The second wave

Seasoned entrepreneur Donna Benton recently exited The Entertainer business, and launched a swimwear company – Caha Capo – which has the potential to scale just as much. The bigger ambition remains not just an inward-focused business expansion, but one that can simultaneously lift the entire SME ecosystem across the region

- VARUN GODINHO

“There are three kinds of people – those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who say, ‘Oh, what happened says 46-year-old Donna Benton, founder of incredibly popular buy-one-get-one-free dealmaker The Entertainer.

It isn’t difficult to guess which among those three personality types best describes Benton.

She arrived in Dubai from Australia to take up a marketing job in 2000. Driving down Sheikh-Zayed Road, she realised that although there were several restaurants, none of them really incentivised customers to visit.

That’s when this first generation business owner decided to strike out on her own and begin The Entertainer in 2001. She had a great idea, but needed funds. “A friend invested Dhs120,000, and in turn received shares in the company. I managed to pay back 28 times that amount and buy out those shares five years later.”

One of the key reasons she tasted success and turned it into a profitable enterprise within the second year of its operations itself, Benton notes, was because of a highly curated approach to the outlets that she onboarded. While you’d expect a budding entrepreneur to begin modestly by signing up a local coffee shop, she wasn’t aiming for second best.

Her first signups were five outlets at the Marriott in Deira. “In your mind, you have to back yourself. I loved the concept of The Entertainer. I thought it was a win-win for everybody. Some people said that it wasn’t going to work – hard work and believing in myself really helped me get through it.”