Sun, Sand and Success

The fourth time the chairman came calling, Baker said yes. “But on one condition – you (the board) do not talk to me for one year. For one year, I do whatever I want. That was in 2016.” Seven years later, not talking to his board was one of the best decisions both Baker and GMG ever made.

From a company best known for creating and running Sun & Sand Sports shops, GMG has not just grown into the Middle East’s largest sports retailer. It is now a multi-billion-dollar giant, one of the UAE’s largest family-owned businesses, with interests in industries across six key verticals: GMG Sports, GMG Everyday Goods, GMG Health and Beauty, GMG Properties, GMG Logistics and GMG Ventures.

GMG has evolved into a global well-being company, retailing, distributing and manufacturing a portfolio of leading international and home-grown brands across sports, everyday goods, health and beauty, properties, and logistics sectors. The past few years have seen high-profile acquisitions, onboarding of leading international brands, and geographical expansions. Today, GMG has a presence in 12 countries with over 600 stores and more than 9,300 employees globally. Oh, and if that isn’t enough, the workforce is expected to double by 2025.

As for Baker himself – whose personality is best described as a blend of charm and ruthlessness, things are only just getting started, and there is no room for passengers on the journey ahead.

“We are a family business, but we are not a charity. We are not a company for the weak. GMG is a company where if you come in, we treat you as our family. But in every family, there is a black sheep, and we have no problem to cut it off,” says Baker, adding: “I actually think we are one of the most unique companies in the region. But you know why we have been so successful? We do not do things that we know nothing about. We reject 99 percent of the opportunities that come to us.”

Baker clearly has a knack for picking winning opportunities, especially with a massive overseas expansion plan underway. GMG took its first global leap by venturing into Asia, with the buyout of Singapore-based Royal Sporting House (RSH) in December 2020. In April last year, Nike-only stores were bought from SUTL Corporation in Singapore and Malaysia. Across South East Asia, Baker plans to open 100 stores in the next two years.

The company also launched Iraq’s first ever Sun & Sand Sports store, with more to follow in the country. Another 100 store openings are on the cards in Egypt by 2026, with a new African headquarters just opened in Cairo.

GMG is also one of only two companies in the world to have been given the global distribution rights (for countries it operates in) by Nike.com.

“My job was to take what my father (who started the company) had done in GCC and take it beyond. I was saying for years that we should expand into South East Asia and Africa – now we are doing that. If you go to these places on vacation, you will see some of the worst retail experiences ever,” says Baker.

He adds: “There was a time in Dubai when the shopping experience was not great, we would go to US and Europe for a good retail experience. Today we have the best shopping experience in the world. Well, I want to take what we have done here into those places. Around 700 million people have been underserved in South East Asia for a very long time. Look at North Africa – one of my friends is an Olympic world record holder. But try and find a decent sports store in his native Morocco? You won’t. I was in Egypt last month – 105 million population, and the only decent sports store I saw was Sun & Sand Sports, which was only opened a few months ago.”

That said, Baker has an unconventional – if not unique – way of doing his research before making a big acquisition. He explains: “When we were thinking of buying RSH, it had 560 stores across South East Asia and the Middle East, before the pandemic. So, I got on a plane and visited every single one of them in 12 countries, 58 cities – in one month. I had a backpack and a ratings sheet. I would rate them on the spot and send a screenshot back to my finance people in Dubai. This was before making the decision to buy – it was a very simple sheet to rate stores; using this information and data, I would run the numbers. We decided to buy the company but also shut down 60 percent of the stores.”

If Baker isn’t wandering around sports stores in a backpack, he could well be found in a random food store. Equally impressive and at a similarly rapid pace has been GMG’s growth in the food industry. While GMG had a history of being a distributor of branded food products for decades, the company entered the food retail industry in April 2022 through its buyout of Urban Foods from Dubai Holding to operate existing brands such as Géant, Franprix, Monoprix, and Monop from the French retailing giant Groupe Casino and also own the rights to expand the brands across the Middle East.

And just two months ago, Baker acquired aswaaq LLC, including its companies operating in retail, trading and properties, positioning the group as one of the UAE’s largest community mall operators.

In line with its ‘farm-to-fork’ vision, GMG now also covers the entire food consumption chain with world-class food manufacturing facilities, an expanding food retail network, and distribution of both their own product such as Farm Fresh and popular international brands. These facilities are supported by an R&D kitchen.

The company now owns the world’s second largest fully automated Himalayan pink salt manufacturing facility, plus several large food manufacturing facilities for meat, fish and other packaged products.

“Farm to fork is what we do. During the pandemic I got more involved and decided to make our own brand Farm Fresh a market leader – in 2020 we had three unique products, now we have 700. I have been pretty hands on in this field. For a month when we had the lockdown, I ate chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner. With the help of my sisters, we would try and cook the exact percentages of herbs and spices needed for different products, write it down, send to the factory – I tried it all out. It was a lot of eating,” he says.

All that eating has paid off handsomely. GMG is on course to become one of the world’s major food manufacturers, and is licensed to export to 154 countries. Indeed, pretty much everything Baker has done has reaped rich rewards, and with his leadership, GMG has become a conglomerate. It doesn’t publish revenue or profit figures, but there is zero doubt that any cursory valuation would put it over the $10bn mark.

But its journey to this point has been nothing short of remarkable. His father, Abdulaziz Hassan Ali Baker rose from humble beginnings, having originally worked in a bank. After getting married, he needed extra income so he bought a boat, went fishing, and rented a store to sell fish. This progressed into opening Dubai’s first gourmet butcher shop selling special cuts close to Jumeirah Beach in 1977.

“He would watch everyone playing football on the beach, wearing sandals. Rubber shoes didn’t exist, so he would see both slippers and balls in the air. That gave him the idea to start a business selling rubber shoes, and he did that with Dunlop in 1978. That’s how this business, GMG, was first started.”

Baker himself – although the natural heir to the family business – was initially not interested in joining his father. He went down the entrepreneurial road after ditching a desk job in a bank, and started his own gym business. When he did eventually join GMG, it was at the bottom and working across several departments.

“When I joined the company in 2010, I was very young. The company was a very ancient organisation we did not have any systems, everything was manual, even though we were considered an organised retailer. I was 21 and we went through a journey, I was eager to change things and tried to convince a lot of senior people with more experience than my entire age. That was quite a challenge,” he says.

In a relatively short time, Baker has achieved the type of growth and diversification that most businesses would take decades to come close to. However, he says the real secret to GMG’s success is always acting like a new kid on the block – listening, learning, evolving.

“As a company today we are huge, we are large, we are successful. But we are still constantly trying to change. We are not scared of mistakes or new ideas. In a way, our mentality is more like that of a startup.”

Now also the Deputy Chairman of the group, Baker’s own vision is for GMG to be present in every major city in the world in the next decade. Only a fool would bet against him succeeding.