Marsh 'N' Mallow

Claire Kanj, founder – Marsh 'N' Mallow

Anyone who starts a small business is shooting for the moon, but Claire Kanj took this adage more literally than most when developing her dessert concept. A lifelong fan of sweets, with a background in graphic design and event management, she envisioned “something unique that could be a trend”. Her first bright idea was to splice familiar flavours of the Gulf – dates, rose, cardamom – into a more unusual confection: marshmallow.

“People think it only comes in bags, or that it’s only for kids,” she says. Sure enough, existing brands produce pink and white cubes “that only taste sweet”. Claire’s re-imagined marshmallows, however, are sweetened with organic agave syrup, as a result most of her products are “free of gluten, dairy and egg” apart from flavours such as chocolate and Lotus Biscoff.

Working hard for a year to develop flavours and perfect the essential fluffy texture, she also realised that marshmallows are practically weightless. “You can buy a boxful and it feels empty,” says Claire. “So the idea of zero gravity came into my mind.” This in turn brought an intergalactic dimension to her concept, which quickly boosted Marsh ‘N’ Mallow into the stratosphere. Within three months of launch she was catering corporate events for Harvey Nichols and Coach with products such as chocolate and lotus Space Rocket Slabs, vanilla and strawberry Planet Tarts and Cosmic Marshmallow Ice Cream. Now the full line is beaming down to Spinneys through our incubator programme. “I love the support we’ve been getting, the professionalism and encouragement for UAE-based startups.”

@marshnmallowuniverse

Curate Home

Neeti Tandon Kashyap, founder – Curate Home

Some small businesses grow out of hobbies, others from a wealth of professional experience. Neeti Tandon Kashyap already had a degree in manufacturing and merchandising, and a previous career working with fashion brands and design houses across Europe and the US, when she founded Curate Home in 2020. The company was a “Covid baby”, as she calls it, conceived to supply Dubai with fresh decor at a grim time for artisans and householders.

But the core idea of sourcing homeware from her country of birth, India, can be traced back to a childhood love of the handmade, inherited from her mother. Delhi in the 1980s was “pre-mass-market”, she says. “You didn’t have access to branded retail products, so you went to a tailor or someone in the neighbourhood to make things for you.”

Her mother collected heritage textiles from every state in India, each one having techniques different from the others. Now Neeti’s own enterprise sources from up to 300 craftspeople and pays them directly (i.e., trades fairly) for tableware, linens, teapots, fragrances…

“There’s a great interest now in the artisanal and handmade. Sustainable too, though that’s often wrongly used as a greenwashing term. All our products are natural, organic, or biodegradable, or made with techniques passed down over generations, so it’s sustaining an ancient craft in a village.” Already a success story with high-end hotel clients and six UAE retail points, Curate Home will soon sell some of its more gift-oriented items through the Spinneys incubator programme.

@shopcuratehome

Coppertop Candles & Aromas Dubai

Ceri Jewell, founder – Coppertop Candles & Aromas Dubai

Some years ago, when she was a tired working mother in the UK, Ceri Jewell experienced a minor epiphany while sniffing a candle in a concept store. “It was a bit expensive for what I would usually buy,” says Ceri, “but it smelt amazing.”

“That candle kind of saved me, that moment of ‘me time’ it gave me at the end of the day.” She has since dedicated herself to duplicating that sense of well-being. Learning the basics of aromatherapy, she started “playing” with essential oils and parlayed that new knowledge into a small business: making natural, sustainable soya wax candles.

Her company Coppertop Candles – a reference to her distinctive red hair – moved with her to Dubai during the pandemic. “I saw a real gap in the market here for a high-quality handmade candle.” Where standard high-street candles may be cheaper than what she’s producing at her home workshop, they’re also usually made with paraffin wax to deliver a “fragrance load” of about 2 per cent. Coppertop candles deliver a much slower-burning aromatic hit of 10 per cent from certified non-toxic, pure and blended essential oils.

Popular variations include Lemongrass, Pepper & Geranium, with each placed in a matching diffuser, and carrying its own “wellness benefit”, says Ceri. “De-stress, detox, balance …”

After making the rounds of Dubai’s markets, she’s delighted to be taking the next step to Spinneys shelves through our incubator programme. “It’s a fantastic initiative because you’re not just investing in small businesses but in the community, and in growing local talent.”

@coppertop_candles_dubai

Gypsy Rose Holistic

Natalie Rose, founder – Gypsy Rose Holistic

For Natalie Rose, the Spinneys Local Business Incubator Programme is as much a platform for sharing her passion as for growing her business. The enterprise began with a personal search for natural alternatives to mainstream health remedies. “I stumbled across essential oils and did a deep dive into researching them for myself,” says Natalie.

Finding different blends effective for a range of ailments, she started mixing them for friends, who in turn encouraged her to bring those products to marketing events. Named after a term of affection from her mother, Gypsy Rose Holistic is “a hobby that became a side-business”, she says. Natalie continues to work as a behavioural therapist, mostly with children, while spending spare hours formulating natural, non-toxic oil blends. Each bottled mist or roller targets a specific health issue. “Headache”, for example, draws on oils such as rosemary and eucalyptus to “relieve tension and help with blood flow”. Her “Sleep” blend, meanwhile, uses chamomile and lavender to help regulate the nervous system.

“The effects of these oils aren’t just physiological, they can be psychological and emotional, too.” With this in mind, she designed a Zodiac range to enhance strengths and bolster weaknesses of each star sign. A Libra, say, might feel their creativity boosted by geranium and basil, while vetiver and black pepper counterbalance their occasional lack of confidence.

“I’m passionate about holistic wellness. I believe our bodies can heal themselves, with the right tools. Scaling up lets me share that with more people, and Spinneys is helping me do that.”

@gypsyroseholistic

Coven

L–R: Co-founder Alyazi AlKhattal AlMuhairi, CEO Lee Slimming and co-founder Maha AlMansoori – Coven

Founder Alyazi AlKhattal AlMuhairi could not put it more plainly: “Coven is a female-owned, eco-friendly sanitary product company.”

The first step in the process was getting the quality right, “We wanted to create a product that would be accepted by all women,” explains Alyazi. This meant using materials that wouldn’t cause allergies, but at the same time offered comfort and high absorbency. The sustainability of the product was equally important to the team behind Coven. They zeroed in on bamboo fibres because “bamboo is a natually regenerative tree” and its fibres are more suitable for the UAE’s humid climate.

The core line of the business has its own simple and fully integrated logic, making and selling safe, hygienic and sustainable sanitary day pads, as well as acrylic dispensers for easy access and widespread distribution. Its range also extends to high-tech CVN-1130 vending machines with touchpads. “The environment, comfort and safety,” says Alyazi, “are all key to the brand.” But there’s a bigger mission behind Coven, too: “Free access”. Which is to say, this business is bound up in what she calls an “Emirati social movement” with the goal of normalising menstruation as a healthy, positive fact of life, ensuring that sanitary products are readily available “in every space women are present”, and advocating for these items to be free where possible.

Joining the Spinneys family, says Alyazi, is an “awesome opportunity” to promote both the brand and its broader message.

@covenwellness

Tabchilli

Maher El Tabchy, founder – Tabchilli

In his native Lebanon, it is common enough to give fermented goods as gifts when visiting friends and family. Even so, when Maher El Tabchy made a startup business of fermentation in the UAE, his mother advised him to ‘focus on something else’. “I just saw a gap in the market,” says Maher. “You have lots of good products here, but not a lot of probiotics.”

A lifelong fan of hot, sour flavours, Maher had plenty of experience in retail but “zero” in culinary arts when he taught himself the various techniques (dry salting, brining and combinations of both). And for all the exact science of the biotic processes at work, he says, “bringing out the flavours is more a matter of trial and error.” “Learning how to gauge the time and the temperature, that’s how you get better.”

Now that he’s cracked those secrets and shares them with others at workshops in a store that also serves as a kind of fermentation hub, colleagues and students are more inclined to call him “chef”.

Tabchilli is not quite a solo operation, but the ever-bigger batches that he outsources are all based on his own painstakingly tried and trusted recipes.

Maher’s kimchi, sauerkraut, wild brine and signature fermented chilli paste, which gives his company its name, will soon be available at Spinneys through our incubator programme. The latter remains his personal favourite, developed a decade ago before he even arrived in Dubai. “It’s my daily spread,” he says.

@tabchilli