Taking the biscuit: Shortbread House of Edinburgh's Middle East success

The truthful reason why we chose the Middle East as an export market is that we exhibit next door to Tunnocks at ISM in Cologne and the Middle East is their biggest export market. We thought “if that’s the case, we ought to be out there.”

I decided to exhibit on the Scottish stand at Gulfood about five years ago. We found out that Emirates Airlines buyers were visiting the show a lot, looking for shortbread. I had numerous meetings with them. 

I remember I sat up all night, working out quotes and details. They were very, very keen but after the show they went a bit quiet. 

I thought we’d lost them – but suddenly, I got two calls in one day from distributors in Dubai asking if I could give them a quote for shortbread, as Emirates were particularly interested in ours.

Flying high with Emirates

Securing a contract with Emirates gave us a fairly significant growth in one deal. But it wasn't big enough to overwhelm us. 

I’m a fairly cautious businessman and existing customers always have to come first. We had to make sure that we could fit their business in without upsetting anyone else. 

From our point of view, exporting is pretty crucial to business growth. We've grown our exports now to about 30%. 

Because we’re in quite a niche market in the UK, there’s a limit to how much we can grow the business here. Therefore, we have to look for quite a significant amount of growth abroad.

How SDI helped

By exhibiting with Scottish Development International (SDI), I find it so much easier to have a ‘Scottish presence’ at exhibitions like Gulfood. It means you’re not just at a stand in the middle of nowhere.

We’ve now exhibited at Gulfood three times and walked the show once. My key reason for going to Gulfood is to find a distributor for the Saudi market, which is the biggest market to get into out there.

Staff at the SDI office in Dubai have been very helpful since we secured the deal with Emirates. They have helped us to maintain the contract. For example, they helped us to get Arabic labeling onto our packaging so we could make the packs more suitable for Emirates.

The staff have been a great help with everything we have been trying to do out in the market.

Wrapping up business

In the gift food market, innovation in packaging is crucial because people will buy the packaging as much as the product. So they’re looking for new and innovative packaging much of the time. We just launched our new packaging at the end of last year and it’s been incredibly well received, so we’re quite optimistic about the shows this year.

Of course the product is equally as important – our shortbread has received 55 Great Taste Awards from the Guild of Fine Food.

I would tell other businesses keen to export to the Middle East that the most important thing is to get out there. My philosophy has always been to get on with the people you’re dealing with. It’s very hard to do it all from Scotland.

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