Sharjah boat maker Al Marakeb's business is smooth sailing

It started as a college dare. When Basel Shuhaiber was studying architecture at the University of Sharjah, his classmates bet him that he couldn't build the boat he said he could in his backyard.

A stubborn character, he set out to prove them wrong.

Nour Al Sayyed, also studying architecture, would visit after class to check on Mr Shuhaiber's progress.

The project took a year and by their own admission, the boat - "ugly and heavy" - was not the most beautiful craft ever to grace the seas. But Mr Shuhaiber proved his point and, in 2007, decided to go into business by founding Al Marakeb, a boat maker.

In 2008, when Ms Sayyed returned to the UAE after a year in Italy studying industrial design, Mr Shuhaiber asked her if she was interested in joining as head of design and production.

"I wanted to do something different," she says. "I didn't want to sit in an architectural firm and just draft for years until I could be a qualified architect. It was spontaneous, risky [but] I was fortunate enough to have the luxury of doing that [and] I was really interested in what [Basel] was doing because I had seen it all start up."

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/the-life/sharjah-boat-maker-al-marakebs-business-is-smooth-sailing#ixzz2LEdnJLyJ