طلبات تخصيص جنوب سعد العبدالله

When the Bedouin ancestors of the current Kuwaitis settled in the region in the early 18th century they adapted their nomadic lifestyle to add sea-faring, fishing and pearling.

During those times one of the main international trading links between India and Europe was the sea route through the Arabian Gulf which joined the overland caravan routes to the Eastern Mediterranean. طلبات تخصيص جنوب سعد العبدالله the new settlement became increasingly active in this trade and eventually the ruling elite in Kuwait consisted of highly mobile merchants who controlled camel trains and fleets of ships.

Following a Bedouin tradition, the very first Al-Sabah amirs (leaders) were elected by the merchants to administer and defend the town. Later, after the Sabah family had entrenched itself politically, it chose certainly one of the unique members whilst the Amir provided he could obtain a pledge of allegiance from another merchant family.

Based on the Kuwaiti historian Al-Rushaid, real authority rested with the merchants and the principal duty of the Amir was to safeguard 'the rights of the merchants contrary to the greed of foreigners';.

The Amirs were certainly successful in doing so. Due to its stable administration and geographical position, early Kuwait could develop industries based on trading, transport by land and sea, shipbuilding, and related activities.

The country became a centre for caravans crossing from south-eastern Arabia to the Mediterranean. Kuwaiti merchants also handled a lot of the sea trade that passed through Kuwait, as well as much of the trade that had other Gulf ports. Kuwait merchant ships also sailed the Indian Ocean between East Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

Eventually, these families became trading dynasties with networks that spanned the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. However, they remained centred on Kuwait where they relied on the Amir to offer favourable conditions because of their commercial activities.

The dominance of the merchant class only began to weaken in the 1950s once the oil wealth, that was controlled by the Amir, started to flow. Nevertheless, the trading ethos remains deeply embedded in the Kuwait character, and today's Kuwaiti businessmen and women have well-earned reputations for mercantile astuteness and hard bargaining, that your foreign entrepreneur ignores at his peril.

This narrow trading mentality ensures that one of the first questions you will be asked when you are creating a pitch in Kuwait will be about prices. Indeed you may be asked about pricing at the start of discussions, even before you've explained your product or service fully. This early increased exposure of pricing is a tactic designed to pare prices down well before the final bargaining begins.

Obviously, you've to convey your prices when asked. In the event that you don't, discussions will likely end there and then. The problem is, once you've announced your price, you will be asked about discounts at every stage of the game thereafter.

To begin giving discounts early could possibly be fatal to obtaining a reasonable return on your efforts because if you agree to discounts before the final decision stage is reached, each new price will end up being the starting place for a further round of price negotiations.

So how do you deal with repeated requests for discounts?

طلبات تخصيص جنوب سعد العبدالله the secret is to indicate early on that the discount will be available but refuse to quantify it until it becomes absolutely necessary... before you believe that the final decision-maker is comfortable with all the other facets of your deal.

One more thing, you should decide early on the purchase price you wish to reach for your product or service. After this, you pitch your 'first' price between 30 and 50 per cent more than that price to be able to leave a lot of room for substantial discounts.