Stories
Jacob Alexander about growth and international business
More than 25 years of growth, partnership, international business.
For almost three decades, Jacob Alexander has been part of the journey of IKEA Kuwait and the Al Homaizi Group. During those years, he also witnessed the growth of K3 Global Accounts from a small, close team into an international retail technology partner supporting IKEA retailers around the world.
What started in 1999 with point-of-sale systems slowly grew into a long-term partnership. First Kuwait, then Jordan and Morocco, Jacob played an active role in implementing systems, supporting business growth and connecting markets. Jacob still clearly remembers the early days of the collaboration.
“Initially, we started with the point of sale systems. Later we moved into the back office side as well. In those days, people from K3 came here and did the programming while I was sitting next to them. It really felt like a very small family.”
At the time, the first implementations were still relatively small. The original IKEA store in Kuwait was not that big. Later, the business moved into the much larger store in The Avenues, growing to almost 28,000 square meters.
Jacob has been working with the Al Homaizi Group since March 1997. Over the years, Jacob experienced nearly every major technological transition within retail IT.
One moment still stands out very clearly: the year 2000 challenge.
“That was probably the biggest nightmare at the time. Everybody thought systems would stop because of the year 2000. I even had to stay in the store during New Year’s Eve instead of celebrating with my family in India.” Fortunately, the systems kept running.
But the years after brought many other major important changes, from Oracle, SQL, Unix to Windows and from physical servers to virtual environments. from many localizations to a highly connected international platform.
Jacob also reflects warmly on the Retail IT Conferences organised throughout the years. For him, the real value was not only in the presentations or meetings themselves, but especially in the personal interactions. “When everyone met physically, it made a huge difference. Not only in the meeting rooms, but also during the private talks and informal conversations. That’s where you learned what others were doing differently.”
He believes those moments of sharing knowledge and experiences helped retailers learn from each other. “Sometimes it was almost like give and take. We shared experiences, ideas and solutions.”
Local innovation for local markets
One of the interesting aspects of the Middle Eastern IKEA markets is that customer behaviour often differs from Europe. Jacob explains that the teams developed unique local solutions together with K3 Global Accounts. One example is the reservation system they built for customers ordering products that were still in transit. “We are one of the only IKEA markets doing reservations in this way"
Another important decision was standardising the technical setup across Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco.Jacob explains that the three markets work with one shared object base. This means Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco do not each need a separate technical structure. For K3 Global Accounts and Al Homaizo this makes support, updates and upgrades much more efficient.
In practice, an update or hotfix only needs to be implemented once. Kuwait acts as the first market for testing and validation. Once the team has tested the update there, the same objects can be rolled out to Jordan and Morocco.
Strong partnerships through ups and downs
After 25 years, Jacob sees the partnership with K3 Global Accounts as strong and valuable.Of course, not every period was easy.
“There were ups and downs over the years. But that is normal in long partnerships. What mattered is that we kept working together.”
He also remembers several former colleagues warmly, including Mundi Gaukur, Joon, Rob, Peter and ofcourse Bjarni, who unfortunately passed away, but also Nasir, Pat, Vinod etc.
“Even after some people left the company, the relationships stayed good. That says a lot.”
The current situation in the Middle East also affected daily business operations.
"Logistics became challenging because goods were not always arriving on time.”
Still, the stores remained operational, and the business was going up.
“There were sometimes disruptions on the internet side, but technology remained essential to keep everything running and no major technical issues occured”
Like many IT leaders, Jacob sees enormous potential in AI and data.
But he also believes people will continue to play a critical role.
“AI will definitely become more important. But people still need to understand what they are asking for. The prompts need to be correct and specific.”
For Jacob, data quality is one of the most important foundations.
“Data is like blood for the business. If you have good data, you get good results.”
He believes companies must continue investing in clean and reliable data before AI can truly deliver value. At the same time, he does not believe AI will replace people entirely.
“Somebody still needs to understand the results, take decisions and keep improving the process.”
Looking ahead
When asked about the future of K3 Global Accounts, Jacob looks ahead positively.
He sees changes happening within the organisation and believes faster decision-making and clearer governance will help the company move forward.
“Now we know who is leading the company and decisions can move faster. That helps the process.” No more hierarchy, but a company that understands us as retailers the best, after so many years. And perhaps that is exactly what 25 years of K3 Global Accounts is really about."
For almost three decades, Jacob Alexander has been part of the journey of IKEA Kuwait and the Al Homaizi Group. During those years, he also witnessed the growth of K3 Global Accounts from a small, close team into an international retail technology partner supporting IKEA retailers around the world.
What started in 1999 with point-of-sale systems slowly grew into a long-term partnership. First Kuwait, then Jordan and Morocco, Jacob played an active role in implementing systems, supporting business growth and connecting markets. Jacob still clearly remembers the early days of the collaboration.
“Initially, we started with the point of sale systems. Later we moved into the back office side as well. In those days, people from K3 came here and did the programming while I was sitting next to them. It really felt like a very small family.”
At the time, the first implementations were still relatively small. The original IKEA store in Kuwait was not that big. Later, the business moved into the much larger store in The Avenues, growing to almost 28,000 square meters.
Jacob has been working with the Al Homaizi Group since March 1997. Over the years, Jacob experienced nearly every major technological transition within retail IT.
One moment still stands out very clearly: the year 2000 challenge.
“That was probably the biggest nightmare at the time. Everybody thought systems would stop because of the year 2000. I even had to stay in the store during New Year’s Eve instead of celebrating with my family in India.” Fortunately, the systems kept running.
But the years after brought many other major important changes, from Oracle, SQL, Unix to Windows and from physical servers to virtual environments. from many localizations to a highly connected international platform.
Jacob also reflects warmly on the Retail IT Conferences organised throughout the years. For him, the real value was not only in the presentations or meetings themselves, but especially in the personal interactions. “When everyone met physically, it made a huge difference. Not only in the meeting rooms, but also during the private talks and informal conversations. That’s where you learned what others were doing differently.”
He believes those moments of sharing knowledge and experiences helped retailers learn from each other. “Sometimes it was almost like give and take. We shared experiences, ideas and solutions.”
Local innovation for local markets
One of the interesting aspects of the Middle Eastern IKEA markets is that customer behaviour often differs from Europe. Jacob explains that the teams developed unique local solutions together with K3 Global Accounts. One example is the reservation system they built for customers ordering products that were still in transit. “We are one of the only IKEA markets doing reservations in this way"
Another important decision was standardising the technical setup across Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco.Jacob explains that the three markets work with one shared object base. This means Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco do not each need a separate technical structure. For K3 Global Accounts and Al Homaizo this makes support, updates and upgrades much more efficient.
In practice, an update or hotfix only needs to be implemented once. Kuwait acts as the first market for testing and validation. Once the team has tested the update there, the same objects can be rolled out to Jordan and Morocco.
Strong partnerships through ups and downs
After 25 years, Jacob sees the partnership with K3 Global Accounts as strong and valuable.Of course, not every period was easy.
“There were ups and downs over the years. But that is normal in long partnerships. What mattered is that we kept working together.”
He also remembers several former colleagues warmly, including Mundi Gaukur, Joon, Rob, Peter and ofcourse Bjarni, who unfortunately passed away, but also Nasir, Pat, Vinod etc.
“Even after some people left the company, the relationships stayed good. That says a lot.”
The current situation in the Middle East also affected daily business operations.
"Logistics became challenging because goods were not always arriving on time.”
Still, the stores remained operational, and the business was going up.
“There were sometimes disruptions on the internet side, but technology remained essential to keep everything running and no major technical issues occured”
Like many IT leaders, Jacob sees enormous potential in AI and data.
But he also believes people will continue to play a critical role.
“AI will definitely become more important. But people still need to understand what they are asking for. The prompts need to be correct and specific.”
For Jacob, data quality is one of the most important foundations.
“Data is like blood for the business. If you have good data, you get good results.”
He believes companies must continue investing in clean and reliable data before AI can truly deliver value. At the same time, he does not believe AI will replace people entirely.
“Somebody still needs to understand the results, take decisions and keep improving the process.”
Looking ahead
When asked about the future of K3 Global Accounts, Jacob looks ahead positively.
He sees changes happening within the organisation and believes faster decision-making and clearer governance will help the company move forward.
“Now we know who is leading the company and decisions can move faster. That helps the process.” No more hierarchy, but a company that understands us as retailers the best, after so many years. And perhaps that is exactly what 25 years of K3 Global Accounts is really about."