Jarir Bookstore Brand Guidelines: A 1974 Riyadh Bookshop, Jarir Marketing & a 2003 Listing

A small Riyadh bookshop and a family that took it on.

Jarir began as a small bookshop in Riyadh. The company’s own history says Jarir Marketing Company, “also popularly known as Jarir Bookstore or Jarir,” was established in the Saudi capital in 1974 as a small bookshop. The Family Business Histories project, a research collaboration between New York University Abu Dhabi and the Tharawat Family Business Forum, gives the same year in its 2024 profile of the company: in 1974, it says, the Al-Agil family acquired a Jarir Bookstore outlet in Riyadh’s Malaz neighbourhood, and it names Abdul Rahman Al-Agil and his sons as the co-founders.

The name is older than the family’s ownership. English Wikipedia says the shop took its name from Jarir Street, where it stood, and that it first dealt in second-hand books and art sold by people from abroad living in Riyadh; Arabic Wikipedia places the first branch on Al-Ahsa Street in Al-Malaz. English Wikipedia names Abdulrahman Nasser Al-Agil as the founder, while Arabic Wikipedia gives Mohammed Al-Agil, one of his sons.

According to the Family Business Histories profile, the new shop was stocked with books and supplies moved from Al-Wai’ Al-Arabi Bookstore, an earlier Riyadh shop that Abdul Rahman Al-Agil owned with his brother Abdulaziz and then turned into a real-estate office. Jarir was run by his sons at different times, and in 1977 the business hired its first employee from outside the family, to help while the younger sons were still studying. In the late 1970s the landlord required the family to leave, and the bookshop moved to a new site in Riyadh on a ten-year lease.

The company itself came next. The same profile says Jarir Marketing Company was set up in Riyadh in 1979, with three of the sons in the main roles: Mohammed as chairman, Abdullah as managing director and head of wholesale, and Abdul Karim as chief executive. For two decades the business was split in two, with Jarir Bookstore Co. running the shops and Jarir Marketing Co. handling wholesale. In 1980 the family introduced Roco, a brand for making and importing school and office supplies, and in 1982 it opened a second Riyadh branch. The company’s history says simply that a second Riyadh branch came in the 1980s and another in the 1990s.

Books, stationery and gadgets under one fascia.

Jarir is a bookshop by name, but its shelves carry far more than books. The company lists its trade as office and school supplies, children’s toys and educational aids, Arabic and English books, and arts and crafts materials. It also sells computer peripherals and software, mobile phones and accessories, photography equipment and smart televisions, and repairs computers and electronics. It runs two divisions: retail, including online sales, under the trademark Jarir Bookstore, and a wholesale division.

Publishing is part of the business too. The Family Business Histories profile, drawing on the company’s 2022 sustainability report, says Jarir founded Jarir Publication in 1999 to publish books and translate them into Arabic, with a focus on personal development, education and children’s literature. In January 2000, it adds, Jarir Bookstore Co. was merged into Jarir Marketing Co., bringing the shops and the wholesale side into one company.

The shops themselves are large. When Jarir opened its third showroom in Qatar in March 2014, at the seven-storey Jaidah Square building on Airport Road in Doha, Gulf Times reported that it covered 3,500 square metres and carried stationery, school supplies, books and arts and engineering supplies next to smartphones, laptops, tablets and games consoles. The paper said the other two Qatar showrooms were at Al Maha Centre on Salwa Road and at the Salman bin Khalid Al Thani Centre, and that the Jaidah Square outlet was the 33rd Jarir Bookstore in the Gulf.

Jarir calls its stores showrooms, and the business and markets site Argaam, reporting the company’s statements to the Saudi Exchange, has followed each new one. In December 2024 Jarir opened a showroom of 2,974 square metres in Riyadh’s Al Mansourah district, its 62nd in Saudi Arabia and 73rd in all; in January 2025 a 1,648-square-metre showroom in Red Sea Mall, Jeddah, the 63rd in the kingdom; and in December 2025 a smaller one of 509 square metres at the Clock Towers Mall in Makkah, which took the count to 64 in Saudi Arabia and 75 in total. Each, the company said, offers the full range of Jarir products. In April 2026 Argaam reported a new 2,310-square-metre showroom at Gate Mall in Kuwait, replacing the earlier one at Sama Mall.

Hypermarkets, bookshops and gadget halls.

Gulf hypermarket, grocery and electronics retailers are mostly seen from the car park. A hypermarket façade carries one short name in large letters, often in both Latin and Arabic script, and the same name is repeated on trolleys, shelf labels, carrier bags and the delivery app. Many chains run more than one size of store, from a large hypermarket in a mall to a smaller neighbourhood branch, and they often give each size its own version of the name rather than a new one.

The retail calendar shapes how these brands appear through the year. Ramadan and Eid, national-day celebrations and the start of the school term bring seasonal campaigns, special displays and printed or digital offer leaflets, and the companies publish these on their own websites, apps and social channels. Own-label ranges sit beside international brands on the shelves, with their own packaging under the retailer’s name or a separate label.

Not every chain in this group sells food. Bookshop chains combine stationery, school supplies and books with gadget aisles, and electronics retailers fill their stores with phones, laptops, televisions and home appliances. Their store fascias tend to follow the same pattern as the grocers: one name, read from a distance, often in two scripts.

Behind the shopfront, the corporate side is published separately. Listed retailers post annual reports, results and board details on their investor pages and through the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul), the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange or the Dubai Financial Market, while family-owned and group-owned chains describe their founders, owners and history on corporate “about us” pages. This guide uses those pages and dated press reports, and marks clearly what rests on a company’s own account.

A family company on the Saudi Exchange.

Jarir has been a public company for more than two decades while staying under family leadership. The company says it became a joint stock company in 2002 and was listed on the Saudi stock market, Tadawul, in 2003; English Wikipedia adds that about a third of its shares trade on the exchange. When Arab News reported on the company’s results in July 2022, it described the listed business as “Saudi Jarir Marketing Co., known as Jarir Bookstore.”

The family is still at the top. The Family Business Histories profile, using information updated in December 2023, names Mohammed Abdul Rahman Al-Agil as chairman and Abdul Karim Abdul Rahman Al-Agil as chief executive and vice-chairman, and says the third generation of the family sits on the board. It lists subsidiaries including United Company for Office Supplies and Stationeries, Jarir Trading Company, United Bookshop and Jarir Egypt Financial Leasing.

Jarir moved beyond Saudi Arabia in the early 2000s. According to the same profile, it began operating in Qatar in 2001, Abu Dhabi in 2002 and Kuwait in 2004, and by the end of 2023 it had 68 showrooms inside and outside the kingdom and 5,524 employees. By December 2025 the count stood at 75, 64 of them in Saudi Arabia, according to Argaam. English Wikipedia also lists branches in Bahrain.

The name has a namesake. A separate Jarir Bookstore in Garden Grove, California, profiled by OC Weekly in June 2017, is an independent shop named after its owner and has no link to the Riyadh company.

For a design guide, Jarir Bookstore shows how a bookshop name can stay on the fascia while the shelves behind it fill with laptops, phones and school supplies. Compare eXtra, another Saudi-listed retailer of electronics, and Panda. For this guide we use ink blue, ledger red and pencil yellow with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Jarir Bookstore’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.