♪ to the couch where you at? ♪ ♪ "show me the latest medal count?" ♪ ♪ xfinity's where it's at. ♪ welcome to it all. comcast nbcuniversal is proud to bring you coverage of the rio olympic games. ♪ haslinda: hello, and welcome to "high flyers," the show that gives you a 360 degree view of asia's business elite. today, we meet someone who could truly -- be called an undercover operator. a man breaking boundaries in a woman's world. he has taken his family's lingerie business and build exclusive market brand.

let us meet christopher karam. the overwhelming response he received convinced the family to go all in. standard -- from one small stand in beirut, he is using his own company to market the branch. -- the brand. for this high flyer to tell us how he is designing the future. ♪ karen,a: christopher welcome. good to have you with us. christopher: have -- happy to be with you. it was a can win sit

in sand a love story that got this started. tell us this love story. christopher: i am born to an american mother and a lebanese father. the a scholarship. there was a civil war in lebanon that lasted 25 years and it made it difficult for him to continue his education there. a best friend of his lied on his behalf to the university of texas and he coincidently got a scholarship to go there. he moved there and my mother, out of 40,000 students fell in love with the only lebanese guy who had no money, and when he finished his education, wanted to go back home. [laughter] because he was very much a family man. , when he had to move back, my mother was adamant on moving with him to lebanon.

when she ended up in lebanon, it was in the middle of the civil or. bombs were going off. it was not the safest place to be at the time. my father asked her -- are you sure you want to move your? and she -- move here? and she said yes. that is a lesson my father at large. don't just get a yes. make it a meaningful yes. he felt she may have put herself under pressure to make it work and he wanted to remove the pressure from her. he told her to go back to the states. go back to your own environment for one month and if you still feel a you can accept this change to move to lebanon, then you will move back and we will get married. money. her some you havet to lebanon,

to go through four airports and you may need -- you may miss a flight. and who knows about availability. this was a time that the facts fax was thethe newest invention. she booked her flights and saw she had money left over. him thee wanted to send money. the apparelto go to market. he told her to use the money for something made in the states that she could bring back and sell and that is the way he could pay his brother back. the exhibition happened to be a lingerie exhibition. got the story right, it started with a five dressing downs. christopher: this is a bit of a funny story. down she bought the first own -- find the brand,

money, what you see fit for the market and come back. she came back and said -- i met someone from japan. they have a subsidiary in the states. this is what i bought. he looks at the merchandise and he got very worried. lingerie for a man is seductive and lacey. with color. buying withy mother his entire life savings, a nude that was very basic. he thought it was the beginning of the end. the merchandise game. it turned to be an immense success. the number one selling color is nude and the number one selling bra is the basic bra.

he was the first person to sell needs to fulfill a fashion solution for women. haslinda: it was never part of the plan for you to take over the family business. all this while, you wanted to be a doctor. christopher: i think that was a bit of the affect of living through the civil war in lebanon. i wanted to help people and becoming a doctor was a way of helping people. on one fateful morning, my father was very proud of me becoming the first doctor in the family. thinking ifarted you should sell the business. he asked me how much i thought it was worth. as a young kid, i told myself, my father once to sell my mother's name. and that is when something changed in me and i said no, i will have to be the one that takes over the business. involved inu are

the family business even as a young kid. age 14. you were tagging barcodes. 40,000 lingerie pieces in the warehouse. so you have personal experience. christopher: here is the deal with my father. as strictnk of him but i think he did the right thing. he told me -- to get straight a's, you get to spend the summer in whatever way you like. if you do not, you have to find a job. later, i am very happy that i never got straight a's because i ended working with him every summer and i learned from the ground up what it is to learn the business. haslinda: having had this experience as a young boy, what is the most important lesson? christopher: to have strong roots. as ank of the business survivor.

it is easy to grow tall and once an economic storm comes in, the tree will be instantly removed. that is why we have grown our business without partners or bank loans. we have strong roots. comes,e economic storm we still stand in our place. we grow slowly but surely. every step we take is very well study. it is not about following people, it is about making the right decision. one of the major lessons i have learned is to learn how to walk away from something and how to say no to what seems like an opportunity. haslinda: the economic storm you talked about came in 2009 when growth came to a halt. christopher: exactly. we were the only ones that were still able to grow during that time. marketn currently, the situation has not been as favorable as before.

dubai relies heavily on toryism. have been slowly decreasing because of a global economic storm. right now, we are still able to reinvestedwe have our earnings into the company and not spreading ourselves to then. thin. haslinda: up next -- christopher: from 32 all the way up to 34, cup d. ♪

♪ karinda: christopher am started in beirut. how did you end up in the uae? christopher: my father refused to me in joining the business. i asked him how come? if anyone should take over the business, it should be me. he told me if i was going to join him in lebanon, i would only learn the same mistakes he did and copy what he had done. to get fresh ideas. i thought it would be a good idea to continue my education at the time because he had done his masters and i wanted to do that as well. right before i had to go to new york, i went to dubai and it was

being built from the ground up. i told myself -- why would i want to go to new york where the city is already built, if i could go back in time and see a city being built from scratch. haslinda: he said opera -- you said that opportunities were falling from the sky. christopher: it was still there barren. it was not fully filled. it was not occupied. i saw a place for me to answer a market from the beginning. one of the hardest things is market penetration. that gave me a big step over my competitors to start. that is how we were able to take over a lot of distribution from the beginning. don't forget come in the early 2000, the middle east was still a little bit of a scary place. even dubai. back then, it was the middle

east. and the middle east has been known as an area of conflict and nobody really had their eye on it and that is how we were able to take that market quickly. haslinda: the middle east and lingerie, they hardly go together. you would not think of the middle east. how has demand been? what are the women wanting? christopher: the lingerie business -- our lingerie business is not what people think of. our number one color that we sell is nude and our number one bra is a pure, a sick, every day bra. so that is how luxury works in the middle east. it is not the idea that people lingerie is only about fantasy and seductiveness. need.an every day basic that is the strength of klynn. as a basic bras

beauty product. just like women must do their hair and makeup, they must have the right bras to feel comfortable during the day. growis how we were able to despite having a cultural difference between what you can say and what you cannot say in the middle east. haslinda: isn't it fair to say that you were thrown into the deep end when you started the business in dubai. christopher: definitely. i did not think the opportunity would come that quickly. luckily, the market growing at a pace that will never be seen again. i was able to make a lot of mistakes that did not cost the company of a lot of money because of the high turnover we were experiencing. haslinda: what were some of the mistakes? christopher: it was in buying the merchandise. i bought many different categories. in a small area. to test the market.

was not in a mature market, i would still be stuck with that inventory today. haslinda: how did you manage to convince the likes of oscar de la renta? to be a distributor? christopher: we offered a platform of being the sole brand with this concept. only but thehe other people did not move and change with the times. they stayed selling their bras in boxes or in drawers or on demand. they also did not provide good sizing. in lebanon, when we first started, everyone was b. we were the first people to introduce different cup sizes. we had the service that these brands needed in terms of

training our sales staff and a platform which was our branding and our image which allowed us to enter the mall. the other brands were not able to enter the mall. unfortunately for them, they are fading away and we are becoming the sole future for these premium brands. haslinda: amazing to note that you have 20 stores and yet you sell your products through word of mouth. , or on a bigger scale, important to you? christopher: marketing will become bigger once we can put in shout.e image for the the last four years, we have been building that image. started, or when my parents first started, they were targeting luxury consumers, it medium and daily consumers. influx ofa big

stores. i decided to cut that part of the business out and i focused k.the d cup up to the --you think about that base wasthe customer not easy. we had to lose out on some of our loyal customers that were used to the medium and a value branch. it was a big risk that i took. right now, we are in a very strong position and we can see that it was extremely successful. now, we are focused on one customer target. tied toave an emotion our brand --and that is, what is your love story? haslinda: that is slightly different than victorious secret where they lose -- use angels, view to fall models -- beautiful

models. christopher: they focus on a younger consumer. andr main target is 28 below and ours is 28 up to 70's and 80's. being 70's these days is still young. the reason we chose that target might by otherle brands because of the name but essentially, they will not get the same comfort they do when they purchase from us. that is why we consider ourselves a value for money branch. what does that mean? you pay a little bit more from a medium brand, but what you get or 10urn is five times times more beneficial. a mature person is more calm. value tohat a nice have is love.

love is something that we live with every day. it is a word that can be interpreted into it so many emotions, between a mother and her children, between best friends, and between significant others. that will be the base of all of our future marketing. love. ♪ haslinda: next, -- christopher: they thought it was something glamorous. they were all jealous of me. ♪

♪ christopher karam, when you were a young kid, a teenager, what was it like telling your friends that you whendealing with lingerie --? christopher: they really thought it was something glamorous and they were jealous of me. constantly being surrounded by these models. the business was like any other and i was in the warehouse putting barcodes,

implementing software. and that was something i really loved. making a system. creating systems are about how things should happen. it was not as glamorous as people thought it was. haslinda: i have never met a man talking about lingerie. i did not even know k cups existed. how do you feel about being in a woman's world? christopher: the challenge about being a man in a woman's world is the groundwork. i perform excellently in the warehouse but once i am in the shop, it is difficult for me to interact with the customers to understand their needs. in the office, i can look at the numbers. they will not tell me what a consumer is asking for. slowly and slowly,

i am passing on this responsibility to my wife. after all, why should the man be buying for a woman's needs. the woman understands more. haslinda: isn't it true that the lingerie business is pretty much dominated by men? that is the reality. christopher: it is true because i guess it all boils down to finances. i don't think that this will be something that will last in the future. much morebecoming courageous and much more starting their own businesses. 30 years ago, in the middle east it was a taboo because women were supposed to be housewives. i am glad that is changing. because there are a lot of these that women are looking to fill. haslinda: klynn started really small. it now has scale. it is an exciting time for the company because this is a time

when you can look at global expansion. what are some of the ideas you have? globalpher: just our expansion, you have to produce your own merchandise. right now, we are the exclusive distributors of over 20 brands that are sold in our stores. we are wholesalers and retailers. if you look at the retail side, the only way to grow globally is to produce ourselves. in production, i like to say -- to compare that to what comes first, the chicken or the egg? for production coming you have minimums you need to reach. with 20 stores, we are starting to look for suppliers to produce for us under our own brand name. 20% of our sales are done under the name of klynn. haslinda: are there plans to list the company? the only person

that can answer that is my son. i would like to see him take it over but at the end of the day, just like my father never pressured me to join the business, it was never something he groomed me for. he always told me i was free to do whatever i wanted. i will follow the same path for myself. i won him to choose his own life and for him to decide on his own future. if he does not want to join the business, perhaps it is an option, but right now it is too early to say. haslinda: you started dabbling in business at a young age. does it pay off to be an entrepreneur at a young age? does it give you time to experiment and make mistakes? christopher: i have been fortunate that my platform to make mistakes was dubai. i am extremely grateful for what dubai has given young entrepreneurs. it gave us the opportunity of

really focusing on the business. there were no taxes. we did not need to worry about bureaucracy. we had only to worry about selling. it is such an expanding market, mistakes would not show. if i had advice for a young entrepreneur, it would be to make mistakes at someone else's expense. haslinda: work for someone else first. christopher: get the experience first and learn what your system should be like, 5-10 years down the line. when you first start, it is difficult to see what systems you have to have in place. you learn as you grow. if you want a mature brand and to learn the systems, you have a few steps ahead when you start your own business. haslinda: you had to grow up in a hurry. you did say that you jumped into the deep end. christopher: i never looked at it as growing up, i looked at it

as my mission and focusing on what i had to do. work hard and things will pay off. haslinda: where will things be in 10-20 years? christopher: in india and africa. brandd like it to be a that always stands for value. some brandsse days that are only selling a name and you pay a premium for the name. the sameyou can get quality for a lot less. our motto is to sell value for money. what you are spending is well worth it. in anda: huge success short timeframe. how do you feel? christopher: i feel that i hopefully made my father proud. karam,a: christopher thank you so much for being a high flyer. christopher: thank you. ♪

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