Shams El-Mutwalli Dubai

Emirati entrepreneur Nasser Sultan Lootah launched an online store selling manga and merchandise in August last year amid the pandemic to ensure avid readers could get their hands on the manga they know and love with ease.

Due to the pandemic “many people couldn’t go out and get manga and other anime merchandise” so “I saw the gap in the market and decided to begin selling them myself. At the moment, I sell many different types of manga,” the founder of Manga Store said.

Customers can place orders for a variety of manga like One Piece, Naruto, Demon Slayer, and various other titles via the Instagram page. The store also offers anime inspired figurines, phone cases, as well as hoodies designed by Lootah.

Manga Store packages the products in brown wrapping paper, with the white and red logo plastered on it along with personalized quotes on each shipment to differentiate the brand and make it “desirable” to customers, gaining traction as a new business.

Lootah acknowledges how “currently the manga scene in the UAE has been getting more and more popular over the past couple years especially because of apps such as TikTok where people find new interests and hobbies. Many people got interested into anime and manga through TikTok and other forms of social media. However, at the moment there aren’t many libraries and stores that sell manga and for some people in the UAE it is quite hard to get manga for affordable prices,” he told Arab News Japan.

This gap in the market has fuelled Lootah’s aspiration to open a manga store in Dubai and grow his business.

Lootah developed an interest in anime at a young age, and gradually began reading manga, primarily influenced by exposure to anime on TV, particularly Spacetoon. 

“They would always play anime dubbed in Arabic at the time and as I got older some of my cousins would always recommend me different shows to watch and different manga to read,” he said.

Lootah also emphasized his fascination with the richness of Japanese culture and how similar it is to his own culture.