Bene Office Furniture

BENE DUBAI

History

Bene AG had a very prosperous past in the Middle East during the 80’s under the guidance of Hubert Grandl, the export director of Bene, but owing to the unfortunate and sad situation in its main market of Iraq the decision was made to close this area of operation.

But Hubert always felt that the opportunity would arise to go back to the region and so in 2002, Bene started a very low profile operation based in Dubai.
John Messent (an expert consultant with more than 35 years of experience in the office furniture and partitions field) was requested to evaluate the market and together with Hubert Grandl decided on selling directly to the A&D community and in the other gulf markets with totally dedicated Bene partners.

The one-man-show became a two-men-organisation with the arrival of Ahmed Kandil (a young talent who used to work for Teknion), in late 2002, and with the co-operation of the Bene factory in Waidhofen / Ybbs whose expertise is so much part of the success story the Middle East team began to formulate.

The two-men-show grew both in business terms and in staff from literally a nil turnover at the end of 2002 to 16.7 million Euro by the end of the 2008 / 2009 business year. In the same period of time the two-men-show became a twelve people Bene subsidiary with sales supported by back office.

The strong sales performance had to be matched by a competent and professional installation team, so with this in mind Bene Middle East opened its own dedicated warehouse and employed installers who are Bene trained.

Bene also has dedicated partners in Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt and Australia, and is actively looking to increase this to other viable markets. Despite the difficult market Bene Middle East continues to grow and goes from strength to strength. Ahmed Kandil took over as Managing Director beginning of 2008 and John Messent has retired in 2009.