Apparel Group locks in 24 brands, including 10 Madinah debuts, for KEC's Multaqa AlMadinah Mall

Apparel Group is making one of its biggest single wagers on Madinah’s retail scene. The Dubai-based retail and lifestyle conglomerate has agreed to bring 24 international retail and dining brands into Knowledge Economic City’s (KEC) Multaqa AlMadinah Mall, with 10 of them opening in the Holy City for the first time, the two companies said in a joint statement seen by EnterpriseAM. The agreement makes Apparel Group the mall’s anchor retail partner, and it’s a wager that Madinah’s organized retail and dining supply hasn’t kept pace with the size of its resident, visitor, and pilgrim base, KEC's new CEO Moath Al Yahya tells EnterpriseAM.

The numbers: Twenty-four brands across 8.7k sqm, spanning 18 fashion, lifestyle, and specialty retail concepts and six F&B concepts, in what the two companies are billing as one of the most comprehensive retail and dining portfolios ever assembled at a single Madinah destination.

The debuts: Ten of the 24 brands are entering Madinah for the first time: Nando’s, Koton, Wagamama, Birkenstock, Kyra Labs, Levi's, Forever New, Rituals, Babies & More, and Cakes & Bubbles.

The site: Multaqa AlMadinah Mall anchors a larger mixed-use development on King Abdulaziz Road that will also house a 390-key Hilton hotel, 66 Hilton-branded residences, and commercial office space. It’s KEC's pitch for an integrated shop-dine-stay-work destination rather than a standalone mall.

Filling a gap: Madinah is one of the world’s most-visited cities, but its organized, international-standard retail and dining offering “has not historically matched the scale or diversity of its resident and visitor base,” Al Yahya tells us. That’s the gap the 24-brand rollout is meant to close, broadening the choice on offer for residents, visitors, and the mns of pilgrims who pass through the city every year.

The economics, from KEC’s side: Al Yahya does not share with us what Apparel Group is putting into individual stores, but he says the scale of the space and the brand count make this one of the largest single retail commitments secured for Multaqa AlMadinah to date. The payoff for KEC extends past the lease line, he says: locking in 24 brands in one go strengthens occupancy and tenant mix, speeds up leasing momentum ahead of opening, and is already helping pull in interest from other regional and international retail and F&B groups as KEC rounds out the tenant roster before the mall opens.

Wagering on residents, too: Madinah’s retail pitch usually leans on Hajj and Umrah traffic, but Al Yahya frames demand more broadly. While Umrah and religious visitation give the city a “strong and recurring demand base alongside Hajj,” Multaqa AlMadinah is designed to double as an everyday destination for residents rather than a pilgrimage-season play — the aim being a mall that doesn’t need peak periods to fill up, he says.

Asked whether the 24 brands reflect a supply gap or genuine demand growth, Al Yahya says it's both: Madinah has historically been undersupplied in international-standard retail and dining relative to its market size, even as demand keeps climbing on the back of rising visitor numbers, population growth, and wider investment in the city.

Why it matters: This isn’t KEC’s first tenant victory this year, and it won’t be its last. Danube Food & Luxuries signed on for a 3.6k sqm anchor grocery store at Multaqa AlMadinah earlier this year, while KEC has separately been offloading development risk on adjacent land parcels through partnership-funding agreements with Alrashid Properties and, most recently, BSF Capital and Fourmen Investment.

Background: Apparel Group runs more than 2.6k stores and over 85 international and homegrown brands across 14 countries, steadily deepening its Saudi footprint through brand launches and destination-led partnerships. Multaqa AlMadinah is the retail heart of KEC’s flagship mixed-use development in Madinah, developed under the Economic Cities and Special Zones Authority.