TOBACCO: MAZAYA Trending shisha promises ‘fruitful’ year


Amman-based Alzawrae has ambitions to grow its tobacco-molasses brand Mazaya – and the shisha category as a whole – in 2018, as Brand Manager Rawan Elayyan tells Luke Barras-Hill.


How did Mazaya’s travel retail business perform in 2017? What makes Mazaya special is we always use premium French tobacco leaves and food grades for our flavours, glycerine and honey. Since we launched Mazaya six


years ago we now have one of the highest growth rates among our competitors. We have three factories, one in Jordan and two in the UAE. For DF&TR specifically, we are now


listed in key duty free shops, mainly in the Middle East. At Jordan’s Queen Alia International Airport in Amman we scored growth of almost +122% between 2016 and 2017. We know that our products are


high quality, but we always want to hit an emotional level with our consumers and travellers. That’s why we always have campaigns and promotional areas that make travellers comfortable and entertain them. At Dubai Airport, we had growth of +50% in some months and +100% in other months. One promotional area for example consisted of massage chairs, power stations and things to make travellers feel comfortable, which gave us a good return on investment. We also do other marketing


activities and consumer promotions in other airports. We are listed in Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon Duty Free, Jordanian Duty Free (borders) and on Royal Jordanian (RJ). All of this helped to achieve high year-on-year sales growth of between 70% to 80% with the main operators.


What is your aim this year to grow the business? We are listed in the Middle Eastern and Gulf countries but our objective for 2018 is more exposure in other countries. Africa is one of our biggest priorities. We had thought about Europe, but it is very restrictive with tobacco. For example in France or UK, you can only show blank packets, which doesn’t work for new


FEBRUARY 2018


companies and especially for our category [molasses and shisha] that isn’t saturated in that region. We are in North and South


America domestically. In duty free we are planning to be there and that is why we are participating in Orlando [the Summit of the Americas] this year.


Can you share some of your upcoming plans for innovation taking place in the coming months? We have a version of the two apples flavour – Two Apples Bahraini – as a new product and a mixed multi-pack with two packs from each flavour, up to five flavours on RJ during the holiday season (December and January) and we’re planning to have new products listed in duty free. We have also been listed in Sharjah (Dufry) for a month. Duty free products are not do-able in all shops and to list them sometimes takes a long time. Many new business deals are in the pipeline.


How are you negotiating the challenge of what is at times limited space availability instore? Shisha doesn’t contribute as much as cigarettes [in percentage sales terms] so we face that obstacle where we can’t have huge areas and displays. Renting promotional areas has helped us to have sufficient space.


Is that feasible in the long term? No, but this will help Mazaya and the category to grow. It will give us more opportunity to have our products displayed.


Finally, what’s next for the future of the shisha/molasses category? The shisha category is boosting up and trending in most countries. The coming years will be very fruitful for tobacco, molasses companies and for Mazaya specifically. We have been in the market six years, three to four of


those in travel retail. We have been thinking of the cruise/ferry channel. It is important, but there is more priority towards other channels such as inflight, on the ground and borders. We may consider cruise by the end of 2018 but we need to have a more specific plan. We want everything in travel retail, but we can’t have it all at once. «


“Shisha doesn’t contribute as much as cigarettes [in percentage sales terms] so we face that obstacle where we can’t have huge areas and displays.”


Rawan Elayyan, Brand Manager, Mazaya


Mazaya Portable Hookah. TRBUSINESS 51


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