Namshi Brand Guidelines: A 2011 Dubai Fashion Site, Emaar Malls and a 2023 Move to Noon

A Dubai fashion site from 2011.

Namshi is an online fashion retailer based in Dubai. MENAbytes, reporting in February 2019, wrote that it was founded in 2011 as a Rocket Internet company, part of the network of online ventures backed by the Berlin start-up builder. By 2017 its stake from that side was held through Global Fashion Group, which The National described in May 2017 as Rocket Internet’s fashion business.

Accounts of who founded Namshi differ in length. The National named three co-founders in 2017: Hosam Arab, Faraz Khalid and Hisham Zarka. MENAbytes, in March 2019, gave a longer list of five, adding Muhammed Mekki and Louis Lebbos, and said that the last two left a little over a year after the start to found AstroLabs, a co-working business. Both lists include Arab, Khalid and Zarka.

What Namshi sold was clear from the start: clothing, shoes and accessories, ordered online and delivered to the door. In May 2017, The National reported that Namshi offered more than 50,000 fashion products and accessories across the Gulf region, with a same-day delivery service in the UAE. By early 2019 MENAbytes described its core markets as the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The name is written Namshi, with a capital N and no suffix in running text, though press reports in the 2010s often wrote it as Namshi.com, after its web address. By 2025, Campaign Middle East was describing a Namshi website and a Namshi app side by side, along with customer emails and push notifications.

Emaar Malls, then Noon.

The ownership story runs through Dubai’s biggest property and retail names. On 24 May 2017, Gulf News and The National reported that Emaar Malls, the shopping-centre and retail business majority-owned by Emaar Properties, would buy a 51 per cent stake in Namshi in an all-cash deal. The National wrote that the stake came from Global Fashion Group, which kept the other 49 per cent. The deal came weeks after Amazon’s purchase of Souq.com, another Dubai online retailer, and Gulf News placed it in a run of e-commerce deals linked to Emaar’s chairman, Mohamed Alabbar.

One founder moved on soon after. In July 2017, The National reported that Faraz Khalid, described as the co-founder and former managing director of Namshi, had been appointed chief executive of Noon, the e-commerce venture founded by Alabbar.

On 25 February 2019, MENAbytes reported that Emaar Malls had bought the remaining 49 per cent, taking full ownership. Emaar Malls called the move part of its digital strategy, alongside the physical malls it runs. In March 2019 MENAbytes reported that Hosam Arab, co-founder and chief executive, had stepped down less than two weeks after the full sale.

The next change brought Namshi under the same roof as Noon. The National reported on 25 August 2022 that Emaar Properties and Noon had signed a definitive agreement for the sale of Emaar Malls’ entire share capital in Namshi to Noon, with Emaar describing Namshi as a non-core asset. Emaar shareholders approved the sale in September 2022. On 13 February 2023, The National reported that Noon had completed the acquisition, effective immediately. The seller was Emaar Malls Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Emaar Properties.

Under Noon, Namshi kept its own name and storefront. The National wrote in February 2023 that Namshi would remain a separate entity, drawing on Noon’s logistics, fulfilment network, delivery fleet and in-house e-commerce teams when needed. The same report described Hisham Zarka as chief technology officer of the Noon Group and a co-founder of Namshi, so two of the founding names had ended up at the buyer.

How Gulf fashion, home and online retailers present themselves.

Gulf fashion, home and online retailers present themselves first through the places where people shop. In the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and their neighbours, many chains trade from large mall units, and the store fascia, a name in lit letters above a wide entrance, is often the first piece of branding a shopper sees. Groups that run several chains often place them side by side in the same mall, or gather them under one umbrella name, so that a single visit can cover clothing, shoes, children’s goods and homeware.

Value-fashion and home chains speak through campaigns timed to the retail calendar: seasonal collections, catalogues and named sale events. Their identity work tends to show up in store refits as much as in advertising. A new logo usually arrives with a redesigned flagship, new signage and new in-store graphics, and then spreads to the rest of the estate store by store, sometimes over months or years.

Online retailers carry the same task onto app screens, product pages and delivery packaging. There the brand becomes a set of repeated elements: a wordmark, a colour, a tone of voice in notifications, and the boxes and bags that arrive at the door. Store groups in the region also run their own apps and click-and-collect services, so the line between the shop and the screen is less sharp than it once was.

Store names are usually plain and descriptive, and the companies publish them in English as they appear above the door. Corporate pages and dated press coverage give the facts behind those names: who founded each business and when, which family or group owns it, and whether its shares are listed on an exchange such as Tadawul, ADX or DFM. These guides draw on those dated sources and describe colour and type only as our own interpretation, with no logo or fascia reproduced.

A fashion storefront on screens and in two languages.

Namshi’s public face lives on screens: the website, the app, customer emails and social channels. A campaign covered by Campaign Middle East in September 2025 shows how the company works in that space. Called Style Academy, it was made with Tommy Jeans for the back-to-school season and set in a local school in the UAE. Campaign Middle East reported that the content was made in both Arabic and English, that the cast were UAE residents rather than professional models, and that the campaign ran across Namshi’s own channels with a shoppable landing page in the app and on the website.

For a designer, that bilingual habit is the clearest constant in the record. A storefront working in Arabic and English has to set Latin and Arabic type side by side and handle layouts that read from left to right and from right to left. The Style Academy campaign also leaned on Tommy Jeans, a partner label, and on regional influencers, so the Namshi name appeared next to another brand’s look rather than on its own.

The ownership history also shapes how the name appears. Since 2023 Namshi has sat inside the Noon group while keeping its own name, so it shows up as a separate fashion brand rather than as a section of a general marketplace. Its founders’ paths are part of that story: Faraz Khalid left to lead Noon in 2017, and Hisham Zarka was Noon Group’s chief technology officer by 2023, according to The National.

For a design guide, Namshi shows how an online fashion retailer can stay distinct inside a larger group by keeping its own name, storefront and bilingual voice. Compare the Noon brand guidelines for the group that bought it, and the 6thStreet brand guidelines for another Dubai online fashion store. For this guide we use graphite, sand white and terracotta with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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