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Stand
by your brand
“Buy
Egyptian” is a worthy campaign slogan. “Manufacture Egyptian – and
do it right” is even better
by
Mohamed L. Mansour
cairolive.com,
April 24, 2002
I wonder how many readers
remember the taste of Spiro Spatis, an Egyptian soft drink with a
bumblebee logo on the cap? Once widely available around town, it is
now rarely carried by the city’s innumerable soft-drink kiosks.
That’s understandable – Spiro Spatis’ PR budget and distribution
would have a hard time matching Coke’s. In fact, one is relieved to
hear the company’s still in business.
The Spiro Spatis story is
also emblematic of a larger dilemma, resulting from even more
complicated issues than marketing. It has to do with the prevailing
Egyptian attitude with regard to local versus foreign goods, an
attitude that has proved fiscally painful, to say the least.
The fact is that Egyptians
trust foreign goods, even though choosing imports means depleting an
already thin job market. The roots of this perception run very deep
and cut across all class boundaries. It began with centralized
industry in the 1960s, when local products lost their competitive
punch in isolation from other markets. During the era of
liberalization, when a nascent middle class wanted the things they’d
never had, foreign-manufactured goods were ready and waiting.
Buying habits – like any
other habit – do not change overnight, and a consumer’s brand
loyalty cannot be won without value-for-money quality. Although the
“Buy Egyptian” campaign initiated by the Federation of Egyptian
Industries (FEI) is certainly a step in the right direction, awareness
raising will do little good if consumers are not presented with viable
alternatives to imported products.
The use of foreign goods
extends to manufacturers, who incorporate high percentages of foreign
components in locally assembled goods. It’s a question of
availability, and it reflects the difficulty of financing and
establishing corollary feeder industries.
Nevertheless, the success
stories of a few local businesses are valuable indicators of what it
takes to make Egyptian consumers stand by their brands. Olympic,
International Electronics (Goldi and Goldstar), Gawhara and Cleopatra
are names with which the average Egyptian is probably familiar;
aggressive marketing and competitive pricing for high-demand goods are
the reasons why. Nile Clothing Company is one of several Egyptian
companies that target a predominately export-based market and whose
strong sales result from coupling high-quality products with a
research-based understanding of the international consumer.
Marketing and packaging
have bedeviled many a would-be local manufacturer. Decisions about
what to produce are often made without prior research or else target
too small a market segment. Packaging – key to attracting and
holding consumer interest – is a relatively new concept, and local
efforts in this area often display the same inadequate quality
controls as the products themselves. Add an unreliable and overpriced
air carrier and the fact that it’s just plain easier in the short
term to import, and you get a dismal picture of stunted export
enterprises.
How can we turn this
around? Some businessmen who started out by investing in foreign
franchises are now applying their market expertise and distribution
networks to domestic production. The transition will take time and
serious financial commitment, but the potential of our Egyptian market
– not to mention the regional one – is immense.
Indeed, the potential to
export from Egypt is the strongest argument for developing
intelligently targeted and well-executed industries. To take one
glaring example, the COMESA countries – our African trade-agreement
partners – currently receive only one percent of Egyptian exports,
simply because we don’t make what they need.
At a time when investors
face the devaluation of the pound and the imminent arrival of
competitively priced foreign goods due to the GATT and TRIPS
agreements, catching up will not be easy. But the alternative is to
see Egyptian and regional business fly by – and with it, our future.
However steep the slope, we have no choice but to climb it. “Buy
Egyptian” is a worthy campaign slogan. “Manufacture Egyptian –
and do it right” is even better.
Mohamed L.
Mansour is a prominent Egyptian businessman, and the president of the
American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt. This article previously appeared as
a letter from the president of AmCham Egypt in Business
Monthly
Browse previous Dardasha columns here.
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