Opening a shop in Dubai Mall, Mall of the Emirates or City Centre is not a product order. It is a programme with a landlord, a main contractor, a handover date and a penalty if you miss it. The acrylic in that programme is bigger than most people expect: the shopfront, the feature wall, the counter, the display system and the signs that get you through handover. This is what the full scope looks like and how it is priced and sequenced.
Projects · 2026-10-14 · 7 min read
A typical 80 to 150 square metre mall unit carries: illuminated shopfront letters and a logo panel; one or two backlit feature walls; a cash counter front and a branded till surround; wall-mounted and floor-standing display systems; shelf fronts, risers and product plinths; a fitting-room or consultation sign set; price and promotion holders; and the statutory signage the landlord checks at handover. Quoted as one package that is a six-figure line in many fit-outs. Quoted piece by piece, it arrives in ten deliveries and never matches.
White is not one white. If the shopfront letters, the feature wall and the counter come from three workshops, they will not match under the mall's lighting, and you will see it on opening day. One supplier means one sheet lot, one colour sign-off, one set of drawings, and one person responsible when the landlord rejects something. It also means one delivery to a loading bay with a booked slot, instead of three vans competing for it.
Every Dubai mall issues a tenant criteria manual: permitted sign depth, illumination type and colour temperature, how far the shopfront may project, which materials are banned at the lease line, and the approval drawings required before anything is made. Brand guidelines lose to that document every time. We cut from the manual first and the brand second, which is why our drawings pass. Send the manual with the enquiry and the first quote is the real one.
Count backwards from handover. Landlord signage approval is the long pole and sits outside everyone's control, so submit drawings the week the design freezes. Production of a full package is 3 to 4 weeks after approved drawings. Site measurement happens once the shopfront framing is up, not from the architect's plan. Install is overnight in almost every mall, often across two or three nights. A store that gives us six weeks from approval opens calmly. Three weeks is possible and costs more in overtime.
Four things, in order: illuminated area, because lit work carries LEDs, power and testing; sheet thickness and whether edges are polished; the number of unique parts, since fifty identical shelf fronts cost far less per piece than fifty different ones; and night access, because overnight install in a mall is a premium labour rate. If a package comes in over budget we will tell you which of those four to change. Usually it is the number of unique parts, and the store looks no different.
If you are opening five stores in the GCC, the first one is a prototype. We keep the CAD, the jigs and the sheet references. Store two onward reuses all three, so the unit cost falls and the lead time shortens, and every branch matches because it came from the same files. Tell us at the first store that more are coming. It changes how we build the first one.
Brand and retail teams opening their first UAE store, franchise partners rolling out a licence, main contractors who need the acrylic scope subcontracted, and fit-out consultants pricing a tender. We can hold the whole acrylic package or price a defined BOQ section. Either way you get drawings, a sample board and a programme, not just a rate per square metre.
Treat the acrylic as one package tied to the landlord manual and the handover date, not as a shopping list. One supplier, one sheet lot, drawings submitted at design freeze, and six weeks from approval. That is how a mall store opens on time and matches itself.
Questions about your own project? Talk to our Dubai workshop, we answer the same working day.
Yes. Shopfront letters, feature walls, counters, display systems, plinths and statutory signage, drawn, fabricated in our Al Quoz workshop and installed overnight to the mall's access hours.
Three to four weeks of production after the landlord approves the drawings, plus two to three nights of install. Landlord approval is the unpredictable part, so submit drawings as soon as the design freezes.
Both. We hold the acrylic package as a subcontractor to the main contractor, or deal directly with the brand or franchise partner. We will price a defined BOQ section either way.
Yes. We keep the CAD, the jigs and the sheet references from store one, so later branches reuse all of it. They also match, because they come from the same files.
Pick your products, add a note, and our team replies the same working day.