Partner of the Month:
Habchi & Chalhoub (Kuwait Duty Free)

Established in Kuwait in 1967, Habchi & Chahoub, a subsidiary of the Chalhoub Company, specializes in supplying wholesale luxury products to stores all over the Middle East with elite brands such as Louis Vuitton, S.T.Dupont, Lacoste, Chanel, Helena Rubinstein, Celine, Lladro, Daum, Baccarat, Christofle, Swarovski,Tumi, Waterman, Chanel, L’Oreal, and dozens more. The company also owns over fifty shops in Kuwait alone, and many more across the Middle East.

As a prominent employer of Overseas Filipino Workers, Kuwait Duty Free, a subsidiary of Habchi & Chalhoub, is one of the recipients of a Ministerial Citation from the Department of Labor and Employment and a Presidential Award of Distinction from Malacañang Palace. Both awards were given during the Second International Employers Awards, as part of the recently concluded DOLE Labor Opportunities Program.

Habchi & Chalhoub does not only hire Filipinos, but also from other nationalities. At quick glance, the cultural diversity of the employees at the company becomes readily apparent: around 22 different nationalities and cultures from all over the globe are represented. It is this diversity that fosters an attitude of open-mindedness and acceptance within the company, one of the principles that Habchi & Chalhoub lives by and is practiced from the rank and file all the way up to the executive level.

“Our company is a meeting point between western culture and civilization, and eastern culture and civilization,” elucidates Mr. Anthony Chalhoub, Chief Executive Officer. “We are very multicultural; most of the team speaks three or four different languages, and are very receptive to and tolerant of various habits and cultural norms.”

Mr. Chalhoub still remembers the first Filipino they hired. “She’s like a sister to me,” he muses. “We first hired her in 1992, during the Gulf War. She was a hero then; she stayed with us through the conflict, and when it was over, her husband came to work with us. Right now, she’s working in our Logistics Deaprtment as Stock Controller. I don’t think she’ll leave. The day she leaves will be for retirement.”

This loyalty is mirrored by Habchi & Chalhoub’s Personnel and Training Manager, Ms. Zenaida Batillano. “I started working with Mr. Chalhoub in 1993, and it’s been almost 12 years since that time.” When people are hired at Habchi & Chalhoub, they tend to stay on a long time; clearly, the company prefers long-term engagements to short-term, even open-period, contracts. Mr. Chalhoub explains, “we’re not like other companies that will just hire sales personnel for five years, and afterwards will just send them back.”

Ms. Batillano explores the assertion further: “Loyalty is something that this company values very much, and that is something that you cannot ask people to give to you. It is something that you, as an employer, should earn. The average tenure of service at our company is seven years, and this has only gone down because of the people we’ve recently hired. Employee turnover is not even 1 per cent.”

She does admit that on the surface, this seems problematic. Most retail businesses prefer young-looking and fresh people to act as their sales personnel in their shops. “But here, we value our older, more experienced employees, and more importantly, their time-tested honesty and integrity. And they still deliver results. That is why we value our employees, and they don’t want to leave. Our recruitment always focuses on the entry-level positions—sales personnel and sales assistants. We always promote from within our ranks. Supervisory positions are given to our employees as recognition of their work and as a reward for all their efforts.”

In this modern day and age, Habchi & Chalhoub return to traditional, old-fashioned ethics in its dealings with both customers and clients, a practice that has seen them through conflicts in the Middle East, and will continue to be their rock in the decades to come.