Naim Dangoor (left) and Ahmed Safwat in Nice,
France in the 1940s.
Bringing the world-famous
Coca-Cola bottles to Iraq proved
quite the challenge for Naim Dangoor and Ahmed Safwat, the country’s first
Coca-Cola
bottlers. They overcame numerous challenges in importing bottling machinery and
completing construction on their building near Baghdad’s city center.
The pair
was finally able to get their operation off the ground in the summer of 1950.
The original contour bottles they filled were embossed with the
Coca-Cola
script in both Arabic and English and a cap that read: “Bottled in
Iraq”. Post-launch newspaper ads declared, “After months of waiting it
is with us now!” –
an indication that there was indeed quite the delay on the introduction.
Ironically, Naim Dangoor is – like the iconic Coke bottle – a centenarian, born 100 years ago in Baghdad. His son, David,
shared some scanned versions of his father’s detailed business plans from the
era that he came across while cleaning up. While we know that
Coke cost a nickel in the United States for over 70 years, the documents give a glimpse of how the initial retail price of Coke bottles in
Iraq was determined.
Naim Dangoor suggested the price of 14 Fils for
a bottle of Coke.
“He was trying to work out what was the optimum
price to sell
Coca-Cola,” David Dangoor explained to me as we reviewed the
charts and graphs his father sketched out sometime around 1950.
While the
Coca-Cola head office suggested 20 fils as the retail price, Naim Dangoor
concluded that selling at 14 fils would bring much more profit based on his
projected revenue forecast estimated prior to launch. Before the days of
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Dangoor created intricate charts and graphs to
convince The
Coca-Cola Company that his proposition was the right approach.
“You
can
see that he was very methodical about deciding what the price should
be,” his son David remarked while sharing hand-drawn analyses of pricing
versus costs
of goods, advertising, rent, property taxes, wages, coolers,
cases, bottles and ingredients.
Perhaps the elder Dangoor was so methodical because of his studies
in engineering at London University. In the 1930s, he made the five-day journey
from Baghdad to London on his own to enroll in the university at the age of 17.
After graduating, he returned to his native Iraq, where he would
eventually form Eastern Industries Ltd. with his business partner, Ahmed
Safwat, a fellow Iraqi and London University graduate.
Naim Dangoor celebrates his 100th
birthday amongst family and friends.
After a few successful real estate and manufacturing ventures,
they decided to apply for the Coke bottling franchise in Iraq.
Coca-Cola was relatively
new to the region, having been introduced in Egypt in 1946 and Lebanon in the
same year as Iraq – 1950. The bottom of each print ad in Iraqi newspapers
has a line that notes Eastern Industries Ltd. as authorized
bottlers of
Coca-Cola. Dangoor remained a
Coca-Cola bottler in Iraq beyond
the 1950s.
Naim Dangoor, who happens to be Jewish, and Ahmed Safwat, who
happened to be Muslim, met at a military training in Iraq, and “they immediately
hit it off and decided they had to go into business together,” David recalled.
Naim Dangoor, 2015
As we studied a late 1940s black and white photo of his
father and Mr. Safwat, David said, “In my heart,
Coca-Cola was that symbol
of common harmony. The campaign, ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ was
something in practice. It was not just an ad man’s story. Here you had two
people from different communities, hand in hand, and here they were working
together for something that is a universal symbol today.
Coca-Cola was to them
a symbol of a new opportunity. I hope that symbol will inspire new common
harmony.”
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