Milano by Danube adapts to major supply chain disruptions in Oman with strategic shift and face-to-face engagement

Containers that once took little more than a month to arrive are now taking well over two, and Milano by Danube says it has had to rethink everything from stockholding to routing cargo through Sohar in order to keep Omani customers supplied. That was the practical backdrop on Sunday, 6 September 2026, when the brand gathered more than 500 traders and business partners at Hilton Muscat Al Bandar and used the event to argue that supply chains are now a strategic commercial concern rathe...

The sharper detail came in a companion Times of Oman interview with Sahil Sajan, the company’s director, who said freight bills that used to run at $1,000 or $2,000 a container had first climbed to $5,000 or $6,000 and can now exceed $10,000 or $12,000. He said the group was also paying war-related charges at port clearance, but had chosen not to cut shipments because construction and development work in Oman was continuing. A DistantNews summary of the traders’ meet said the company’s response was intended not only to cope with freight volatility but to protect project timelines and preserve dealer relationships. (timesofoman.com)

For Milano, Oman is being presented as more than another Gulf sales territory. Anis Sajan, vice chairman of Danube Group, told Times of Oman that the brand may have been born in the UAE but “got its wings in Oman”, while Sahil Sajan described the Sultanate as a “second home” for the family and the business. He said his father began building the company’s presence there more than 20 years ago and that Milano now works with more than 300 to 400 dealers across the country, with visible outlets in places including Al Khuwair, Barka, Sur, Maabela and Wadi Kabir. In an earlier LinkedIn post, Sahil Sajan said traders had come from all over Oman to a dealers’ meet he called his first experience of the format as director. (timesofoman.com)

That helps explain why the company is trying to pair its marketing message with a logistics overhaul. Sahil Sajan told Times of Oman that deliveries which once took around 30 to 35 days now require a minimum of 65 to 70 days, forcing the business to plan inventory much further ahead. He said Milano’s main warehouse remains in the UAE, with another in Barka, while Sohar Port has become more important as shipping patterns shift. At the Muscat event, the company said its “Global Direct” strategy was meant to shorten the distance between manufacturer and market, while Anis Sajan said the lesson of the current turmoil was that “supply chains cannot be treated as a back-end function anymore”. (timesofoman.com)

The commercial pitch in Oman rests on a wider product mix than sanitaryware alone. In the interview, Sahil Sajan said demand had remained firm across sanitaryware, electrical products, hardware and furniture fittings despite the disruption, and the traders’ meet itself put water heaters, sanitary products, electrical items and hardware on display. He argued that the Omani market has become more competitive since Covid-19, making availability, service and delivery as important as price. He also said Milano offers a seven-year unconditional warranty, presenting that as part of the brand’s attempt to sell reassurance as well as product. Milano’s company profile says the range also stretches to tiles and water purifiers. (distantnews.com)

The Oman gathering also fits into a wider regional dealer-network push. On LinkedIn, Anis Sajan said he was proud to see “the next generation of Milano” carrying forward the annual dealers’ meet tradition, while a comment from Sahil Sajan on the same thread said the company had recently run six dealer networking events across Oman, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait over two months, attracting more than a thousand traders in total. Milano’s LinkedIn page describes the business as wholly owned by Danube Group, says it was established in Italy in 2006, and puts its footprint at 50 showrooms in the Middle East, more than 5,000 distributors worldwide and a presence in 47 countries. (linkedin.com)

That emphasis on face-to-face ties has become part of the family’s public explanation for Milano’s growth. In a recent LinkedIn post, Mohammed Azhar Sajan wrote that “Business is never just about products. It’s never just about numbers. It’s about people,” adding that traders are not simply a distribution network but the people who carry the brand’s reputation on the ground. The language is promotional, but it helps explain why Milano keeps investing in large trader gatherings even as freight costs rise and margins come under pressure. (linkedin.com)

Milano says the strategy has paid off. At the Muscat event, Sahil Sajan said the brand had continued importing while some competitors scaled back, allowing it to capture extra market share and deliver 20% growth during the disruption. In the Times of Oman interview, he set out a similar ambition for the next phase, saying the company wanted to enlarge its dealer base and win more project business as Oman’s development pipeline expands. If that target is met, the Muscat traders’ meet will have been about more than loyalty-building: it will have been a test of whether a relationship-heavy Gulf sales model can still work when shipping is slower, costlier and far less predictable than it was a few years ago. (timesofoman.com)

Source: Noah Wire Services