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Rami Abu Ghazalah
He spent four decades refusing to expand the Kingdom's favourite chain — then chose, on his own terms, the moment to let it grow.
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Founder
Ihsan Abu Ghazalah
An engineer turned down basketball, studied food technology in France, and built the secret recipe behind the Kingdom's most-loved brand.
Founder
Habib Mohamed Abdul Latif
A canteen boy with RM3,800 and three failed ventures behind him built Malaysia's best-known jewellery house — by selling diamonds in a gold town.
Brand
Habib Jewels
Malaysia's first listed jeweller went public at the worst possible moment — the depth of the 1998 crash — and beat its own numbers.
Founder
Nancy Liew
A nurse walked into a bank with a fast-food proposal. The officers laughed. She opened Marrybrown anyway — and ran it for 44 years.
Insight
The cosmopolitan city commerce could not save
Ayutthaya was one of the richest cities on Earth — until 1767, when the trading companies that built its wealth sailed home and left it to burn.
Insight
The City That Built a Culture It Couldn't Keep
The first European city in the tropics ran on the Atlantic slave trade. When direct routes made it obsolete, only one thing it built survived.
Insight
Ouidah: The Port That Got Its Gods Back
Ouidah exported over a million enslaved Africans — the one thing it could not control was the religion they carried out the Door of No Return.
Insight
Malaysia QSR: The Halal Moat No Bank Funded
Bank loan rejected in 1981. Forty-three years later: 16 countries, 500 outlets, and the halal certification no competitor built.
Insight
Aceh: The Tsunami That Ended a 29-Year War
Twenty-nine years of war produced no peace in Aceh. Then a tsunami that killed 170,000 produced a signed settlement in 232 days.
Founder
Shakour Abu Ghazalah
A refugee staked his last money on the Kingdom's first chicken counter, then died two years in — leaving his sons a debt and a lost recipe.
Founder
Dato' Lawrence Liew Yong Fatt
Banks refused his plan. He opened Malaysia's first homegrown QSR anyway — now the world's largest halal chain of Asian origin.
Brand
Marrybrown
Rejected by banks and dismissed by rivals — Marrybrown built a 16-country halal QSR empire on the moves KFC and McDonald's could not copy.
Brand
Al Baik
Saudi Arabia's most-loved chicken chain refused to open in its own capital for 43 years. The deliberate scarcity is what made it number one.
Founder
Yulia Yanina
PTU cutter from Saratov to closing Paris Couture Week — when geopolitics removed her name from the calendar, she returned off-schedule.
Founder
Nino Shamatava
Cancer survivor, refugee child, grieving collaborator. She built Russia's most recognized independent fashion label through all three.
Founder
Gosha Rubchinskiy
He walked away at maximum visibility in 2018 and did not explain why. Seven years later, the relaunch is the first collection he actually owns.
Founder
Alisa Ushakova
Walked out of law school exams to bet on fashion — then spent a decade building the machine that turned ₽200K into ₽786M in annual revenue.
Founder
Alexander Terekhov
Sixteen years as the creative face of a womenswear label he didn't own. Sashaverse is what he built once he understood the difference.
Brand
USHATÁVA
From a ₽200K Yekaterinburg bet with no fashion training to ~₽786M and the Garage Museum — a federal brand built entirely on its own terms.
Brand
Sashaverse
He built Russia's most exported womenswear label, lost the name when the investor closed it, then rebuilt it — this time owning every piece.
Brand
Gosha Rubchinskiy
Shut down at peak visibility in 2018. The 2025 Grunovis-FZCO relaunch is legally distinct from the CDG original — not a revival, a reset.
Insight
How Beast Became the Hermès of Flowers
Amber Xiang's 2011 thesis: the story is the margin. RMB 418M in fragrance sales later, it has proven impossible to compete with from below.
Founder
Ivan Khokhlov
He co-founded 12 STOREEZ with the woman he married, survived two years of sanctions, announced a divorce — and kept running the company with her.
Founder
Amber Xiang
The Dragon TV director who sold flowers as editorial — until an OEM scandal made her the story, and she had to discover what it was made of.
Brand
Beast
Two crises tested the story-led model. The Golden Teardrop answered both — RMB 418M in 2024 fragrance sales, domestic category leader.
Brand
12 STOREEZ
From a Yekaterinburg home showroom to ₽11.9B — twelve monthly capsules, one sanctions crisis, and a GUM flagship on the floor Hermès vacated.
Founder
A.K. Mansoor
He arrived in Dubai on roughly US$50 a month. Thirteen years of trucks and warehouses later, he opened a fried-chicken shop in Deira.
Brand
ChicKing
A single Deira outlet in 2000 became ~475 across ~45 countries — a halal QSR built for the emerging-market consumer the majors overlooked.
Insight
Serbia: the brands that sanctions couldn't reach
Serbia's post-2000 founders — wine, rakija, organic food — are now 50–68. The EU accession clock is running and no one is watching.
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