sales team on their pre-emptive strike ahead of the Sohtain launch. I instantly agreed.
Early the next morning, all the salesforce gathered in the spacious briefing room to listen to Hani’s final instructions before starting their market rounds. I was assigned to shadow one of the team leaders. This meant that I did not have to go on one of the deliveries trucks but sat next to the supervisor in his sedan on the way to one of the leading wholesalers in Jeddah.
As we walked in, we received a warm welcome, which was followed by istikans of very sweet traditional tea and an exchange of pleasantries about kids and their schools. As per Hani’s instructions, we were to quickly conclude each call and move, since we had many outlets to visit. Ahmad, the supervisor, asked the wholesaler how many cartons of Sohat should he order for delivery. This seemed to be a question that caused the wholesaler to retreat and politely say that he did not need water for the week, as his warehouses had been stocked with Binzagr’s Sohtain trade loading offer.
Ahmad made no comment but only looked around and dashed to pick a bottle of the new water from the stacked cartons placed on the highly visible display. The shape of the Sohtain bottle was very similar to that of Sohat and its label was the same color. Even the brand name was designed using the same typeface. Ahmad slowly walked towards the wholesaler while demonstrating difficulty in uncapping the bottle he was holding. He finally removed the cap and splashed a little water on the thawb (dish dash) of the wholesaler, who reacted in shock. Ahmad reassuringly held his hand with a smile and insisted that the wholesaler walk out with him outside the shop. Despite the apparent anger of the wholesaler, Ahmad explained in a calming and smiling tone that the purity of drinking water is the responsibility of wholesalers and retailers, as much as it is the responsibility of the bottler. Having walked out with the wholesaler, Ahmad made him stand in front of the shop in the sunshine and pointed to the areas of the white thawb where the water traces had dried to reveal a light stain that was still showing on the thawb. At that moment, the wholesaler showed a sign of slight relaxation and an apparent curiosity to hear more. Ahmad then took the bottle of Sohat that he had carried with him, opened it with great ease and repeated the splashing experiment on our host’s thawb. As it dried, there were no traces whatsoever left on the white fabric. At that point, Ahmad concluded his pitch by explaining that Sohat was pure source water, bottled at Lebanon’s mountain peaks. Residual minerals could have only caused the stains left over by Sohtain, which could be harmful to babies and delicate stomachs. Before leaving, Ahmad said that his delivery trucks would continue to pass by daily in case the wholesaler changed his mind and wanted to place a new order.
This is how the innovative thinking of one man – and his persistence – changed the way Saudis drank their water.
[1] Sohat, the brand name was inspired from the meaning of the Arabic name: Health implying good health. The name of the water fountain at the peak of Al Kanissah Mountain over Falougha in Lebanon, is now referred to as the Source of Sohat.
[2] Sohtain,derived from the Lebanese superlative figure of speech where adjectives expressing the state of an individual, is multiplied to express as good or even a better status. Sohtain exactly means “Sohat” multiplied by two.