Al Majed for Oud

Al Majed for Oud began in 1956, when Sheikh Ali bin Othman Al Majed started a wholesale trade in oud and saffron; the company took formal commercial registration in Riyadh in 1982 and has been headquartered there since. From that wholesale start, it has grown into one of the larger oud-focused retail groups in the Gulf: as of the end of 2023 the company operated 286 stores and more than 650 products across 132 brands, spanning Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar.

The range runs from raw oud wood and oil through oriental and French-style perfumes to home, body, and hair-care lines built around the same fragrance materials — a spread that reflects the company's roots as a raw-material trader as much as a perfume retailer. Its scale is unusual even among established Gulf oud houses: nearly seventy years after Sheikh Ali bin Othman Al Majed's original wholesale trade, the company listed 30 percent of its shares on the Saudi exchange in a Riyadh IPO, a step few oud houses of comparable age have taken.

From that single Riyadh headquarters, Al Majed for Oud now supplies its own retail network across six Gulf countries, still trading on the oud and saffron wholesale expertise the company was built on.