Elie Saab

Elie Saab was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on July 4th 1964. He was only six years old, when he first showed signs of his future flair, designing clothes while other children played. His parents thought he might become a tailor.
In 1981 he went to Paris, intending to study fashion, but was impatient to get started on making clothes. So he returned to Beirut and set up his own workshop in 1982.

His atelier started right from the beginning to make evening gowns and wedding dresses. His clothes were a mixture of Oriental and Western styles.
During the 1980's, his collections attracted many clients, including Princesses and his reputation built up. His signature style of making garments using rich fabrics, lace, detailed embroidery, pearls, crystals and silk threads, put Saab in a league of his own.

By 1986 orders were pouring in and jet setters and high rollers were after his creations. During the 1990's, he took a bigger atelier and started fulfilling orders from Paris and Switzerland.

In 1997 Saab was the first non-Italian designer to become a member of the Italian Camera Nazionale della Moda, and so in 1997, Elie showed his first collection outside Lebanon, which was in Rome.

In 1998, he started ready-to-wear in Milan. In the same year, he held his fashion show in Monaco, attended by Princess Stephanie. His evening gowns are very renowned for their elegance. He always shows at least ten wedding gowns with every collection. Nowadays, he dresses many Hollywood film stars and attractive American women.

He became particularly well-known in early 2002, when Halle Berry wore his red gown to receive her Oscar Award. She was the first black woman recipient of an Oscar, and Saab was the first Lebanese designer to dress an Oscar winner. Halle Berry is shown here wearing her Elie Saab dress.




Saab has his headquarters in Beirut, with offices in New York and Paris. His ready-to-wear line is made in Italy. He has 60 retail outlets all over the world, 18 of them in the United States. He is now preparing to move into his own new multi-story building in the Beirut Central District, which should be completed soon.

Website: www.eliesaab.com

Elie Saab has an innovator mind to mix the oriental and western styles together. According to Hamel, mixing the oriental and western fashions is a business concept innovation. So his successes based on satisfying the body of the lady to distinct herself from all people around her, as a queen everyone looking at her and envy her to have ES signature on her dress.

His market scope is all over the world because he believes that his designs can speak all languages and communicate intimacy with the body of the lady. His basis of differentiation was his creative ideas, techniques, colors, designs, and the ability to read the need of the lady.

All these aspects could be considered as strategic assets to ES. For any lady point of view, wearing something attractive and get people’s attentions is most benefit they are seeking for. So this is considered as a customer benefits which is to understand the need of the lady and satisfy it.

Therefore, for any lady who is seeking to be recognized, different, unique, sexy, and elite, you should try one of ES collection to impress all gentlemen and let all other ladies jealous of you.

Sex Therapist

Do You Need A Sex Therapist?

A sex therapist is very often someone who was originally trained in a related field such as psychology, social work or counseling and has chosen to specialize in the treatment of sexual issues. A sex therapist might also be a person who did not previously come from a related clinical field but has received both a proper education, as well as clinical supervision, from a university that offers a qualified graduate program in Human Sexuality.

When dealing with sex and relationships, it's often difficult to separate the sex
part from the relationship part. But that's exactly what a sex therapist tries to do; not that sex therapists don't care about your bigger relationship concerns or don't want to talk about them, but very often it's important to isolate the actual sexual issues from the underlying relationship factors. Experience has shown that fixing your relationship won't necessarily fix your sex life, so sex therapists like to focus on specific behavioral therapies that are known to address successfully a broad range of sexual problems.

Sex therapy usually requires in-office visits but sometimes can be conducted via telephone or e-mail, depending upon the nature of the problem. Some of the more common problems that sex therapists deal with include: premature ejaculation, erectile disorder, female orgasmic dysfunction (inability to reach orgasm), female sexual unresponsiveness, low libido and lack of desire, interpersonal psychodynamics around sexual issues, and lack of communication between couples about their sex lives. Many sex therapists also handle gender-identity disorders and sex-change counseling, as well as fetish and paraphilia-related issues (deviant sexual behaviors, such as pedophilia) and sexual trauma to name a few.

In general, sex therapy takes its cues and definitions of sexual dysfunctions from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also known as DSM-IV, which is published by the American Psychiatric Association and is essentially a compilation of symptom and behavior checklists that help clinicians make reliable diagnoses of mental disorders.

The original therapeutic models for sex therapy go back some 30 years to the work of pioneering sexologists, Masters and Johnson, and were later developed and refined by brilliant clinicians such as Helen Singer Kaplan and media personalities such as Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Sex therapists have devoted considerable time and effort to researching and understanding human sexuality and are much more apt to put a patient on an appropriate clinical program than a typical psychologist.

To dispel a myth: If you go to a sex therapist, you will not be asked to get undressed or engage in sexual activity. What you see on HBO's Real Sex has nothing to do with what happens in the office of a real sex therapist. Sex therapists use their time with patients to foster communication and understanding, as well as to pinpoint the precise nature of a given sexual problem.
Sex therapists will often give their patients "homework" that includes intimacy-building activities of a sexual nature and then discuss the results of those assignments later during an in-office session.

Sexual dissatisfaction is the number-two reason for divorce in this country (US), and, unfortunately, lawyers far outnumber sex therapists. But if you're having a sexual problem and would like help, you can locate a qualified sex therapist by contacting organizations such as AASECT (the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists) and the American Board of Sexology, or you can ask your medical doctor for a referral.

So as we noticed, there is a need for this kind of therapy all over the world. Maybe some people are under or overestimating it but no one can deny that misunderstanding sex can led to serious problems in the community.

Conceding this treatment or therapy, to enter the Middle East region as a market scope, I think it will face a lot of barriers to entry according to Porter framework. These barriers consist of governmental, religion, tradition, cultural, and values that the Arab world will not feel free to talk about. So it is really hard for this kind of business to exist in the market.

On the other hand, some people look at it as a non market issue, because some organization and institutions will stand up to talk and fight these services. They will refer it to religious and tradition issues.

Therefore, I think these services will not appear to the customers although there is a great demand in the Arab market.

dove campaign

The dove campaigns have been really popular for quiet sometime, although I really do wish that they have the original billboards in the UAE. Well the dove campaigns relate mostly to barons no-market issues.

Issues – the cosmetics industry focuses on selling its product through pretty models, however dove is selling its products using what they call reverse physcology. The ads are focusing on diversity in their ads to sell, so the issues here has became, body image and self esteem.

Interests- the interests in this case could be dove itself as a group that is raising awareness about negative body image.

Institutions – are two in this case, public sentiment and the media. Public sentiment has been positive towards the campaigns and the media has been promoting this campaign for real beauty even further.

Information- this campaign is partly promoting self esteem visually and partly promoting it through dialogue and information and direct participation, through the website that dove has constructed called campaignforrealbeauty.com
So the information is being laid up front for the people to take part in.

Finally, the campaign has taken up the cosmetics industry by storm. It has redefined the concept of beauty that we have become used to. Thumbs up for dove!

Expansion

Al Maya Group:

Investing Dh40 million in an expansion involving the setting up of eight new supermarkets and at least two fashions retail stores in the next 12 months. This is an aspect of the core-strategy as it was explained by Hamel framework. Therefore they will enter new market in different areas to target new and existing customers in that industry.
Their plan of expansion will be locally and globally to compete with different types of segments. One of their global expansions will be in Poland by fashion retail stores and the first British Home Stores (BHS). They draw the expansion map and position their targeted places on that map. For example they understood the game of product market scope which was mentioned in Hamel framework. Therefore, they did not enter the hypermarket business which reflects the process of competing or not.

Considering porter framework, we can see that the hypermarket can be seen as a new entrant under the five forces, although they’re affecting Al Maya Group profits and market share, Al Maya Group still resisting entering such market since they are still making good profit and maintaining a good market share.

One of their considerations is the high increase of the gasoline prices 30% and it may dramatically increase later on. Therefore some people will shop less if they found out it would cost them a lot to reach that place. Moreover, these shoppers may suffer from parking problems as well. Thus, this concern could be non-market issue that will affect their business indirectly. As a result, from the expansion plan and the increase in oil prices, Al-Maya group will have a competitive advantage be being reachable to the customers everywhere. So they have a value over their competitors by being accessible that will satisfy the customers and give them a reason to visit their stores.

ViRGiN

Having a strong base to compete is a main aspect to succeed because it will consider as competitive advantage or a value you have in your hand. Therefore Virgin Atlantic has a value over some other airlines to expand their business worldwide as it was explained in Barney framework. So they will start their business in Emirates to cut 10-12% of the market share within a year of starting flights between London and Dubai. This confidence in presenting this fact came from many aspects behind Virgin Atlantic. For example, they differentiate them selves very well to be able to compete. Virgin adds value to their flights by adding some fun and excitements at the airplane to satisfy their customers. This fact will threaten Emirates Airlines as a new entry (Porter) in the market because they will be their main competitor. Moreover Virgin in the long run may also consider as a substitute to Emirates Airlines since they are aiming to increase their flights from daily to double daily if they are doing well. Furthermore, Virgin is a unique Airline by itself which could be the reason to succeed as a first competitor to Emirates Airlines. In the economy class of Virgin Airlines, each passenger has his own TV that he/she can watch any programs as they prefer. In additions, you can select TV shows, different type of music, international radio and so on. In the business and first class, you can fix your chair to a bed to take a nap or sleep and you do not have to re-adjust in landing and take-off stages. As we can see, their basis of differentiation is really strong which will help them to compete with Emirates and other Airlines in the targeted market. Statistically, Virgin Atlantic is interested in Dubai market because Dubai government is investing $12.3 billion over the next 15 years on airport development projects, including the expansion of Dubai's main international airport and a new international terminal at Jebel Ali and the expected passengers numbers will treble to 60 million by 2010.

New Graduates

Talking about the opportunities in the workplace and measuring the graduate’s number each year is like we are talking about the main concept in economics which is the supply and demand. Therefore, as it was pointed in the article The New School that supply of the graduates is much more that the demand of the careers opportunities all over the world. This is the main problem that forces most of the graduate students to continue studying their MBAs after their graduation. On the other hand some of the graduates consider that it is better to have a master degree to push and prove him/her in the workplace which in a way gives him/her competitive advantage over the others. As a company or recruiter point of view, what would they look and consider while evaluating the candidates who are applying for a job. Will they look only on the number of certificates the graduates are handling or there are some other issues behind this aspect? According to Barney, there are for questions to be discussing when we are evaluating the firms. Let’s consider that the firms are the candidates and the customers are the recruiters. As a recruiter point of view, he/she will evaluate the candidates as products in the market and what competitive advantage each one has over the others. They will consider what value each candidate has and how this value will benefit the company in their threats and opportunities. Also they will look at their abilities if it is rare or not. For example if one of the candidates has a French language as a second language over the other of the candidates. So it may consider as a rare skill the candidate has where the company may benefit from it. According to Porter, buyers (recruiters) have a power which is the bargaining power to choose which of the graduates (new entrants) fit the positions they need. So the graduates should satisfy the need of the recruiters to be accepted in the company. This may not only happen be getting more degrees and certificates. They should have a competitive advantage over some other graduates since the supply is more than the demand. This could be obtained by some training programs, languages skill, computers skills and so on.

Democracy

To succeed in a business, you have to know how to deal with the environment that has a direct influence on the company. For example they have to know how to deal with the competitors, customers, environment, laws and so on. Therefore, what happened in Saudi Arabia was a shock to Danish companies that have sales in Saudi Arabia or in the Muslim world in general. According to Hamel customer interface is the third components of the business concept which is buyer power in some other concepts. As soon as the Muslim knew about the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), they panned the Danish and Norwegian products from their markets. As a result, sales have been decreased in this market according to the buyer power. This shows the importance of the customers’ satisfaction in the revenue generating by the firms worldwide. On the other hand, some firms in Saudi Arabia have been affected by the cartoons because their names are attached with a Danish name like SADAFCO. Therefore it is their responsibility to clarify that there are Saudi 100%. This is also happened in Kuwait to KDD (Kuwait Danish Dairy) where it is 100% Kuwaiti company. I think these companies should inform the customers who have the magic power in this case in order to sustain in the business. So they have to focus more on the customer interface to guide them to the right direction. On the other hand, for the Danish base companies, they have to satisfy their Muslim customers by refusing and denying the cartoons because these cartoons may affect the economy in these countries as a whole. In my opinion, the Danish and Norwegian governments should have an instant act toward this issue because it is not a democracy issue when touching the religion concept.