story

Story? Why does there have to be a story? Here’s why…

In this time of ever fasting and smarter communication techniques, we sometimes forget that behind great ideas, great communication or great websites, there are real people. Real people that you often don’t get to meet, either because you don’t want to, they don’t want to or because it does not seem to be important. We do think it is very important that you can (if you want to, that is) get to know who is behind filini.com, so here’s our story.

Business partners Claudia van der Werf and Michiel J. Schröeder both held interesting jobs with international hotel management companies in various countries prior to moving to the United Arab Emirates. In 2004 we started a company called Desert River, to distribute quality European lifestyle products in the Middle East. From there, we soon branched out to include a rental service for great design products, all of them new to the region.

Interestingly, the mid-level design market is not well served in the Middle East. Either you’ll find super high-end designer brands that almost no-one can afford, or you’ll find that those collections that are affordable are more geared towards local taste and design. Nothing wrong with local taste and design of course, but we wanted to bring something different.

The number of retail shops in the GCC that could potentially sell ‘our’ brands is limited as most design shops are cookie-cutter franchises from overseas and will not add products from external suppliers to their range, no matter how nice the product. Moreover, compared to Europe there are very few independently owned and managed lifestyle design boutiques that could carry such funky brands as Blofield, Fatboy and Slide. To reach the maximum number of people, we started a new initiative called filini so even people living in the far corners of the GCC can purchase and experience our great design products at reasonable prices.

This webshop is in its initial stages, so bear with us whilst we are building the selection. We promise to expand it with more funky designs and cool gifts in the coming months. But only original products and trusted brands, because there is enough cheap and nasty stuff on the market already :-)