São Paulo – The Brazilian luxury furniture brand Ornare has officially completed its first project in Saudi Arabia: a custom kitchen installed in a residential palace in capital Riyadh.
The project was carried out by architects Shalise Basso and Carina Fontes, who lead Ornare’s only franchise in the Middle East, opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in March 2022, following the pandemic.
The installation marks progress in building a project base in the Saudi capital in anticipation of opening a showroom in the city. The showroom had been previously announced and remains part of the architects’ plans. However, the expected opening is now scheduled for early next year.
“We’re in the process of documentation,” says Shalise Basso. “When you compare Saudi Arabia [to the UAE], it’s a bit behind in terms of [foreign] investment, but this is changing quickly,” she added. “We already have clients and projects, and I believe the store will be open by early next year,” she told ANBA.
In the past three years, Basso and Fontes’s franchise has entered a phase of consolidation. The showroom in Dubai, previously located in Opus Tower, a stern business-hotel complex, moved last year to Citywalk, a vibrant mixed-use space in the Emirati metropolis, featuring residential buildings, offices, leisure facilities, restaurants, and open-air shops.
At the new location, the sales team has grown. The showroom gained a more spacious environment for events aimed at architects, a key audience for the brand, who, according to Basso and Fontes, generate 60% of the franchise’s projects by specifying Ornare. The rest come from social media leads, relationships with developers and contractors, as well as occasional customers who enter the store to dream about a new kitchen and often leave with a commissioned project, sometimes for the entire house.
In their effort to win over Dubai architects, the franchisees gained the trust of XBD, an architecture firm based in London and Dubai with several completed projects on Palm Jumeirah, the famous palm-shaped islands of the emirate, home to global celebrities. The trust reached the point that Ornare Dubai, for example, furnished the home of one of XBD’s partners, according to Carina Fontes.
“She could have had her house done by any company,” she said, referring to the fact that XBD works with all the major luxury furniture brands and internationally renowned architects. “But we [Ornare Dubai] were the ones who did it,” she continued. “XBD is very big here, with many luxury projects, and this is a very important achievement for us.”
The close relationship with architects who specify projects throughout the UAE and even in neighboring countries recently led to a series of projects in Abu Dhabi, one of them in the luxury Saadiyat Island complex. In fact, the partners see even more potential to eventually open a new showroom in the emirate.
“Abu Dhabi is an even bigger market than Dubai,” assesses Carina Fontes. “Dubai showcases a quiet luxury that doesn’t feel the need to show off. In Abu Dhabi, grandeur is everywhere, especially in the homes. Also, there are many Europeans already accustomed to luxury. Sales are, so to speak, easier, and the potential is huge,” she says.
Slow and steady work
When they opened the showroom in Dubai, their biggest challenge was convincing professionals and clients who were used to the most sophisticated furniture brands in the world to work with a Latin brand that, although a luxury reference in Brazil and respected in the United States and Europe, was unknown in the Middle East.
The business’s current stage was achieved, as Carina Fontes put it, through “slow and steady work.” The product’s quality certainly helped, but above all, it was the architects’ willingness to build relationships with clients that made the difference—a factor highly valued in Arab culture, where transactions only happen when there is trust between the parties.
“As an architect [before opening the franchise], we couldn’t find that willingness [to build relationships] here. We really missed that in the market, so we realized that our edge would be the service—the personal touch, being warm, having the patience for three- or four-hour meetings, months-long negotiations,” said Basso.
“In the UAE, several families live in the same house. Discussing an entire project takes time. We take advantage of that, getting everyone in the family involved. We might start negotiating a project with the father and end up closing another with the son. We also focus on customizations. Other stores have wonderful products, but with fewer possibilities than ours,” Basso continued.
This care in building relationships extends to the clients’ architects as well. “Even if the client comes here with a floor plan or with their own architect, we help in the creative process, with our professional suggesting something different, and from there a relationship [with the architect] begins,” says Carina Fontes.
About Ornare
Ornare was founded in São Paulo in 1986. The production that supplies its clients and the 14 owned and franchised showrooms in Brazil, as well as the other 11 in the US, UAE, and Italy, comes from a single factory in Cotia, São Paulo state.
In addition to these locations, the brand recently announced three more showrooms in Recife, Campo Grande, and Balneário Camboriú, two others in Boston and Washington, US, and its first one in Portuguese capital Lisbon.
The new showrooms already have set locations. All are expected to open between the end of this year and the first half of next year.
Read more:
Brazil’s Ornare opens custom furniture showroom in Dubai
Report by Daniel Medeiros, in collaboration with ANBA
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
