Commerce · Dubai, UAE · 2025
A Dubai skincare brand: one store, one app, one AI concierge, 38% higher conversion
A fast-growing skincare brand in Dubai had loyal customers, a store that struggled on mobile and a founder answering product questions on WhatsApp before breakfast. We rebuilt its commerce around one catalogue, launched an app for regulars and gave the brand a concierge that knows every formula, and knows when to hand over to a person.
- Client
- A D2C skincare brand in Dubai
- Market
- UAE and the wider Gulf
- Engagement
- Discovery Sprint, product build, then Care & Grow plan
- Timeline
- 22 weeks
- In care since
- 2025
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android, WhatsApp
38%
higher conversion
Store and app combined, first full quarter after launch against the same quarter a year earlier
22%
higher average order value
Mostly from customers buying a full routine rather than one product
41%
of customer questions answered by the AI concierge
Resolved end to end, in English or Arabic, with no human needed
The context
A brand people loved, sold through a store that fought them.
Our client makes skincare for life in the Gulf: formulas built for heat, humidity, long hours in air conditioning and hard water. It began with a handful of products sold through Instagram and grew into a range of around forty, sold on a Shopify store to customers across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Its customers were loyal and talkative. They wanted to know which serum sits under which moisturiser, whether a cleanser is gentle enough for a teenager, and when their favourite sunscreen would be back. Most of them asked on WhatsApp, and most of those messages reached the founder's own phone.
The challenge
Mobile shoppers were leaving, and the questions never stopped.
More than four in five visits came from phones, yet the store had been designed on a desktop. Pages were heavy with apps bolted on over the years, the Arabic version was an afterthought, and checkout asked for a lot before it offered Apple Pay, instalments or cash on delivery.
Meanwhile the founder was starting most days with around 300 unread WhatsApp messages. Many asked the same twenty questions. Some needed real care: a reaction, a pregnancy, a prescription. The brand needed the first kind answered instantly, at any hour, without anything ever guessing at the second.
Our approach
One catalogue, three front doors.
Prem Raval led the account. We kept Shopify as the commerce engine the team already knew and rebuilt everything customers touch on top of it. The website, the app and the concierge all read from the same catalogue, cart and account, so a routine started on WhatsApp can be finished in the app. We ran it through the Ampersand Method, starting with a three week Discovery Sprint.
- 01
Listen & Learn
We read three months of WhatsApp and Instagram conversations, with names removed, and interviewed twelve regular customers in English and Arabic. Their questions became the concierge's first syllabus.
- 02
Map & Measure
We audited the store's speed, apps and checkout, mapped where mobile shoppers gave up, and agreed three measures with the founder: conversion, average order value and questions answered without a human.
- 03
Sketch & Shape
A mobile-first design system in English and Arabic, right to left from the first sketch, a short skin quiz that builds a morning and night routine, and a checkout with the payment options Gulf shoppers expect.
- 04
Build & Break
Storefront, app and concierge built in two week sprints, with a demo every Friday. We spent a whole sprint trying to make the concierge say something it should not, and tightened its rules every time it did.
- 05
Launch & Land
The new store and the app launched in the same week. The concierge went live on the website first, then in the app, then on WhatsApp once the team trusted its handovers.
- 06
Care & Grow
A monthly review of concierge conversations, restock alerts and campaigns, with a growth plan that ties email, WhatsApp and the app together.
What we built
What customers see, and what keeps it honest.
Four surfaces, one brand. Every piece shares the same product data, the same customer account and the same tone of voice, in two languages.
A headless storefront
A fast, mobile-first store in English and Arabic, built on top of Shopify, that loads quickly on a mid range phone on mobile data.
- Full right to left Arabic layout
- Skin quiz and routine builder
- Apple Pay, cards, instalments and cash on delivery
- Prices shown with 5% VAT included
An app for regulars
iOS and Android apps that share the store's catalogue and accounts, designed for the customers who reorder every six weeks.
- One tap reorder of a saved routine
- Restock and delivery alerts
- Loyalty points shared with the website
- Same day delivery slots in Dubai
The AI concierge
A bilingual assistant that answers from the brand's own product sheets, ingredient notes and policies, never from the open internet.
- Routine suggestions that add straight to the cart
- Answers in English and Arabic
- Links to the product page it relied on
- Hands sensitive questions to a trained adviser
WhatsApp, done properly
The WhatsApp Business Platform connected to orders and to the concierge, with opt-in at checkout and only the messages customers want.
- Order, delivery and restock updates
- The concierge on WhatsApp, with human handover
- A summary of every handed over conversation
Growth built in
Analytics, email and WhatsApp flows planned alongside the build, so marketing had clean data from launch day.
- Server side analytics events
- Welcome and replenishment flows
- Campaign pages the team edits itself
Guardrails
Clear rules for what the concierge must never do, tested hard before launch and reviewed every month since.
- No medical advice, ever
- A person for reactions, pregnancy or prescriptions
- Customer data handled under UAE data protection law
The outcome
The numbers moved within a quarter.
In the first full quarter after launch, conversion across the store and app was 38% higher than in the same quarter a year earlier. Average order value rose 22%, mostly because customers who used the routine builder bought the whole routine rather than a single product.
The concierge now answers 41% of customer questions end to end, in English and Arabic, at any hour. The rest reach a person with the conversation already summarised, so the team replies faster and the founder's mornings belong to the business again.
Just as important, it feels like one brand. The voice, the routines and the account are the same whether a customer arrives from Instagram, the website, the app or a WhatsApp message. That is what we mean by ecommerce development: the store, the app and the conversations built as one system, not three projects.
D&C behaved like our own product team. The store, the app and the AI concierge feel like one brand, and the numbers moved within a quarter.
Care & Grow
Growing together since 2025.
In our care since 2025
The brand has been on a Care & Grow plan since launch. Every month we read a sample of concierge conversations with the founder's team, add answers where it hesitated and tighten the rules where it was too sure of itself. New products join the concierge's knowledge on the day they go on sale.
Since launch we have added Ramadan and Eid gift sets, a subscription for the three best sellers and same day delivery in Abu Dhabi, all inside the same store, app and concierge. The mobile speed budget is checked on every release, and it has held. Working from Mumbai puts us in the brand's working day, which is at the heart of how we work with teams in Dubai and across the Gulf.
Who worked on it
- Partner, product and partnerships
- Product designer
- UX researcher
- Arabic content designer
- Two frontend engineers
- Mobile engineer
- AI engineer
- QA engineer
- Growth strategist
What we learned building an AI concierge for skincare
Start with the questions, not the model
Three months of real customer messages told us more than any demo could. The concierge’s first version answered those questions well and politely declined everything else. Breadth came later, one reviewed topic at a time.
Decide what it must never say
Skincare sits close to health. The concierge never diagnoses, never comments on medication and never guesses about pregnancy. It hands those conversations to a trained adviser with a summary attached. Customers trusted it more because it knew its limits. We cover how we build these safeguards on our AI and automation page.
Arabic is a design decision
Right to left layouts, Arabic product names and a voice that sounds natural in both languages were designed from the first sketch. Translating a finished English store would have produced a store that felt translated.
Credits
D&C Studios owned discovery, design, the headless storefront, the iOS and Android apps, the AI concierge, the WhatsApp integration and the analytics setup, and runs the Care & Grow plan. Formulation, product claims, photography and fulfilment are the brand’s own. Figures come from the brand’s store and app analytics.
Why this client is not named
At the founder’s request the brand is described by type, and every screen here is recreated with a fictional label.
Selling direct in the Gulf? Tell us what your customers keep asking.
Stack and tools
- Shopify, headless
- Next.js
- React Native
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL with pgvector
- Retrieval augmented generation
- WhatsApp Business Platform
- GA4