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When the Thunayan Al Ghanim Building was constructed back in 1954, it was considered to be one of the most advanced buildings in Kuwait at the time and one of the first to have an elevator. There are many stories on bedouins coming in from the desert to watch “the flying horse” that can go up and down. Back then the Thunayan Al Ghanim building housed the original KOC offices, the British Consulate, the first English bookshop in Kuwait, and later on the Rolls Royce dealership.

The building was originally designed to be 10 floors tall but during construction, the Kuwait City municipality changed the law and set that buildings in that area to be no higher than 4 floors since they wanted to spread out the city instead of having highrises with everyone located in a smaller area.

Below are some photos of the building from the 60s compared with photos taken last week.

Thanks Noura Anwar Al Ghanim!

Looks like the local Ford dealership battle is over. According to a news article in the Arab Times,”Ford Motor Company has terminated its dealership agreement with Arabian Motors Group WLL for the Ford and Lincoln brands in Kuwait effective July 27.”

Alghanim Auto also recently opened their new Ford showroom in Shuwaikh although I have yet to pass by it. If anyone from Ford is reading this, I call shotgun on the Ford Focus RS test drive!

Last month I posted about a rumor that Alghanim was acquiring the Ford dealership for Kuwait and now it turns out that rumor was true. Ford sent out an email over the weekend letting their customers know that Alghanim is now the official dealer for their cars in Kuwait. Here is a link to that [Letter]

This means Alghanim now have the following car brands split between their two three automotive divisions:

Alghanim Automotive
Chevrolet
Cadillac

Alghanim Auto
Ford
Lincoln

Alghanim Motors
Honda
Lotus

Update: Added Lincoln to the list. Also a reader made me realize that Alghanim Auto is not short for Alghanim Automotive but is in fact a completely different division. So updated post now reflects that.

Thanks Osama

Last week I posted a link to the popular architecture website ArchDaily who had nominated Al Shaheed Park for “Building of the Year 2016” under the category Public Architecture. Over the weekend I was made aware that there was another nomination for a Kuwait based project, the Ali Mohammed T. Al-Ghanim Clinic. The clinic was designed by AGi architects and is nominated for “Building of the Year 2016” under the category Healthcare Architecture. The building looks pretty cool for a clinic and I actually want to pass by and check it out in person.

To see more pictures of the building click [Here]. On the other hand to vote for this project on the ArchDaily website, click [Here]

Alghanim Industries acquired the rights to develop Wendy’s restaurants across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region from Alamar Foods, a Saudi-based company owned jointly by Al Jammaz Group and the Carlyle Group. The value of the deal remains undisclosed. Alghanim Industries has acquired all operational outlets in the UAE with plans to open additional stores across MENA over the next 10 years. Part of the expansion in the region includes opening stores in Alghanim Industries home market, Kuwait, which has among the highest consumption of fast food per capita in the MENA region. [Link]

It’s interesting that Alghanim are getting into the food industry, makes me wonder what they will be bringing next?

A few days back a reader contacted me and told me he was leaving the country for good and wanted my recommendation on a shipping company. Since I had just used a shipping company myself I figured I might as well write about my experience.

Back in May I shipped some furniture and electronics to my apartment in Lebanon. I didn’t really look for a shipping company, I just contacted Alghanim Freight since I previously heard they were the best and so didn’t even bother looking for any other options. My experience was a mixed bag but truth be told, not sure they can be blamed for all of it.

The problem with shipping stuff to Lebanon right now is the the fact there is internal conflict taking place in Syria right now. Before the internal conflict shipping stuff from Kuwait to Lebanon could take anywhere from 1 to 4 days but now it takes around two weeks. The shipping trucks are held at the Jordan/Syria border a few days and then formed into a convoy and led by security to the Syria/Lebanon border. Once they get there they get stuck in a long queue waiting to be cleared into Lebanon.

Based on a previous conversation with Alghanim Freight we were told our stuff would arrive to Lebanon on June 3rd. So me and Nat booked out tickets from May 31st to June 16th. Alghanim Freight sent over a packing crew and they did an amazing job. They worked around 10 to 12 hours with just a small break packing everything into carton boxes and wrapping up stuff with bubble wrap. In the end we had a total of 105 boxes which they loaded up onto their truck and took off.

Insurance
The day after they picked up the packages and while talking to Alghanim Freight we found out that although our shipment was insured, it was only insured up to $20,000. That amount was far less than the cost of the items we were shipping. To increase the insurance we were told that we would need to state the value of the items in each box. Although we had a list of all the boxes and what was inside, the descriptions were generic. Majority of the boxes were described just as “Furniture”, a few boxes were described as “Kitchen” and only a few boxes mostly the electronics were more specific. Since there was no way to know what was in each box there was nothing that could be done and so we didn’t get the extra insurance. We should have been asked ahead of time if we needed extra insurance kinda like how McDonalds asks if you want to upsize your meal while taking the order and not after you’re done.

Delivery Dates
This is where we had the biggest issue but now looking back at it I realized it mostly wasn’t in their hands. Originally we were told our shipment would arrived June 3rd. Two days after our packages were packed and taken we were told our shipment would arrive to Lebanon June 8th. That’s already a 5 day delay and the packages hadn’t even left Kuwait. When we got to Lebanon we found out that the shipment would get delayed again and in the end the shipment finally arrived on June 12th.

The Delivery
Our biggest concern was if all our items would end up arriving to Lebanon and how much we would get charged for customs. Luckily we didn’t end up having any problems. All 105 boxes were delivered with nothing damaged and nothing missing. In addition we also didn’t pay any customs at the border. Seems Alghanim Freight use trucks who have good relationships with the border people and so their cargo don’t get unloaded which is why we didn’t pay any taxes.

Conclusion
The fact that all our items arrived safely and the fact we didn’t pay any Lebanese taxes on our shipment is more than enough reason to use them again or recommend them to people. They were not accurate with the delivery dates but I truly believe it wasn’t in their control this time around. Total cost for shipping was around KD650.

According to Alhamour.com; Bassam Al-Ghanim has submitted his official resignation as the Chairman of the Gulf Bank. Gulf Bank still has not announced his replacement, but they expect it to be someone from the Al-Ghanim family. This is a result of the Gulf Bank Shipwreck; which has resulted in a total loss of US$ 1.2bn (KD 313 mm), an amount that represents 70% of Gulf Bank’s Tier 1 & 2 Equity.

Update: Kutayba Al-Ghanim is the new Chairman of Gulf Bank.

Posted by K.

A reader sent me the following pictures which he took with his phone while visiting an Alghanim Electronics showroom. It seems they are selling HP supplies which are not meant for resale. If it was a small shop in Hawalli I would expect this.. but they’re not a small shop in Hawalli.

Here are two better shots of the new Alghanim Electronics store that opened up at the Avenues. There were less people there today so it was easier to take the shots.

I just saw the new Alghanim Electronics store at the Avenues and although I am not a big fan of Alghanim Electronics I was actually impressed by the place. The place looks pretty cool and EVERYTHING they have is on display to be played with from phones and cameras to mp3 and portable video players. The new store is located under Cinescape near NBK and IKEA.

I passed by Al Ghanim Electronics tonight to check out their HDTVs. They had a whole bunch of plasmas on display but none grabbed my interest, I was there looking for regular (tube/crt) high definition television. Turns out they only had 1 which supported the 720p resolution and it was the 36″ Sony which a regular reader (hola) pointed out to me was on sale for KD590 because it was the last piece. Sadly its widescreen which won’t fit in my display and also I was looking for a regular 4:3 ration TV not the 16:9. They had 2 other Philips TVs which supported HD and were pretty cheap BUT neither of them supported the high resolution 720p, just the low res 420p and 1080i. The 34inch was for like KD300 while the 29″ for like KD200.

So if anyone is interested in the Sony 36″ HDTV, its selling for an amazing low price (actual price is around KD800) and they only have 1 display model left.

I passed by Al-Ghanim Electronics yesterday because I needed to buy a fridge. While there I also picked up laserprinter and scanner. Last time I bought a laserprinter was in 1996, it was an HP 5L I believe. It was a pretty decent laserprinter but later on in its life I was getting a lot of paper jams. I actually don’t think I ever changed the toner for it either. Thats what I love about laserprinters, you buy them and you forget about them. No need to keep buying expensive ink and if you don’t use it for a month or two, nothing clogs up. So yesterday while checking out the printers, I had my eye on two. One was a HP LaserJet 1012 and the other the LaserJet 1160. The first model was around KD69 while the second one KD120. I was gonna go ahead and buy the cheap one but the thing looked really flimsy and problematic. Plus, since I buy a laserprinter once a decade I figured why not pay a bit more and get something that looks like it will last a lot longer. So I went with the LaserJet 1160. While checking out the printers I remembered nat wanted a scanner. So I turned around and found the scanners section. The choices there were a lot easier. Most of the scanners were unknown brands while the most expensive scanner they had was an HP for KD40. So since I had just paid 120 for a printer, 40 sounded very cheap and I got that. Its the HP Scanjet 3970 scanner.

When I was done paying they got me the boxes for my goodies and to my surprise the printers boxed looked like it was open. I went downstairs and noticed the printer I had chosen was not on display anymore! The fuckers tried to give me the printer on display without telling me. So I complained, they apologized and blamed it on the salesman. They then told me I had to go to the Hawalli branch and pick my printer up from there.

Once home I opened all the boxes (new stuff always smell so nice) and set everything up. Everything works perfectly and looks good. Bit my bit my design studio at home is starting to look and feel like a… design studio.

Alghanim Industries has announced that they’re now the official distributor of Starlink’s satellite internet in Kuwait and across the Middle East, North Africa, India, Turkey, Pakistan, and more. For those not in the loop, Starlink offers high-speed, low-latency internet that works through satellites, making it perfect for places where regular internet can be spotty or completely unavailable.

This is pretty big news. Although our internet is pretty fast here, our latency is terrible. Latency is the time it takes for data to travel from your device to a server and back. Basically, it’s the delay you feel when you’re trying to load a webpage, play a game online, or join a video call. Lower latency means less delay and faster responses.

According to the Sama X website, there will be four packages to choose from:

Sama X Personal 500GB
Sama X Personal 1TB
Sama X Personal 2TB
Sama X Personal 5TB

All four packages promise speeds up to 350/40 Mbps (download/upload), and 20-40ms latency. The difference between the four packages will be the bandwidth.

The rollout has already started across the region. According to the Starlink website, the service is currently available in Bahrain, Oman and Qatar. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are pending regulatory approval, while Kuwait will be available this year. Exciting!

Sama X don’t seem to have an Instagram account, but their website is samax.com

Service Hero recently revealed the results of its 2024 Customer Satisfaction Index, and the top brands in Kuwait have been named (based entirely on you).

If you’re not familiar with Service Hero, it’s the region’s only consumer-powered index, measuring how happy people are with the service they receive across different industries. It’s been running in Kuwait since 2010 and follows strict international research standards, so the results are credible and transparent.

Over 28,000 assessments were collected from customers across Kuwait, rating brands in categories like satisfaction, complaint resolution, loyalty, and more. This isn’t a popularity contest, it’s a data-driven reflection of how brands are actually performing. Here are the winners:

Entertainment: Vox Cinema
Islamic Banks: Boubyan Bank
Retail Banks: National Bank of Kuwait
New Car Sales: Toyota
Car Service: Chevrolet
Private Hospitals: Royal Hayat Hospital
Delivery Apps: Jahez
Restaurants: Mais Alghanim
Fast Food: Pick Yo!
Clothes: Centrepoint
Electronics: X-Cite
Health Clubs: Oxygen Health Club
Home Furniture: Home Centre
ISPs: Zain
Mobile Operators: Zain
Cafes: The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
Airlines: Qatar Airways
Supermarkets: City Hypermarket

I don’t think there is anything on the list above that felt out of place, it’s not like Aramex won best delivery courier or anything controversial like that. Link

The compound in Dasman that housed the original Kuwait Television studios, and later Villa Moda and Mais Alghanim, has been demolished. It’s located across the street from The Cheesecake Factory on the Gulf Road, near the Kuwait Towers (Google Maps).

I’m not sure how many people who drove past those old warehouse-like buildings knew how historically significant they were. The compound had been abandoned for over 20 years, but I always hoped it would be refurbished and redeveloped either into a creative hub like Qatar’s Fire Station, or a trendy retail space similar to Alserkal Avenue in Dubai.

Besides housing KTV, the first TV station in the Gulf, the buildings later became home to two other iconic Kuwaiti brands.

In 1987, “Mess Alghanim” which started off as a staff cafeteria for the employees of Yusuf Ahmed Alghanim & Sons Co, moved into one of the old Kuwait Television building and transformed into a warm family restaurant. It was also that year the name of the restaurant was changed to “Mais Alghanim”.

In 1992, Sheikh Majed al-Sabah opened the first Villa Moda there in one of the other buildings. He was the first to bring Western designers like Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren to the region. Until today when I think of that store I can’t believe how ahead of its time it was.

As a tribute to the compound’s history, I’ve put together an album on Flickr that includes:
– Black and white images shared by @badshaiji from 1975
– Photos Mais Alghanim when it was still open there
– Villa Moda store after it had shut down and been abandoned
– Photos of the compound taken in 2021 and 2024
– Photos of the compound now being demolished

Check out all the photos here.