Lebanese entrepreneur Haitham Abdul Baki came to Dubai in 2002 with a suitcase full of perfumes he made from oils extracted from plants in Mount Lebanon, where his family planted and sold plants for a living. Two decades later, the business he built out of that suitcase has grown into a luxury Arabic perfume brand with presence across 12 countries that still carries its origins from Lebanon — but now, with a distinct Emirati spirit and brand.

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Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Abdul Baki (LinkedIn), chairman of Taif Al Emarat. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

Enterprise: What got you into the perfume business?

Haitham Abdul Baki: I’m from Mount Lebanon, and my family business was planting and selling flowers. In some seasons, a lot of what was planted was discarded when demand was low, so I wanted to make use of the discarded plants by extracting oil and a fragrance essence from them through distillation. I used flowers like jasmine and gardenia, and extracts from lemon trees and cloves, and tried to package them and sell them in Lebanon.

It was difficult to scale production because the amount of oil that you can extract from plants is very little, so you need huge volumes of plants, and it’s a costly process. In 2002, I decided to come to the UAE — just me and my suitcase — and it was at the early stages of its boom as a trading hub — and tried to start selling what I had there.

Our product was completely natural, as opposed to products that are more chemical-based here in the UAE, which I think piqued interest from a lot of customers. Products that would have been viewed as too expensive in Lebanon were easily sold in the UAE to a market that values natural products and has much higher purchasing power.

We sold a lot more than expected in a span of three weeks, so we started developing the product, and began to get a lot of requests from customers to mix our floral scents with oud or amber, which is of course very popular here.

We started doing this and one of our signature scents — which we had named Taif at the time — became very popular and became the inspiration behind what became our brand name, Taif Al Emarat. We now have around 75 stores across 12 countries. We also have three subsidiaries, which together have about 25 branches as well.

E: You said natural and organic-based perfumes were pretty rare in the past in this market. I assume that has changed over time — have you had to pivot or find a way to maintain competitiveness over time?

HA: Competition is healthy, in any industry. In this industry, the land from which you source your material leaves a big stamp on the final product — and even if you source that same plant and plant it in a different soil, it will never produce the same scent. The soil determines the scent — to the extent that some customers can’t tell what the origin of the fragrance is because of how different it smells from place to place.

Alcohol can also be extracted from several sources, and we use the most expensive one, which is extracted from sugarcane. We distill it in our own facilities, in Lebanon and in Turkey, and we import materials from Lebanon, from which the plants from the base of all our perfumes, along with Bulgaria, Iran, Poland, and other countries — so we have a diversified supply chain, but our Lebanese origin is what makes us distinct

Something else that helps distinguish our products is the technique through which we distill and extract our essence, as well as our sourcing — most brands in the Arab world that produce floral fragrances use a second or third distillation, which helps extract more oil, but the oil is less concentrated and long-lasting. We always use the first distillation, and we use natural resources, and we think this commitment to top-tier quality is what keeps us relevant and attractive.

E: How did you fund the business at the start?

HA: I learned from my mother early on not to depend on external funding like bank loans and in general stay away from riba. For me, if I don’t have the funds, I don’t invest; if I do, then I will. This is why our business took longer to take off, and it was purely through organic growth, with the income from the business repurposed for growth.

Yes, it requires more patience. But for me, this is business; you can’t have a strong business that is built on a trade — like perfumes — without patience and consistency.

E: The perfume business is pretty timeless. But are there any trends that you think could disrupt the industry in the near future?

HA: We’ve been preparing for 2026 since early 2025. It’s crucial in this business to do plenty of research early on to make sure we’re ahead of trends. This is especially true in a business like perfumes, which at the end of the day is a luxury. It’s not an essential. In order to maintain customers’ loyalty, we have to consistently innovate and think of ways to keep them coming.

We also try to find plants and resources that are rare in the market, and we store them and play with them and see how to make use of them.

E: Where do you see Taif Al Emarat a few years down the line?

HA: My goal in 2017 was to have our own factory that we own — not a lease. We achieved that in 2023. The factory produces 1.2k units every hour, and my goal is to develop a new factory that’s 4x the size of our existing one, that will allow us to scale production and expand to markets like the US and Europe.

E: How do you sell such an authentically Arab product to European and American customers?

HA: We do extensive research of our markets before making the move to expand there. We try to see which markets are interested in luxury Arabic perfumes, and we tailor the products accordingly.

In the US, we conducted focus groups to see how our products are received and how we can work on them for that market. We can’t go in blindly with the same products that we sell in the Arab world. We retain the original Arabic essence that’s in all of our perfumes, but we adjust the intensity and create a mix of fragrance notes that caters to their taste.

E: Onto the crux of this interview — what’s your morning routine?

HA: I usually sleep between early, between 11pm and 12am, and I make sure to clear my inbox — and WhatsApp — before I sleep and flag anything that is less urgent for the following morning, so every morning I start the day knowing what my priorities are.

Once I’m at the office, I try to allocate time to the departments that need it the most, where there’s gaps in performance or issues. I also monitor the CCTV throughout the day and see how the stores are operating across the countries where we operate. This is super important — it’s a litmus test to see how healthy the business is and what are the issues operationally that could affect it.

Our manufacturing facilities operate at this point as a well-oiled machine. Their systems operate smoothly with minimal interference, so most of my focus goes towards what happens after the product is ready — at the retail stage.

Haitham’s recommendations

What he’s reading: I really enjoy the stories of the prophets — the story of Prophet Yunus, for example. They help ground me and take me back to simpler times, and give me a lot of positive energy and hope.

His favorite way to disconnect: Spending time with my kids. As soon as I run into issues at work or I start to stress out, I turn off my phone and take my kids out, either on a safari or to a nice restaurant.

His advice: You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to be successful; all you need is a goal. You need to be focused, and commit. It’s not about building a business for the sake of it. Find what you’re good at, make sure you have a strategy, and enough funds to start comfortably so you can sustain yourself.

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