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New Appointment

Domnick O' Reilly

Mohamed wins International Medal of Excellence

Category Management (CATMAN) project

F1 Specials - Bahrain Duty Free

gives visitors a taste of Bahrain

Bahrain Duty Free Issue No. 16 | July 2012

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Message from the GM

Dear all,

Welcome to the June edition of our In Touch magazine. Inside you will find updates on new products, CATMAN and of course, what we as the BDF team have been doing during the past three months. All contributing to living the BDF values and fulfilling the BDF Vision :)

A key element in our Vision is to be the premier travel retailer in the Middle East and to help us achieve this, there are numerous projects currently being conducted in BDF. Key projects include;

1. Processes review within all departments to help us clearly understand better how our business works.

2. Introduction of new HR software system which will streamline paperwork concerning HR tasks while allowing us all remote access to carry out numerous tasks.

3. Introduction of new cash registers and new register software to improve hardware reliability, to better capture pax flight information and to offer smarter promotions to customers.

4. Upgrade of our back office system NAVISION.

5. Installation of our back up computers in BIADCO for business continuity purposes in case of a problem in our Juffair office.

6. Introduction of a new PLU hierarchy to improve our sales analysis

7. Introduction of a performance management process for us all

As individual projects these are very comprehensive. So with 7 running at the same time plus the day to day tasks, there are a lot of you very busy. Thank you! Your commitment and hard work is appreciated.

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Hard work and commitment are qualities required from us all along with numerous other qualities such as HONESTY. During May I issued a note to all on this topic, which was necessitated due to dishonest actions by some of our former colleagues. It is critical that everyone understands and practises honesty.

In May Domnick (Dom) O’ Reilly joined BDF as Head of Operations. I would like to welcome Dom to BDF and I am confident that his vast experience of duty free operations will contribute greatly to us all. The Head of Operations is a new role in BDF and is responsible for all of our retailing locations, inflight, warehousing and marketing. To facilitate this role warehouse now reports to Dom and security reports to Domnick, Head of Finance.

Total sales up to the end of May were +1.1% on budget and +5.3% on the same period in 2011. This is a good achievement considering the challenges we are facing. However year to date spend per passenger in departures is -9.6% on budget and -8.1% on 2011. So Purchasing, Sales & Merchandising teams always keep pushing to make that extra sale, no matter what the value… it all adds up! The lead up to Ramadan when there are extra people travelling in holiday mood is a key time to do so :)

BDF is always exploring ways of expanding our business. A recent example of this was BDF’s submission of a proposal to the Bahraini Tender Board to operate Gulf Air’s Infight duty free operation. The BDF team put in a tremendous effort to ensure that a competitive and profitable written proposal was submitted and then presented to the Gulf Air team, in the format of a two hours presentation accompanied by a questions & answers session. Details of the winning submission will be made in August 2012.

Health & Safety is of critical importance in our work places. As individuals we all have the responsibility of ensuring we work in a safe environment. This may include wearing the correct safety footwear, driving safely, keeping our retail areas clear of objects that customers could fall over, reporting unattended bags, not blocking fire exists and finally preventing fire. One of the biggest dangers our business has is the threat of fire. So we all need to be extra vigilant in relation to this. If you observe any Health & Safety issue, report it immediately to your manager.

Finally I would like to congratulate Joshua Deroca, sales assistant, who was our April Values Champion and Hisham Al Saloom, Cash office manager, who was our May Values Champion. Both Joshua and Hisham practised our values in very meaningful ways that contribute greatly to BDF’s vision.

Lets continue to live the BDF Values :)

Garrett

Garrett Coogan

General Manager

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Mohamed Yusuf Ali wins

International Medal of Excellence

Maricris attendsHealth and Safety Conference

Shashi and Salman win sales competition

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Company News

Shashi and Salman won a sales competition held amongst the 12 sales staff in the Electronics department. The competition was held to to see who would reach the highest figures in selling Olympus Digital Cameras.

The prizes for the winners, which was sponsored by Gajria Electronics, was handed over to Shashi and Salman along with letters of appreciation from Bahrain Duty Free.

Mohamed Yusuf Ali, Sales Asistant from the Operations Department

- Shift 1 has been awarded the City & Guilds International Medal of

Excellence for Diploma in Retail from City & Guilds International, UK.

The City & Guilds’ International Medals for Excellence programme

recognises and rewards exceptional people whose work makes them

really stand out. The recipients are candidates who have completed

their International Vocational Qualification (IVQ), comprising both

theory and practical assessment, at a City & Guilds approved centre

outside the United Kingdom or Ireland. Only one medal is available

for each of the eligible IVQs.

Maricris Merto has attended the First National Occupational Safety and Health Conference and Exhibition that was organized by Bahrain Health and Safety Society and International Labour Office from 22nd May – 24th May 2012. During the conference many issues related to safety and health were discussed with recommendations on how to improve health and safety performance through motivationand leadership. The exhibition was organized under the patronage of H.H. Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa with the respected speakers from different countries and different Safety Organizations, tackled very important topics on how to Creates Safety Culture for decent and safe work.

Most importantly, medal winners are only sought from the

complexes for which distinctions have been awarded during the

current competition period (i.e. if no candidates have achieved

distinctions during the period, medals will not be awarded for

that IVQ). The candidate scoring the highest mark in a written

component will be nominated as the medal winner.

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New Appointments

Domnick O' Reilly

Head of Operations

Domnick has recently joined as Head of Operations. He brings a vast Duty

Free experience to BDF. Domnick began his duty free career in the early

90’s with Aer Rianta in the merchandising department of Dublin Duty

Free. He successfully participated in an Aer Rianta retail management

program and subsequently went on to obtain an MBA in retailing from

Stirling University.

Domnick previously worked in the Middle East as a Retail Manager in

Damascus Duty Free. From there he moved to Kyiv Duty Free as Operations

Manager. Prior to his arrival to BDF he was the General Manager of

Caribbean ARI, based in Barbados.

Domnick is a big sports fan with Arsenal being his team of choice, while

he is known to spend hours enjoying Cricket and F1.

Bahrain Duty Free staff celebrated Labour Day, by the cutting of a cake by the Bahrain Duty Free trade union members. Labour day is celebrated in most parts of the world on May 1, to recognise and acknowledge the contribution of the employees of the organisation. Bahrain Duty Free takes this occasion to thank all staff for the hard work and dedication put in over the months and years.

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Labour DayCelebrated

Company News

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F1 Specials

Formula 1 fans at the Airport enjoyed

a special welcome, not to mention F1

Specials deals, at the Bahrain Duty Free.

Promotions were tailored to the needs

of the travelling F1 fans and they also

got a taste of Bahraini hospitality with

kiosks displaying Bahraini products and

heritage items. A unique feature of the

promotion was the F1 themed mobile

shopping cart - ‘The Pit Stop Shop’.

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In early May, we held additional values workshops to ensure all our colleagues had an opportunity to understand our values in more depth and of course, to create some more wonderful posters! We have received your feedback on the values from the workshops you attended and we will be looking at this to understand what we can do to help you demonstrate our values even more.

Values Workshop

Company News

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Category Management(CATMAN)

Company News

Bahrain Duty Free is currently undertaking a project called

Category Management (CATMAN). We have a team for this

project and it’s members are:

1. Ross McMahon - Head of Purchasing & Logistics

2. Shane Stapelton - Category Manager

3. Sujat Ameen - Purchasing Analyst

4. Hameed Jawad - Senior Buyer

5. Mohammed Masood - Merchandising Manager

6. Jocelyn - Merchandiser

7. Eoin Cox - ARI

8. Abdulla Yahya - Buyer

9. Dominck O’Reilly - Head of Operations

10.Sasha Kuzmin - IT Consultant

11. Neetu Dora - Senior Learning & Development Advisor

12. Shaheen Sheikh - Purchasing Administrator

13. Ambrose Stanley - Merchandiser

Confectionary is a growing business in the travel retail industry

and in Bahrain Duty Free it is one of the core categories. This

project is conducted by CIR (Counter Intelligence Retail) who

have done the category review of the confectionary section in

many airports. The objective of the CATMAN project is to develop

a common approach to Category Management across BDFS and

the benefits are:

• ImprovesBusinessPerformance-salesandprofits

• ImprovestheCustomerOfferandCustomerExperience.

• Strengthensourrelationshipswithsuppliers

(and airport partners).

• Workingcloselywithsupplierstogrowthecore

category business

• Harnessesknowledgeandexperienceacrossthe

wider organization

Based on the subcategory share in Bahrain and till point research

in travel retail we have changed our till point strategy from

merchandising the promotional items & near expiry items on the

till point. Now informal gifting has 25% of space & snacking has

75% of space. By merchandising informal gifting on the two half

of the shelves closest to the shopper, it maximizes their exposure

to the informal gifting SKU’s as they queue at the tills.

We have changed the Arrivals & Departures shop merchandising

plan according to the principles of CATMAN, which is already

showing positive impact on sales figures after the display change

which was done in March and April.

On a broader perspective, many of the wall & gondola locations

will be changed as well in the near future.

This CATMAN project is sure to give the BDF team very good ideas

on how to uplift the other category as well.

The management would like to thank all the CATMAN team

members for the extra effort put in for implementation of this

program. We also appreciate the continued support extended by

the retail team.

Snacking

An ideal treat toeat immediatelyalone or to share

with friends

InformalGifting

A gift for friends, family or colleagues

FamilyGifting

The perfect gift for returning

home

PremiumGifting

The perfect high quality gift to bring back for

your loved ones

DestinationGifting

An ideal gift or ‘trophy’ from your travels

Understanding the Confectionery Sub-Categories

Confectionery is segmented in to five sub categories, each defined by research into how shoppers understand and buy the category.

Each sub-category represents a group of similar products which are bought with the same key purchase driver in mind.

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Our L&D team has had a busy few months with lots of Learningand Development activities being undertaken for all our employees, be it internal training, product training or learning about Bahrain Duty Free. Here’s a summary of the key initiatives...

Performance Management

Product Training Seminars

External Promoters

Induction Programme

In April and June the HR team ran a number of workshops focusing on an introduction to Performance Management and Performance reviews. All levels of employees are included in these workshops as everyone’s performance counts!

A total of 206 employees have attended the workshop so far and approximately another 170 employees will be attending the course during June and July. To complement this, the HR team will also be attending your team meetings to talk to you about performance reviews.

Purchasing and HR have been working together recently to ensure that product knowledge for our employees is up to date. Since February 2012, there have been 260 attendees at various product training days. Brands include Christian Dior, Estee Lauder, Chanel, Visio, Sony Cybershot, Sony Playstation, Nestle Swiss Premium, Bose Speakers, Rolex, Canon Camera and Swiss Watches to name a few! More product training is being planned.

The HR team recently ran a number of induction programmes

for our External Promoters. Although they are employees of our

suppliers, every External Promoter has a role to play in increasing

sales for us and by wearing our uniform, they represent Bahrain

Duty Free to all our of customers.

The groups learnt about all aspects of our company such as

facilities, employee responsibilities, time and attendance, dress

requirements, organisational structure, how they represent

Bahrain Duty Free etc. To date, approximately 60 External

Promoters have attended.

Each induction session was opened by Garrett Coogan, General

Manager and we hope all our External Promoters found the

induction useful and now feel part of our family!

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Employee Development

AWARDS

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Working TogetherAward Q1

The winners of the first ever Working Together award have been announed. Congratulations to Shift 1 who had the highest values in Sales over the quarter on Thursday, 2nd February.

A team lunch was arranged and in addition, each team member received BD 10.

The Bahrain Duty Free Values Champion Award for March went to Ambrose Stanley, who works as a Merchandiser.

Ambrose received a BD 50 cash prize plus a 3 day ticket to the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Well done Ambrose!

Anyone can nominate a colleague for the values champion award, just complete the form and provide the justification. We look forward to receiving nominations for the next month’s award.

The first ever values champion Award has been announced

and the winner is Durriya Mohammed, IT Hardware and

Network Supervisor. Durriya was chosen for her continued

hard work and demonstration of values in her everyday

tasks. The values Durriya was specifically nominated

for were Customer Focus, Responsibility and Working

Together.

Durriya received a BD 50 cash prize plus a 3 day ticket to

the Bahrain Grand Prix.

As this was the time that a Values Champion Award was

given, Bahrain Duty Free goodie bags were also handed

to the other nominees; Felix Peris, SA Kanchana, Ambrose

Stanley and SA Joshua. Well done to you all for being

nominated.

Congratulations to Durriya and the nominees and we look

forward to receiving your nominations for the next month’s

award. Remember, anyone can nominate a colleague.

Values Champion Award

February 2012

Values Champion AwardMarch 2012

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Can you give us an bit of a background about yourself?

What can I say, I have worked with Aer Rianta for 21 years exactly

(June 3rd); and have been privileged to work in most operational

positions in many different locations. I have worked as a porter,

merchandiser, warehouse operator, supervisor, duty manager,

retail manager and also recently worked as General Manager of

our operation in Barbados. I have also worked in our operations in

Russia, Ukraine, Ireland and Syria.

Can you tell us a about on your role and responsibilities at BDF?

My main role as Head of Retail Operations involves ensuring that

our customers receive the highest possible levels of service in our

stores at all times. It is only through this can we hope to achieve our

mission of being the best travel retailer in the Middle East. To achieve

this, I am working closely with my 324 strong team in the retail

section to ensure that we develop our standards together in order

to look closely at every aspect of our roles. I am also responsible

for ensuring that all of our team is kept updated on developments

throughout the company; as well as liaising with our friends at the

Bahrain Airport Company in order to understand any challenges we

may face to continue our development.

How has your first couple of weeks gone so far? What were your

first priorities?

I cannot believe I am here a month already, as the time has just

disappeared. My priority when I arrived here was to understand

the roles we all play in the company; and to establish the key

responsibilities of my team. It has been a very interesting month as I

get to terms with the different roles and individuals.

What is the vision for your line of business?

We need to continue developing our standards to ensure that our

customers see us as their first choice retailer when they are travelling.

We are operating in a dynamic environment where standards are

continuing to rise; and we need to continue working hard together to

ensure we give the best levels of service; have the best processes and

people in place in order to exceed our customers’ demands.

What are your main aims in BDF this year?

A satisfied customer is a repeat customer as I was once told. My

aim is simple as I believe we need to speak to our customers to

ensure that we are offering the type of goods they want from us.

More importantly we need to listen to what they are telling us. I

think by listening to what we hear from our friends / colleagues

and customers we will have a greater knowledge on which we base

our decisions; and therefore achieve my aim of having even more

satisfied customers visiting our stores and making us their travel

retail store of choice.

What do you like most about BDF?

Our team !!! We have some amazing people who have an important

role in portraying our company’s image. From our cleaning team to

our porters; our sales floor team to our warehouse; and from our

support teams to our drivers everybody I have met so far within the

BDFS team has made me feel so welcome to this beautiful part of the

world. I would like to thank everybody for that and look forward to

working with everybody as we move “Forward Together”

Any last words?A phrase I heard in Barbados was “One Hand Can’t Clap”. In short;

together we can move mountains if we work together

Interviewwith Domnick O' Reilly

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Meet The Team

Brief outline of the team’s responsibility?The HR team covers lots of areas from Recruitment, Performance Management, Learning & Development, Payroll, Internal Communications, Drivers, Watchmen and Facilities. We have a diverse team from different backgrounds and experience.What is the primary challenge facing the HR department?Managing the many projects we are currently undertaking whilst trying our very best to maintain a good level of customer service for our internal customers on a day to day basis! Thankfully, we have a great team spirit to help us work through challenges we face.What are the major projects happening?The biggest project is the new HR System which will automate a lot of processes for HR including applying for annual leave, sick leave and all other leave. The other project which complements the HR System is the HR process review.We are also currently rolling out performance management, cash register training for the implementation of the new registers, Inflight training for Bahrain Air and reviewing all our training suppliers to name a few projects.What is the busiest day of the week?Every day!

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HR Department

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What's New!Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to our “Whats New” section. In each edition we shall be showcasing some of our new products prior

to their arrival. This will keep you informed of what’s happening and to help you also keep our customers

informed of upcoming launches.

As always, the Purchasing department welcomes your feedback and suggestions. If customers have given you

any feedback we would appreciate that all suggestions are passed onto the buying team here.

Lindt Chocolate

Discover Lindt Secrets of

Chocolate

Experience the luxuriously

smooth Excellence chocolate

bars, exquisite Lindor truffles

or extravagant praline

masterpieces, created by the

passion of Lindt’s Maîtres

Chocolatiers.

The Gold Genie Collection

Redefines Luxury

Newly introduced is a limited

edition collection of Gold plated

Smartphones and Tablets that

include Apple iProducts and

Blackberrys. These products are

targetted at gadget indulgent

shoppers and gives us an edge

over other retailers.

The Scent of Gucci

Flora Garden

BDFS introduces Gucci’s new

fragrance collection, Flora

Garden which comes on three

fresh scents, classified as

Glamorous, Tuberose, Gardenia

New

Angry BirdsSoft Toys Collection

Your favorite Angry Birds are now available at the most affordable prices, which comes in 3 sizes start from 4 inches to 16 inches and offered in different styles and five colors. This toy with sound is the ideal huggable toy for your little one.

ComingSoon

Samsung Galaxy S III

BDFS will soon introduce the

new Samsung Galaxy S III,

operating on Android OS, V4.0

“Ice Cream Sandwich” Quad-Core

1.4GHZ with 4.6” Super AMOLED

capacitive touch screen. With

Galaxy S III you can take a 8.0

mega pixels snapshot and roam

with 4G LTE 700 network.

ComingSoon

Sol Lite

The world’s lightest phone also features the following:Dual-Band Support 900/1800MHz1.2 Monochrome Display250 ContactsUser ProfilesSuper Slim 8.5mm Mobile PhoneTalk Time 120 Minutes/ Standby time of 100hrs

ComingSoon

Nokia Lumia 800

Nokia’s first Windows Phone 7.5

Mango smartphone is one of

the best Windows smartphones

in the market. It has a 3.7inch

ClearBlack AMOLED screen and

is powered by a huge 1.4GHz

processor.

New

The Scent of GivenchyFruity Touch

The new fragrance for women Very Irrésistible Givenchy is fronted by actress Liv Tyler. Very Irrésistible Givenchy Electric Rose is an aromatic floral, and features notes of blueberry, lemon zest, anise rose, green violet, cedar and musk.

New

Ross McMahon