Obegi Home

Dubai has a special resonance for Karine Obegi, from both a personal and professional perspective.

- Karine Obegi

It was off the coast of the Burj Al Arab that her husband, Yordan Obegi, proposed, and it is the place where she discovered her true calling and found creative fulfilment. Success was perhaps inevitable. Karine’s background in business - working for McKinsey & Company consultants around the world after graduating from Paris’ prestigious international business school, HEC - provided a solid foundation in understanding companies and their strengths and weaknesses. Karine learned about teamwork and numbercrunching, as well as the efficacy of creative solutions and longterm strategies. This was an invaluable asset when she married into the thriving third-generation family business of Obegi Group, which was established in 1905. The company was a stalwart of the Beirut design scene, and its ethos of ‘doing business with ethics’ has remained unchanged.

When Karine moved to Dubai with her husband 12 years ago, they had been married for over three years and had a young family, and both were fascinated by the entrepreneurial spirit of the UAE. Obegi Home Dubai was founded as a branch of Obegi Home Beirut. Initially, Karine admits, “We struggled to understand and cater for a new global clientele - because Lebanon mainly caters to Lebanese and Arab customers. After an initial period of adjustment, Obegi Home Dubai outgrew the parent company, not only in terms of size, but also in terms of product and service offerings.” This was due to Karine’s management strategy, as she sought to develop the artistic, bespoke flair of the brand and turn it into a commercial success. She recalls several strange, clandestine phone calls in the early days of Obegi Home, when the boutique was often mistaken for the cosmetic surgery belonging to Hollywood dermatologist Dr. Obagi; both deal in aesthetics but in entirely different ways!