£1.8M of Gulf revenue in eighteen months

A £2.4M UK home-goods brand with flat domestic growth and a crowded category — evaluating whether Amazon UAE and Saudi Arabia were a real opportunity or a conference slide.

That entry meant translating listings, ticking the customs boxes, and running the UK playbook at lower volume.

The category was structurally open: a fraction of the UK’s competitor density, materially lower cost to rank, Ramadan and seasonal demand curves the UK calendar completely misses — and localisation requirements that translation alone would have fumbled.

A category entry case built on demand data: realistic year-one revenue bands, entry ad spend to rank, landed-cost and VAT structure, and payback timing — presented next to the do-nothing UK baseline.

Enter UAE first, KSA in month five; native-built listings rather than translations; a free-zone structure for VAT efficiency; launch calendar anchored to Ramadan and White Friday, not Black Friday.

Executed with our vetted in-region partners for compliance, content, and logistics; the client’s team ran day-to-day operations against our playbook with monthly checkpoints.

£1.8M of incremental Gulf revenue across 18 months at a TACoS eight points below the brand’s UK ratio — the Gulf became the company’s fastest-growing channel.