Players on the World Stage

摘要

"It was one of our ideas from the very beginning that we would create our brand, which was Dubai Duty Free, and we see that very much as over and above the brands that we sell," says Colm McLoughlin, who helped to set up the operation after he was hired away from his job as head of the duty-free shop at Shannon Airport in Ireland, birthplace of the duty-free industry. "We are probably the best-known operation there is. So yes, we are pretty happy about our brand," says the managing director of DDF. McLoughlin came to Dubai in 1983 for four months. He has been here for 21 years, during which period he and a staff of 100 built DDF into the second-biggest operation after London's Heathrow. Of the original employees he calls the "pioneers," 64 are still with DDF, which now employs 1,200 people.