Bought on the way home

I grew up in Jeddah, and the weeks after the pilgrimage season have their own commerce.

The travellers are going home. They come through the older markets and the shops along the road to the airport, and they buy for a whole street of people: dates by the kilo, small bottles of perfume, prayer beads by the dozen, a light gold piece for a mother, water to hand out to the neighbours. One person, thirty purchases, most of them at a unit price that would embarrass a regional pricing template.

No plan I have read has a line for them. They are in the country for days. They will not be back for a year. They cannot be retargeted, they will never open an email, and a loyalty scheme is meaningless to somebody who is about to fly. Every model of a valuable customer says to ignore them.

Then watch what they carry. Twenty households in a street none of these brands can afford to advertise in are about to be handed the product by the one person in the neighbourhood whose word on it counts, at the exact moment everybody is listening.

They are not buying gifts. They are buying evidence. The journey has to be visible in a living room, in front of people who did not go, and it gets judged in the ten minutes when the bag comes open.

So what sells is whatever tells the story when it is unpacked. Small enough to give one each, sturdy enough to survive a suitcase, obvious about where it came from at a glance, and priced so that one person can buy forty without an argument at the counter.