Dubai: When you’re tasked with growing your family’s business, the pressure can be a little daunting.Canadian national Hassan Tamimi, 29, is the Group CEO of Al Tannan Group Holding. For him, taking the family’s business forward means respecting its legacy, but also being flexible enough to Dubai-it – achieve excellence, take risks, and seize opportunities.Tamimi said: “I was born in Canada, but I come from a family with a long entrepreneurial history in Dubai. My grandfather established Al Tannan Group here in 1982, so although I didn’t spend my entire life in Dubai, the city has always been deeply connected to my family’s story.”Tamimi moved to the UAE in 2010, when he was 13 years old. Growing up, he watched his grandfather and father work hard, and expand their company: “At its core, it was a traditional trading business focused on household products. My father later diversified the business further into areas such as kitchen appliances and home décor. When I became involved, the business was still largely centred around household products.”An unusual pivotBut that wasn’t the direction he wanted to pursue. Living in Dubai had expanded his innate curiosity.Tamimi said: “Dubai gives you permission to think internationally from the beginning. You are surrounded by people from almost every part of the world. Trends from Japan, Korea, Europe, America and the wider Middle East can coexist here, and consumers are extremely aware of what is happening globally.”While he was still in high school, he developed an interest in something far left field from what his family had been selling for decades – he discovered collectible figures. Specifically, anime.Convincing his family he would like to branch out was a challenge. “You want to sell a figurine for the price of a frying pan?” was his father’s initial reaction.But with his family’s support, he began working on a business idea around novelty and nostalgia-driven products.He said: “I grew up around business, so I was always looking at why people bought things and what made something valuable to them. I was also interested in collectibles from a young age. Later, travelling – particularly to Japan – completely changed the way I looked at retail. I saw how anime, collectibles and characters weren’t treated simply as children’s products. There was an entire culture around them. People formed identities and communities around the things they loved.”That made him ask: why couldn’t he create that same kind of experience in the Middle East?A new chapter: The Little ThingsThe short answer is, he could – and he did.Tamimi is founder of The Little Things, a pop culture retail concept that is responsible for introducing popular brands like Pop Mart and Bandai Namco, through exclusive partnerships, to the UAE.The long answer is that it took a lot of patience to see the idea through. To Dubai-it, he had to believe in the potential of the niche category before everyone else could see it.He said, in the early 2010s, “anime, collectibles and fandom culture were nowhere near as mainstream in the region as they are today. The community was there and it was growing, but the market was still relatively small – many people simply saw collectibles as toys.”Add to that, he was a teenager when he started his business. In the UAE, you cannot register a company to a minor under the age of 18, but it was still possible at the personal court. So, Tamimi went with his father to register The Little Things under his name.He became a business owner at 15 – he had to prove himself, while also demonstrating there was a serious and growing market of adult collectors, anime fans and enthusiasts.Tamimi’s father gave him the initial capital he needed, “but after that, I wasn’t simply given more money whenever I needed it. I had to learn how to save, reinvest and build a safety net.”He learned to be disciplined, and was encouraged by his father to make mistakes, understand what went wrong, and adapt.Dubai was the perfect place for incubating his idea: “For me, Dubai wasn’t simply where the business was headquartered. It became the testing ground for what the business could become internationally.”A growing communityDubai also helped educate him about the unique, niche world of pop culture collectibles. Over the years, he met a growing community of collectible enthusiasts.He said: “In the early days, people would come into the store and start sharing stories with us, about a character they grew up with, an anime they loved, or a collectible they had been searching for, for years. We listened, shared the excitement and got to know them.”Over time, he said many of those customers became familiar faces, then friends, and eventually, started to feel like family. That’s when he realised his business idea could be much more than just a store.“The products themselves carry memories. Something as simple as a figure can take someone back to their childhood or remind them of a story or character that meant something to them. But what made it powerful was having a place where people could share that passion with others who understood it.”Tamimi’s vision grew as he understood people’s emotional connection with collectibles. At The Little Things, “we became much more intentional about creating spaces where people could meet, discover products, attend events and share what they loved.” Community became the heart of his business.Staying curiousToday, adult collectibles have exploded in popularity, with the luxury collectibles market forecast to grow by 7.31% in the UAE by 2028, according to market research platform Statista.Tamimi said he has experienced moments that validated his vision: “One was the release of the exclusive Black Grendizer collectible (an exclusive Tissot watch with collector statues). Customers came from different parts of the world for it, and the pieces sold out within 48 hours. Moments like that demonstrated that Dubai could become a genuine destination for collectors.”Looking ahead, Tamimi wants to scale Al Tannan Group into a stronger regional and international business, but not simply for the sake of growing bigger.He said: “My grandfather’s generation built the foundation. My father’s generation diversified it. My responsibility has been to respect that legacy while understanding that the way you did business 20 or 30 years ago cannot simply be copied today.”He’s going back to what helped him zero in on a unique business idea and Dubai-it, before it became a global trend: curiosity.Tamimi said: “I don’t believe you should blindly chase every opportunity. But I do believe you should stay curious enough to recognise the right one when it appears.”
