Landmark Group and the environment

Dar Al Khair: Give us a brief background to the Landmark Group.

Vipen Sethi: The Landmark Group, which was founded in 1973 with a single store in Bahrain, has grown into one of the largest retail organisations in the GCC, and continues to expand rapidly throughout the region, as well as India. It currently operates over 400 stores across the GCC and has recently started operations in Jordan.

In addition to its retail sector, the group has also diversified into leisure, food, hospitality, and electronics; and has created a comprehensive infrastructure, including its own logistics and distribution division, to support its retail operations and other businesses.

In September 2005, a unique retail concept was unveiled in the region with the opening of the first Centrepoint store by the Landmark Group at Dubai's Mall of the Emirates. Centrepoint has brought together key retail concepts of the Landmark Group - Babyshop, Shoe Mart, Splash and Lifestyle - under one roof - offering its loyal customers a diverse mix of world-class fashion and lifestyle brands. A second outlet of Centrepoint opened in November on the Trade Centre Road, Bur Dubai with three more brands - Emax, Lee Cooper and Shelly's - being added to this location

Tell us about your environmental initiatives.

Our efforts in the past were more focused on supporting charities. However, we have now taken a decision to get more involved in helping our environment and that is why we have joined the World Wide Fund for Nature - UAE.

We see joining WWF as the first step in a long process of environmental initiatives. By joining we believe we have committed ourselves to the cause, and through WWF we can better help environmental conservation. We are confident in our decision to become a member of WWF and we plan to continue supporting the organisation whenever we can.

What does your association with the EWS-WWF mean to you?

Being a member of the WWF, gives corporations such as ours access to information about how we can help and provides us with the opportunity to give something back to our environment, and truly live up to the term Corporate Social Responsibility.

Too often in business one gets caught up with the day-to-day work and forgets the other benefits of being a large organization - like ours - that has an ability to make a difference. EWS-WWF is our reality check, it reminds us of our corporate values of helping others, encouraging a friendly environment etc; and it gives us the opportunity to help whenever we can. It is also our reality check about the implications of our actions as humans to our environment in regards to the endangered species, climate change, and the environment in general.

Have you taken any initiatives in the past towards Corporate Social Responsibility?

We tend to take on different initiatives at different moments in time. For instance we were one of the sponsors of the Adopt a Plant programme, organised by the International Association for Human Values. We encouraged our customers to take a plant, which we gave away in a test tube for them to raise. The purpose of this programme was to encourage environmental responsibility by teaching customers the benefits of plants for the environment and to create a sense of bonding with these plants.

We have made efforts to give back to our community in numerous ways.

You deal on a day-to-day basis with customers. How would you like to be perceived by them?

We do deal with customers on a day-to-day basis, and they are our priority. We want them to see us as a family instead of a retail store. We constantly work on making the retail environment of each of our concepts friendly, our products competitively priced, affordable, and as convenient as possible.

Our efforts became evident with the launch of the Centrepoint concept, which was created to gather as many Landmark brands together as possible. It is a one-stop shop that an entire family may visit and enjoy simultaneously regardless of age, gender or nationality. It was made to position us as a family and a family-friendly environment.

We would like our customers to feel at home with us and be confident that we bring them quality products at affordable prices and enjoy the retail experience as a family with us.