Brand ambassador
Beiruti entrepreneur Tony Salamé has built a business empire by introducing European fashion labels to the Middle East, helping to regenerate his home city in the process. Now he’s adding spas, magazines and even restaurants
WORDS | SUELLEN GREALY
ANYONE WITH HALF AN EYE ON INTERNATIONAL TREND BAROMETERS will tell you that Beirut is sizzling. Last year the New York Times named the Lebanese capital the top city in the world to visit. This year, the Observer called it one of the most vibrant places on earth.
Back in 1989, however, things were rather different. Tony Salamé was still in his twenties and had just returned home to Lebanon after studying medicine in France. Beirut was festering from years of civil war. The downtown area, where today Salamé’s flagship store Aïshti purveys international designer glamour, had virtually collapsed into the acrid smoke of conflict.
Since those days, Aïshti has “been instrumental in reviving certain parts of Lebanon and creating new destinations where none existed before,” claims Salamé.
Salamé’s family, who had real-estate interests in Lebanon, had wanted him to become a doctor, but he was more interested in law. While pursuing a law degree at St Joseph’s University in Beirut, he began to import small quantities of the previous season’s fashion and fabrics from his contacts in Europe. “I also had things manufactured in Lebanon, including some accessories, like belts,” he explains. “I did everything bit by bit.”
While Salamé was in Europe, his family had remained in Lebanon. It gave him a sense of independence and a taste for travel, and building on what had become a successful importing sideline seemed to offer the chance for both. “I decided to open a store,” he says. “My family helped a little, but as I already had suppliers, I could get credit. Of course, that was such a tiny store, I didn’t need much stock!”
He is talking to me after returning from one of many frequent trips to Milan, where an Aïshti office and distribution centre steers its relationships with the European fashion houses. “I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur then,” Salamé continues. “I enjoyed fashion and I enjoyed selling clothes. It was fun and I never took myself too seriously.”
What began as a single hole-in-the-wall clothes store in a Beirut suburb is now regarded throughout the region as the source for prestigious fashion labels. Although Salamé completed his law degree, he opened a second store a year later with another following the year after.
Within less than eight years, he had attracted Gucci to supply his stores directly, and more of Europe’s major fashion houses followed suit. There are now five Aïshti stores in Lebanon plus one in Damascus, which stock Prada, Miu Miu, YSL, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Jimmy Choo and many others. And Aïshti has been joined by a trendy younger sister – the laid-back Aïzone, which carries brands such as Juicy Couture, Camper, D&G and Diesel. Aïzone has seven stores in Lebanon alone, as well as branches in Jordan, Dubai, Syria, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Aïshti’s strong Middle Eastern character is clear at the downtown store in El Moutrane Street. Here, heritage buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries, which reflect Beirut’s Ottoman and French Mandate history, have been virtually raised from the ashes. The main Aïshti store, opened in 2001, is surrounded by small-scale pedestrian streets in an environment that feels natural to local Lebanese. This is closer to what Beirut was like in its ‘Paris of the Levant’ and ‘Pearl of the Orient’ days than any mall could ever be. Within the cluster of shops around Aïshti are single-brand stores for which Salamé has the franchises, among others Cartier, Fendi, Dior, Celine and Ermenigildo Zegna.
Salamé has been instrumental in the rebirth of the area. He took a 6,000-square-metre risk that paid off. “We were the first important business to open in downtown Beirut to bring luxury to the heart of the city,” he says. “The opening of Aïshti encouraged other businesses to follow suit, and now we have our own Via della Spiga right in Lebanon’s capital city.”
The reference to Milan’s most fashionable shopping street is deliberate. Salamé’s time in France and Italy gave him a vision of what Beirut could eventually be. “I dreamed of positioning Beirut as a major fashion destination like Milan so was inspired to create the same sort of pedestrian street here.”
It was also living in Milan that refined his personal fashion tastes. Describing his style as “very classic” doesn’t preclude choosing the very latest designer fabrics. “I have some suits and shirts made to measure,” he says, when pressed. “And my shoes…” As Beirut’s prince of fashion, he knows he can call on Zegna to show him a special selection of fabrics for his shirts, and on Santoni for his bespoke driving shoes.
Salamé, who is married with three young children, has had to overcome obstacles that most of his counterparts in the West could barely imagine.
“It’s true that living and working in Beirut poses challenges,” he says. “The constant threat of war has taught us to be more persistent. We’ve always respected our engagements with suppliers, even during times of duress. We’ve never fired our employees during times of war. In fact, hardship has brought us closer together, making us more passionate about our work. We’ve also learned to move fast, and to keep changing with the times in order to remain current.”
Aïshti employs 850 staff and so far, ‘remaining current’ appears to have protected them from the financial vagaries afflicting other parts of the world. “The Aïshti and Aïzone concepts have become so successful that we’ve been able to export the stores to various countries across the region,” Salamé says. “Our turnover for 2009 was $160 million. Our projected turnover for 2010 is $200 million. This is 20 percent growth. It took us 20 years to get to this point, but our growth has been steady.”
Part of Aïshti’s success has been an almost organic development from its original role editing luxury fashion for a Middle Eastern market. The brand now embraces three restaurants, a day spa, a home collection and three print publications. The magazines, initially launched as a marketing tool for Aïshti stores, have, through a consistently international outlook, become must-reads for style-savvy Middle Easterners. Aïshti magazine and Gossip in English, and L’Officiel-Levant in French, are now newsstand titles.
“We are also expanding into the hotel industry, with the imminent opening of a boutique hotel in Old Damascus, and into real estate by developing residential projects,” says Salamé.
Such ambitious plans might, at this point in time, be considered too high-risk were they to come from someone who was less intimately acquainted with the region. But Salamé is a local boy and knows his customers: “The market for luxury brands differs even within the Middle East itself. Lebanon is more open and liberal than its neighbours and has a decidedly more European feel. In other Arab nations, we sometimes face cultural barriers that are tied to local traditions. I believe that the countries with the most potential for growth in the coming years are Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as long as the region remains stable.”
So is the continued expansion of the Aïshti empire a risk? Salamé thinks not. He may have spent his youth looking for thrills and spills (he was once an avid sky-diver, but has now given it up) but today he’s satisfied with hiking, biking and skiing. The Aïshti store and a second branch of his People restaurant at the mountain resort of Faqra tempted more people to patronise the chic ski destination.
Building on such a validation of his tastes, it’s no surprise that he hopes to turn his other interests into successes. Aïshti is a key contributor to Lebanon’s budding green movement, and Salamé is personally involved in many local philanthropic endeavours.
His other lifelong passion is contemporary art. “I’m a part-time art collector,” is all he will say. “Over the years I’ve collected the work of contemporary European artists such as Rudolf Stingel, Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri and Piotr Uklańksi. There are lots of talented artists here in Lebanon, but we need a showplace.” He dreams of establishing an important contemporary art museum in Beirut – after what he has done for the city’s shopping life, just imagine what he could do for its art scene. www.aishti.com
