Page 147 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

CHAPTER 5

A Piece of the Action: Strategies

for Entering the GCC Market

INTRODUCTION
Toyota’s Saudi Arabian franchise is one of its most successful in the
world. It is so successful, in fact, that in 2004 the Saudi franchisee
was invited to open a showroom in Japan and in 2005 a senior del-
egation came from Japan to Jeddah to celebrate 50 years of success-
ful partnership. From the results of this partnership, one might
have thought Toyota’s Saudi Arabia strategy was deliberately
crafted from Japan, drawn in painstaking detail, and executed as a
high-priority project by the global head office.
History, however, shows otherwise. According to both official
corporate histories and popular legend, Abdul Latif Jamil—
Toyota’s Saudi agent—was an entrepreneur with a modest auto
business who began his career as a customs clerk in Jeddah. He
opened his business with about $2,000 in 1938, started selling spare
parts, and eventually built the business to the point that he owned
a gas station by 1952. Legend has it that in the mid-1950s, Toyota
executives came to Saudi Arabia looking for an agent and stumbled
across Jamil. True to his reputation, he took a chance on Toyota and
agreed to import a Land Cruiser. Jamil’s first Toyota customer was

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