Interview: George Dean

How has business been for Sanipex Group and Bagnodesign over the past 12 months?

Despite what’s happening here in Dubai in recent months, we’ve been having a good time. Last year our financial results showed 15% growth both for the business and our margin, and 16% growth for Bagnodesign as well. We introduced the Carlyle and Fonteyn ranges last year, which are very premium, and they’ve helped take us up to another level, and helped us have a big success in the second half of 2025.

And this year, despite what’s going on, we’ve had a tremendous increase in business. For instance, a lot of hotels, restaurants and shops here in Dubai are renovating now during the quieter period we’re having. So that’s helped us, and by September, then fingers crossed everything will be fine again.

We carry about £40m of stock here, so we have a big advantage having products available even with everything that’s happened this year. It’s a bizarre situation, and we planned for the worst, but as of the end of April we were about 35% up on last year here in Dubai. And this year, our UK turnover is up by almost 50%, so things are quite healthy at the moment. 

How have you had to adapt the business in the midst of the recent conflict in the region? 

The situation happened just a few days before KBB Birmingham this year, and although I was supposed to go I had to cancel my trip to the UK. We really didn’t know what was going to happen. I was very insistant that we should close all of our showrooms for the first day, but then on the second day, we had customers knocking on the door asking to come in, so we ended up being quite busy.

There’s something about Dubai where people just want to carry on. There’s a spirit of defiance to what’s happening. It’s a challenge, and we’ve had to start doing a lot of air freighting. Because we had a lot of stock and a good relationship with Emirates, we’ve been able to move products around by air a lot.

We normally ship 100-120 containers a month by sea, and in April we only had 59, but because we’re air freighting a lot of it, it’s not been a problem for supply – we have a great logistics team. We’re not looking at the margin at the moment, we’re really focused on servicing our customers, and then the margin will bounce back once the problem goes away. 

Where do you think Bagnodesign sits in the market? What sets you apart from your competitors?

We consider ourselves to be a premium brand, and a huge part of our turnover comes from our brassware. So Bagnodesign is around a £70m pound business, and around 60% of that comes from brassware and showering. I think whatever market you look at, the big Germanic brands have reduced their prestige, and they’re becoming very much the middle-market now and very installer-led. Whereas the Italian brands are the premium brands.

How important is the UK market for your overall strategy? 

Well, we opened our first UK showroom in 2010, but it’s probably fair to say we didn’t manage the market very well at certain times in the past. We had a change of strategy just before Covid, and Covid ended up disrupting things and we moved into distribution. But roughly three years ago we relaunched our brand directly to the retailer.

And we don’t supply directly to the consumer, and we don’t have an online presence either. So we’re looking to really support partner retailers and contract merchants. We’ve now got over 100 retailers in the UK, and we’ve got a good team with good leadership in the UK.

Of course, the market is challenging, but we need to make sure we’re carrying on as usual, because there’s a good market with the independent retailers at the quality end. That’s why we’re also investing heavily to support the UK market at the moment, and we’ve uplifted the stock levels significantly.

What can we expect to see from Bagnodesign over the next year?

We’ve got a very clear path in front of us. At Clerkenwell this year we launched our new Ginza product – I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan in the last couple of years and that’s very much inspired by the architecture there, while also being a range targeted at younger people.

As a business, we’re also expanding further into Europe. We’ve really got capacity now with our manufacturing, so we’re looking for more partners throughout Europe and expanding into the Far East as well. But to put it simply, we’re very focused on growing in Europe over the next 18 months.