Dubai is where American brands go to prove they can work anywhere

Skims, Primark, Ulta Beauty, and Pacsun all opened their first international stores in Dubai within 90 days.

Five US retailers opened or confirmed their first-ever international stores in one city over the past 90 days. That city wasn’t London.

Skims launched at Mall of the Emirates on December 22. Ulta Beauty followed on January 29 — same mall. Primark confirmed three Dubai locations with the first opening at Dubai Mall on March 26. Pacsun, which has never operated a single store outside the United States in its 40-year history, signed with Majid Al Futtaim for Mall of the Emirates. Gymshark showed up too.

Different brands, different price points, different customers. Same destination.

What actually happened

Start with Skims. Kim Kardashian’s shapewear company, now valued at $5 billion after its latest funding round, picked Dubai over London for its first Middle East store. The Regent Street location comes later, sometime in 2026. Dubai came first. The franchise partner is Al Tayer Insignia — the same operator behind Harvey Nichols and Coach in the region. The store opened with 400 gift bags for early arrivals and a design language built around curved walls, warm lighting, and oversized signage that Skims has been rolling out across its US fleet.

Ulta Beauty brought a different calculation. The largest specialty beauty retailer in the US — roughly 1,500 domestic stores, 25,000 products, 600 brands — entered the Middle East through Alshaya Group. Mall of the Emirates first, Dubai Mall on March 27, Red Sea Mall in Jeddah on May 7. The CEO called it a “new chapter.” The franchise operator called it a “milestone for our beauty portfolio.” The real story is simpler: Alshaya already runs Starbucks, H&M, Victoria’s Secret, and Bath & Body Works across the GCC. Adding Ulta was operational, not experimental.

Primark’s timeline is tighter. Three stores in three months: Dubai Mall (March 26), City Centre Mirdif (April), Mall of the Emirates (May). Then Bahrain and Qatar before the year ends. Alshaya handles the franchise. The Kuwait opening last November — Primark’s first in the Middle East — drew the kind of crowds that make brand managers rethink their international roadmaps. Dublin to Kuwait to Dubai in under six months. Meanwhile, Primark is also opening a 74,000-square-foot flagship on Herald Square in Manhattan this spring. The brand is moving simultaneously into the two markets that matter most for global proof of concept.

Then there’s Pacsun. This is the one worth watching closely. A Californian mall brand built on Gen Z aesthetics and skate-adjacent fashion, 350-something stores across the US, never once ventured abroad. Now it’s signed an exclusive regional partnership with Majid Al Futtaim for up to 20 stores across the GCC over five years. The launch activation happened trackside at the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix in December. The first store opens at Mall of the Emirates in the coming weeks. For a brand that hasn’t expanded its US footprint in 18 years — and is now simultaneously adding 20-35 domestic stores — the Dubai move signals something beyond geography.

The franchise layer

The brands get the attention. But the infrastructure underneath is what makes the pattern repeatable.

Three operators sit behind nearly every major US brand entering the GCC right now. Alshaya Group, founded in 1890 in Kuwait, runs over 3,500 stores across more than 50 brands. Starbucks, Shake Shack, Chipotle, Charlotte Tilbury, Footlocker — Alshaya is the one executing on the ground. Fifty thousand employees. The company took Primark from zero to five Middle Eastern stores in a single budget cycle. Now it’s doing the same with Ulta Beauty.

Majid Al Futtaim owns 29 shopping centers and operates across 13 countries. Mall of the Emirates is theirs. So is Mall of Oman, City Centre Deira, and City Centre Mirdif. The company just committed to a Dhs 5 billion ($1.36 billion) expansion of Mall of the Emirates — 100 new stores, an outdoor dining courtyard, a 575-seat theatre, a wellness club. It is also developing Ghaf Woods, a Dhs 15.4 billion ($4.2 billion) mixed-use project anchored by a new mall built among 30,000 trees. This is the operator that signed Pacsun.

Al Tayer Insignia brought in Skims. The company operates the premium end of franchise retail in the Gulf — Harvey Nichols, Coach, Kurt Geiger. For brands that care about controlled distribution and elevated presentation, Al Tayer is the call.

What these three companies do, collectively, is remove the execution problem. A brand entering Dubai doesn’t need a regional office. Doesn’t need a supply chain team. Doesn’t need local market research — the operator already has it. Lease negotiation, staffing, logistics, marketing — all handled. The brand ships products and provides guidelines. The operator does everything else.

It’s a model that doesn’t exist at this scale in London, Tokyo, or Paris. European markets require direct operations or complex joint ventures. Japan demands localization that takes years. Dubai offers a shortcut that doesn’t sacrifice quality — and the franchise operators have the track records to back it.

The malls are spending

It’s not just that brands want in. The venues themselves are investing at a scale that makes the commitment reciprocal.

Mall of the Emirates: $1.36 billion expansion. One hundred new stores including Primark, Ulta Beauty, and Skims. A new outdoor precinct — the mall’s first — scheduled for early 2027. The existing infrastructure already includes Ski Dubai, a 575-seat theatre that opened recently under the New Covent Garden brand, and a wellness destination from SEVEN Group. The expansion isn’t a facelift. It’s a reconfiguration of what the mall is — from a shopping center into something closer to a mixed-use entertainment district that happens to have stores.

Dubai Mall, already the largest mall in the world by total area, added The District earlier this year — 65 new shops and restaurants near the Ice Rink. An expansion bringing 240 additional luxury retail units is underway. The mall reportedly handles over 100 million visitors annually.

Beyond the established giants, seven new malls are scheduled to open across the UAE in 2026. Sobha Mall in Hartland. South Bay Mall in Dubai South. Liwan Mall in Wadi Al Safa with Spanish-inspired architecture. Ghaf Woods as part of Majid Al Futtaim’s forest-led community concept. Dubai Square at Creek Harbour — described as an “indoor city” spanning 2.6 million square meters, roughly three times the size of Downtown Dubai — is expected by 2028.

The volume of construction alone tells you something about where the region expects physical retail to go.

Demographics that actually match

There’s a practical reason five youth-oriented brands picked the same market in the same quarter. Around 60% of the GCC population is under 30. Per capita spending in the UAE ranks among the highest globally. The consumer base is digitally native but demonstrably willing to shop in person — the footfall numbers across Dubai’s malls are not soft.

For Pacsun, which targets Gen Z and Gen Alpha, this is a near-perfect audience match. For Skims, which built its brand on Instagram and celebrity culture, the regional appetite for fashion-forward Western brands is documented by a decade of successful franchise operations. For Ulta Beauty, the GCC beauty market has been growing at rates that outpace North America.

And the brands aren’t just reacting to demand. They’re testing whether their playbooks translate. Pacsun’s F1 activation was as much a marketing experiment as a launch event. Primark’s no-e-commerce model — the company still doesn’t sell online — will face its most revealing international stress test in a market where digital expectations are extremely high. Ulta’s 25,000-product assortment will meet a consumer base that already has access to Sephora, Faces, and a sophisticated local beauty retail ecosystem.

Dubai is functioning as a filter. Brands that work here, in this competitive and infrastructure-rich environment, have a strong case for working in other international markets. Brands that don’t will learn it faster and cheaper than they would in London or Shanghai.

What comes next

Primark’s Dubai Mall opening on March 26 is the near-term event to watch. If it replicates the Kuwait launch — thousands of shoppers, social media saturation, sell-through numbers that justify rapid expansion — the acceleration across the GCC will be visible within months.

Pacsun at Mall of the Emirates will be a different kind of test. This is a brand without an international operating history entering through a franchise model in one of the world’s most competitive retail environments. The first 12 months will tell us whether the Gen Z mall brand translates or whether it’s a US-specific phenomenon.

The Mall of the Emirates expansion rolls through 2026 and into 2027. One hundred new stores don’t arrive at once — the sequencing will reveal which categories the operator is prioritizing and which brands are being courted.

And somewhere, a DTC brand with 50 US stores and a growing international waitlist is looking at what Pacsun just did and asking its board the obvious question.

The franchise infrastructure is ready. The malls are spending. The audience is there.

Dubai isn’t a bet anymore. It’s a proof point.