You would be forgiven for thinking the founders of stylendubai.com are heavily into fashion.
But it is not the first interest of the 37-year-old twins Dara and Dawser Al Hadidi, who set up the online luxury style guide.
"Fashion is part of any girl's life, but … what we're interested in is the web. We are both web experts," says Dawser.
The twins were working in the industry when they spotted an opportunity in Dubai's luxury shopping sector.
"New brands are being introduced every day, especially in the fashion avenue. An online presence to provide this information for the user was highly important," says Dara.
Stylendubai is designed to help fashion fans navigate the vast array of luxury shops in Dubai.
"Dubai is big and the choices can be overwhelming, so the more you narrow it down, the more you help users to plan their shopping trip ahead, it becomes even more fruitful," says Dawser.
"We like to think of it as the premier luxury and fashion style guide of Dubai."
Users can search for the location of shops and browse sections featuring ready-made outfits and up-and-coming local designers.
"We have a strong connection with the PR brands and they provide us with all the content (but) we reproduce (it) from stylendubai's point of view," says Dawser.
"We have a team of editors who do this. We have two editors and three programmers. We're small but there is a lot that we're involved in ourselves."
Stylendubai does not sell products, so relies solely on advertising for its income.
"Now we are just in the build-up stage of our venture and trying to focus on building a quality brand and engaging the network of retailers, which we have succeeded in doing so far," says Dawser.
The twins hope the website will one day become part of the daily routine of every shopper in the emirate.
"I want it to be like the Google of luxury brands," says Dara.
The website is targeted at affluent customers, but appeals to anyone who is interested in designer brands.
"Even if they are on Dh10,000 [US$2,722] salary, they could still invest in a piece of luxury. So anyone who is luxury brand savvy is our fan," says Dawser.
Even though the website has grown, the twins have now invested heavily in technology to improve its listing in search results.
"There's a certain way to make sure you're cleanly indexed or listed on the search engine. Any time that you make a search for a related shopping or fashion … any of the companies that we have, we will appear," says Dawser.
"We don't push ourselves on anyone. We make sure that when we appear the search is related to our company. The process of it is extremely technical."
The set-up was "easy" because the business is based in one of the free zones, but the venture did not come without its challenges. Persuading luxury brands to cooperate was the biggest.
"Two or three years back … in the back of their mind they thought they would lose control of their brand if they existed online," says Dara.
"That took time, [but] six months down the line they started coming on their own. They saw that we were compliant with their policies and we respected their brand and so on."
Stylendubai is just the first of many similar Web ventures the twins hope to launch. They have plans for others such as home decor and children's fashion.
"But we're a very small company and it's very easy to run out of capacity, so we have these plans and we will roll them out at some point, but we need to make sure that we study them carefully. That's why we're taking our time," says Dawser.
