Chabros International Group: A World Of Wood
As many other companies Chabros International Group faced a financial crisis after the global economic crisis in 2009. The decision from Chami of investing $ 11 million in his Serbian sawmill was taking right before the beginning of the crisis and may have been crucial.
Why did Chabros operate internationally?
In order to understand Chami’s decision we have to take into account which reasons he argued for expanding his business outside of Lebanon. First of all, Lebanon was a very unstable country and when Chabros received by occasion the first orders from Lebanese customers in Dubai he did not think twice to expand into this country. In 1998 they opened their first branch outside of Lebanon, which led automatically to a share of risk in their operations. From this point on Chabros did not depend anymore on one single market. Another important reason for the expansion was that they could significantly increase their sales numbers.
Change in expansion motivations
Through this first very positive experience Chami was convinced about his internationalisation plans and his next country on the list was Saudi Arabia. The market entry was not as easy and successful as the one in Dubai. This was partially due to a different strategy with Italian partners as a joint venture which caused problems through cultural differences (Both Italian partners left the market between the first and second year). Shortly after this Chabros faced supply problems due to a much higher demand than they could deliver on time. Therefore Chabros changed for the first time their expansion motivations because they opened an office in Serbia not in order to expand their business in this country. They expanded because they needed to ensure a certain production capacity. First Chabros subsidized its supplier but in 2007 they acquired the Serbian supplier