UAE. Welcome to The Moodie Davitt Podcast. Today’s episode features Patrick Doyle, Founder and Chief Executive at International Diplomatic Supplies (IDS), based in Dubai.
IDS is the global leader in the supply of duty free liquor, groceries, and household goods to the international diplomatic community.
This compelling interview plots the IDS journey from start-up in the spare bedroom of Patrick Doyle’s South London home through to the COVID-19 crisis, a time in which the company remains that 2020 travel retail rarity, a growing business. Doyle also outlines his interest in acquiring further diplomatic operations, both in Europe and elsewhere.
That story, and indeed Patrick Doyle’s, is an impressive entrepreneurial business tale. But what really makes this interview so fascinating and inspirational is that he is also a passionate philanthropist, supporting several fine children’s charities (scroll down for details) around the world.
“It’s not all about making money for me,” Doyle says. “I want to be successful and success means you make money, but I don’t need to accumulate wealth, I want to do something with it.” And he’s done exactly that time and again as he told Martin Moodie during a zoom call from Dubai earlier this month.
“There’s nothing corporate about me,” he says. “When you leave school at 16 with four O levels and certainly not an A among them, you certainly don’t have ideas above yourself. But I work hard and I’m quite good at this thing that I do.” He certainly is. Welcome to The Moodie Davitt Podcast.
[Click on the icon to listen to the Patrick Doyle Podcast]
| A growing global force International Diplomatic Supplies (IDS) was started in 1997, originally supplying embassies in London, as well as exports from the English capital to British embassies around the world. The business grew steadily and in 2010 IDS Dubai was created from the merger with Intagulf in the port hub of Jebel Ali in Dubai. This gave IDS operations in both the UK to focus on the London market, as well as exports to Europe, North and West Africa; and operations in Dubai to focus on East Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Sub-Continent and Asia. The London operation also allows IDS to offer a wider range of products, including perfumes, cosmetics, electronics and groceries, to complement the beers, wines and spirits portfolio from both London and Dubai. IDS has purpose-built temperature-controlled warehouses and offices in both locations and moved into a new purpose-built expanded premises in Dubai last year. |
Profiling some of International Diplomatic Supplies’ key CSR programmes
| Gentle Hands is a Christian social welfare agency in Metropolitan Manila. With a ‘There is hope in love’ tagline, the charity aims to offer a centre for the rescue and healing of children in crisis. Its mission is to provide family-style care and hope for children who have experienced trauma; its goal to bring holistic intervention to every child in its care. The Gentle Hands 24-hour Residential Care Facility provides medical, nutritional, home life, educational, recreational, adoption counselling and Christian living programmes to orphaned, neglected and abandoned children in the Philippines. |
| Shamida Ethiopia aims to empower the country’s most vulnerable women and children. The charity highlights Ethiopia’s social problems which have been increasing at an alarming rate due to poverty, HIV, diseases, drought and conflict. The number of orphans and vulnerable children is increasing rapidly.  Shamida’s mission is to contribute towards the holistic development and self-sufficiency of women and children in difficult destitute circumstances. Its work includes providing housing for orphans and the reunification of street children with their families or guardians. |
