RIYADH — The conversation about Saudi Arabia‘s retail ambitions has shifted. It is no longer about whether the kingdom can attract international brands or fill new malls. The question now, as articulated across two days at the 2026 RLC Global Forum here earlier this month, is who sets the terms. Increasingly, the answer is local.
Convened in partnership with the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, the forum brought together regional conglomerates, sovereign-backed institutions and global operators to discuss how the balance of power in retail is tilting toward markets that are no longer content to import a playbook.
“We meet at a moment that feels fundamentally different from just a few years ago,” said Panos Linardos, chairman of RLC. “Growth today is no longer linear. It is not evenly distributed. It is no longer guaranteed.”
A $40 Billion Blueprint
Burak Çakmak, chief executive officer of the Saudi Fashion Commission, shared a detailed picture of the country’s retail ambition. The fashion and beauty sector now employs 340,000 people in the kingdom, contributes 2.6 percent of GDP, and is projected to reach $40 billion by 2029. More than half the workforce is female. Much of this is data is compiled by the Saudi’s Fashion Futures program, which works with businesses, investors and others to identify trends and provides insights and connections to help capture opportunities for companies in the country’s fashion and retail sectors.
“Five years ago, nobody had an answer about what fashion in Saudi looks like,” Çakmak said. “Today, we’ve made a major impact on putting Saudi on the map as a destination for retail, for talent, for local brands, and as an opportunity for international brands to come in.”
That ambition is backed by concrete institutional investments. The commission’s Saudi 100 Brands program, now in its fourth year, incubates more than 100 local labels annually. Istituto Marangoni opened the kingdom’s first international fashion campus. A permanent showroom partnership with White Milano launches this year. And Riyadh Fashion Week expanded last October to include a strong lineup of local designers alongside international houses, including Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood.
But Çakmak was blunt about what the market demands of newcomers. “It requires much more extensive engagement and showing that you appreciate and understand the culture,” he said. “Thirty-five million local population is a very different engagement than any other country in the region. It’s not an expat mindset.”
A Ramadan capsule, he added, no longer suffices. “It should not be just about jalabiyas or caftans. You’re capturing consumers at a moment where they want to shop for every occasion, not just Ramadan.” National Day, Founding Day, Saudi Cup, Riyadh Season, Formula 1 — the calendar of commercially significant cultural moments is proliferating, and each demands a distinct strategy, he asserted.
AI, Price and the New Playbook
Michael Chalhoub, CEO of the Chalhoub Group, reported 8 percent year-on-year growth and described a company deep in strategic transformation. Under its Vision 2033 plan, AI is a core enabler, most visibly through Layla, an AI beauty coach on the group’s Faces.com platform that has lifted conversion 2.5 times. “It’s hyper-personalized, culturally relevant, and allows us to get closer to our customer by knowing her even better,” Chalhoub said.
Beyond AI, the group is growing its stable of homegrown retail concepts, which include Level Shoes and department store Tryano as well as Faces.com, and is actively evaluating acquisitions. “Today you have no customer that looks at a product online without looking at it offline in luxury, and vice versa,” he said. “We really have to have a seamless experience across those channels.”
Umair Ansari, senior vice president of travel retail for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas at the Estée Lauder Cos., said the prestige beauty consumer in the region has fundamentally changed in that they are no longer loyal to a single signature scent. They are building curated wardrobes, layering scents to create something individual. He cited technology like Jo Malone London’s AI Scent Adviser, which replicates an in-store consultation online, as an enabler. “It bridges the difference between curiosity and confidence for our consumers,” Ansari said.
John Hadden, CEO of Al Shaya Group, which operates 70 brands across the GCC — from Starbucks to Ulta Beauty — was direct in addressing challenges retailers face. “The shopping malls in this region, apart from probably the top five or six, are all under pressure,” he said. “Less people are coming to malls. So when they come, the most important thing is to convert them.”
He was especially emphatic about price, calling it “the single most important pre-determinant” in the region today. “The days of pricing up 20, 30, 40 percent over the home market have gone. The traditional franchise model, in my opinion, has gone as well.” Al Shaya’s response: launching Primark in the Gulf to capture the value segment, bringing in Ulta Beauty and Chipotle, and cutting inventory 50 percent to drive full-price selling.
John Hadden
Beyond the Concrete Box
Al Shaya is also venturing into development, applying their retail expertise to real estate, building two of the kingdom’s largest malls — the Avenues Riyadh, a $6 billion mixed-use development, and the Avenues Khobar. Both are expected to open within the next two years.
At Cenomi Centers, the kingdom’s largest listed mall operator, Bruno Wehbe, president of flagship assets and new ventures, described a deliberate pivot from scale to experience to address the conversion issue. The group’s landmark partnership with Westfield, extending up to 20 years, is centered on new brand recruitment, experience design and more than 50 exclusive concepts at Cenomi’s flagship Riyadh and Jeddah properties.
“Size has been important in the region for two decades,” Wehbe said. “But we believe quality of the experience is the number-one thing to solve for.” That means breaking what he called the “old concrete box model,” introducing natural light through some of the Middle East’s largest skylights, creating air-conditioned environments designed for length of stay, and curating a tenant mix that counters the brand fatigue plaguing the region’s malls.
Luxury’s Recruitment Challenge
Fahed Ghanim, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Lifestyle, said too many houses have over-indexed on their top clients while neglecting the aspirational consumers who represent the brand’s future pipeline.
“Brands that only serve the ultra-luxury customer are not able to recruit,” he said. “Some are alienating, continuously getting more out of the 2 percent, clienteling them to the max. But there are no new customers being recruited. That’s a threat houses have to really consider.” He argued that brands have to create value across the full chain: heritage, craftsmanship, transparent pricing and cultural relevance, especially as a younger generation increasingly questions where true luxury value resides.
On localization, Ghanim advocated that brands should adapt without surrendering their identity. At the Abu Dhabi F1 finale, his portfolio of brands from Lululemon to AllSaints all activated around the race. “They’re becoming global movements, places where people connect, where lifestyle can show up.”
Asked what will separate luxury’s winners from its losers, Ghanim’s answer was simple: “It comes down to how brands make you feel. Feeling seen, feeling appreciated.”
The New Terms
As the physical retail landscape transforms, the battle for the kingdom’s digital consumer is intensifying too. Trendyol, Turkey’s dominant e-commerce platform, has become a significant player in Saudi’s online retail infrastructure since entering the market two years ago. Mohamed ElAnsari, CEO of Trendyol Gulf, described a platform now serving 3 million to 4 million Saudi customers with 200,000 daily orders and roughly 10,000 onboarded merchants. Critically, 60 percent of sales now come from local retailers, up from zero at launch — a shift ElAnsari framed as central to the company’s mission.
“Localization for us is the name of the game,” he said. “We’re not in the cross-border business.”
The platform is positioning itself as an enabler for Saudi’s growing design SME sector, handling procurement, manufacturing, storage and fulfillment so founders can focus on the creative work. “You do what you do best and let us do what we do best,” ElAnsari said. “Their success is our success, unlike most other marketplaces.”
Mohamad ElAnsari and Nasiba Hafiz in conversation with Nez Gebreel, founder of The Arc Bureau.
FHS KSA 2025
That model is being put to the test through a Ramadan capsule collaboration with Saudi designer Nasiba Hafiz, the first time Trendyol has partnered with a local designer outside its home market of Turkey. Hafiz, who founded her brand in 2012 and is known for her craft-led, slow fashion approach, said the partnership allowed her to work at a scale she couldn’t access independently. “It was a huge load off my shoulders,” she said. “I dived into my favorite part of being a designer, and I really focused on the creativity.” The collection will also be available internationally through Trendyol’s cross-border network.
Taken together, what emerged in Riyadh is a market in purposeful transition, one where the consumer is younger, more digitally fluent and more proudly local. Çakmak summed it up simply: “It’s changing by the moment. You need to act quickly to adapt and be flexible.”
Editor’s Note: For more insights into the Saudi fashion and retail sectors, visit www.fashionfutures.com, which provided information for this article.
