US-headquartered Reebok International, a leading sports and fitness gear manufacturer, will meet its customers at stores in the UAE and Qatar as part of its newly launched fitness roadshow.

Zena Habi, Reebok’s fitness expert, will meet customers and answer their personal queries on fitness on the ‘As the Reebok fitness expert’ show. The first leg of the road show started today (April 24) at the newly-opened Reebok store in Mirdif City Centre in Dubai.

“The Middle East poses an interesting challenge to my peers in the product development team,” said Mark Greiner, sales and marketing manager, RBK Middle East - the sole distributor for Reebok in the GCC.

“The varied culture, lifestyle and how they use the product is very different from the West. We believe that investing time in understanding and meeting the varied customer requirements is inevitable and in line with this, we are focussing on aligning our customer outreach campaigns accordingly,” he added.

“With our ‘Ask the Reebok Fitness Expert’ road show, we aim to help them understand their fitness needs and products, while collecting insights that will help design and develop better products.”

Reebok tied up with Zena in July 2009 and the association was in line with the brand’s increased focus in the women’s fitness space.

The road show is part of Reebok’s initiative in the region to enable direct engagement with the consumer, aimed at understanding and addressing their fitness needs.

Zena Habi said: “I have been a fitness instructor/consultant for 11 years now and have met young, old, Arab, non Arab fitness enthusiasts. Every conversation is different and poses a unique challenge.”

“Among the most common question I encounter is: What shoe should I wear or is there a brand that develops fitness gear for Arabs? While no brands do that, or can do that, the large variety and needs are just impossible to collate in a single collection,” she added.

“However, in my experience with Reebok, I have found products across collections that go well with the conservative cultures. During this road show, I hope to be able to collect saleable insights that could lead to improvising products for the needs of Arabs,” Habi concluded. – TradeArabia News Service