Three developers are rebuilding their malls around homegrown brands instead of global anchor tenants

For decades, the playbook for building a successful shopping mall in Egypt, or anywhere in the region, was straightforward. Secure international anchor tenants, fill the corridors with fast-fashion giants like Inditex and H&M, and install the food-court usuals, then rinse and repeat. A handful of Cairo developers have scrapped that approach. They’re building retail destinations around homegrown brands, and the economics of the industry are changing with them.

From survival to strategy

When the EGP lost roughly half its value in the weeks after the November 2016 float, international tenants in malls across Egypt went into crisis mode. Local brands, less exposed to import costs, found themselves in a much better position. “That was the first light-bulb moment — local brands are really important to have, especially in turbulent times,” Marakez (the developer of Mall of Arabia and District 5) Chief Commercial Officer Ashraf Maklad tells EnterpriseAM. “It’s a feature, not a bug.”

Covid reinforced the lesson. International chains suffered again — FX was scarce, shipments halted, and some stores were forced to shutter. Local businesses saw an opening and moved in. “It was after the pandemic that our leadership team posed the question that would shape District 5, our newest development,” Marakez Executive Vice Chairman Dasha Badrawi tells us. “Could an entire mall be built around Egyptian brands?”

Former Marakez CEO Basil Ramzy adds that the shift wasn’t purely defensive. Even before the import restrictions hit, the company was seeing a growing consumer appetite for locally made products. Egyptian designers were bringing more creativity to clothing, jewelry, leather goods, furniture, and home accessories. The new brands were finding homes first on Instagram and second in a handful of small concept stores scattered across the city.

The experiment that worked

The first significant cluster of homegrown brands materialized when Marakez opened District 5 in 2022. The 75k-sqm development was designed from the outset to feel different: a walkable, mixed-use streetscape with an industrial aesthetic, outdoor courtyards, and co-working spaces, all aimed at a younger, experience-driven consumer. The tenant strategy was where Marakez placed its structural call. Rather than chasing multinational retailers, Marakez went looking for the brands its own young leasing team was already buying on Instagram.

Maklad describes a three-tier pipeline. Entry-level: the 80+ brands housed inside Go Native, a department store for emerging local fashion labels founded by Omar Abuzaid, whom Marakez recruited from the basement workshop of his Sixth of October villa. The next tier is the Designer Hub, a flexible pop-up space where digitally native brands with strong social-media engagement can test physical retail without the cost of a full shop. Brands that gain traction graduate to permanent standalone stores. In Your Shoe has recently made the leap. Marakez now has a pipeline of 200 to 300 brands waiting to enter and is doubling the size of the Designer Hub concept.

District 5 has since become the anchor of a wider infrastructure play. The multi-brand showroom Locally opened its eighth branch there in May, and Go Native has flagged the site as the clearest evidence that the customer base is broadening beyond Gen Z.

Foot traffic and revenue have proven the model. “A lot of the local brands that come are surprised — shocked — by the amount of traffic and the sales they get,” Ramzy says. The mall’s offices are waitlisted. The original parking lot is now so full that Marakez is building underground and structural garages to keep up with demand.

Different cases, same conclusion

In west Cairo, Badreldin Group’s Arkan Plaza, an open-air mixed-use development, has been built around local tenants since opening in 2012. Today, some 85% of Arkan’s tenants are homegrown across retail and F&B. “We believe in local brands and the people who run them,” Badreldin Group CEO Ahmad Badreldin tells us. Arkan offers new brands marketing support, preferential rates, and grace periods, and it hosts monthly pop-up bazaars, a practice it has maintained since its earliest days. The formula has worked well enough that Badreldin’s next project, the 205 development, will dedicate zones exclusively to homegrown brands.

In east Cairo, U-Venues — developed by El Sewedy Industries — arrived at the same conclusion from a different starting point. COO Ahmed El Sewedy tells us he didn’t set out to champion Egyptian brands; he set out to build a place where consumers could enjoy a day out, modeled on destinations like The Grove in Los Angeles. But when his team evaluated which brands would deliver the best product and experience, homegrown businesses consistently won. “An international brand would approach us, and with the USD exchange rate being what it is, I’d say, ‘Why should a retailer in our mall be selling a sofa for EGP 3 mn?’ when the local alternative is just as nice.” U-Venues’ Furniture Hub, its fashion retail, and the vast majority of its F&B are all Egyptian — without a Zara or Zara Home anywhere on site.

Gen Z is driving it

The consumer is why this isn’t just a crisis-era workaround. All three developers point to the same phenomenon. Gen Z consumers are buying local because they think it’s cooler, not because it’s cheaper. Older generations are following suit. “Our clientele at District 5 is much younger than you would find in a traditional mall,” Badrawi says, noting that his own daughter, studying fashion in Paris, comes home to Cairo and heads straight for Go Native and the Designer Hub. “It’s a statement, a part of youth culture now to support local brands — and that’s a trend that continues to expand.”

Quality has caught up with ambition. As El Sewedy puts it, customers no longer walk into these stores and think, “this is good for Egypt.” The standard is international, and the economics — insulated from import costs and currency risk — are more resilient. Badreldin adds that local is sometimes even more expensive than some fast-fashion options, but it is now perceived as more prestigious and more fashion-forward.

What’s next

The developers are moving from building malls around local brands to building the infrastructure the brands themselves need. Marakez is convening the Egypt Fashion Forum in 4Q. Originally scheduled for May, it was pushed back on account of the war and speaker-lineup logistics; brands will attend to gain expertise in design, marketing, and supply chain management. Arkan’s 205, a mixed-use “downtown” development that Badreldin describes as 10x the size of Arkan Plaza and pitches as the downtown of west Cairo, also opens its first phase in 4Q. U-Venues is looking at expansions in west Cairo and possibly the North Coast.