The SOM Story: Dana Al Khobaizi on building her Kuwait-born activewear and sleepwear

I felt like there was no brand that was catering to the petite, curvier, fuller-busted body type, with different proportions that most international brands weren’t designing around,” says Dana Al Khobaizi, recalling the moment nearly two decades into her career in retail when she realised the activewear she had spent years importing and selling was never actually built for the women buying it. Al Khobaizi had opened her first clothing store in Kuwait in February 2007, the first store of its kind to be owned by a Kuwaiti woman, and went on to bring in labels from New York, Los Angeles, Australia and Paris, including nearly every major activewear name during the category’s boom years around 2015 and 2016. “I had direct access to the customer because I was selling these brands,” she says. “I knew what worked, what didn’t work. The number one feedback was always fit issues.” That feedback became the founding idea behind SOM Active, and Al Khobaizi is careful not to reduce it to a single lightbulb moment. “It’s a culmination of experience, it’s a culmination of the gap in the market, it’s a culmination of a passion,” she explains. “There’s no point in starting something if it’s not goin...