Consumers in the UAE, a federation of seven emirates including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Ajman, are major lovers of perfume, and are especially fond of fragrances featuring oriental notes like amber or oud.  In the last few years, both big international labels and niche perfumery ones, from Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford and Christian Dior to Maison Francis Kurkdjian – all of them widely distributed in the UAE and the Middle East – have launched a large number of perfumes featuring oud, with its distinctive woody, leathery and animal notes. The market nearly went into overdose, a clear signal of the ambitious plans international fragrance brands have for the region.

Yet, despite a strong presence of overseas labels, consumers in the UAE and the Middle East in general are fond of local brands that are tailored to their needs, price-wise too. According to the Chalhoub group, a leading Middle Eastern distributor of fashion and luxury brands, in 2017, in the Arab Gulf region (which includes Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAEs and Qatar), $1.4 billion in fragrance sales out of a total of $3.1 billion were generated by Oriental scents. In 2016, the Chalhoub group itself launched Ghawali, an Oriental fragrance line with its own dedicated monobrand store network, to tap the new Arab Gulf consumers.