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Zabadne & Sons

Where the family operates.

Zabadne & Sons is the operating side of the family’s work: manufacturing and distribution, property development and management, and joint ventures taken on directly.

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The platform

Owned and run by the family.

The name over the door in Nigeria in the 1970s is the name on the contract today. The people who own these businesses are the people accountable for them.

Capabilities

Four things we do.

Each one is something the family has run directly.

01

Manufacturing and distribution

The family ran a Nigerian factory that at its height employed more than eight hundred people, alongside distribution and brand representation in Nigeria for Whirlpool, Maytag, Akai, and Pioneer. That experience — production lines, supply chains, import logistics, and managing staff at scale — is what we bring to the operating businesses we own today.

  • Production and assembly operations
  • Import logistics and distribution
  • Brand representation and agency agreements
  • Workforce management at scale

02

Property development

Residential and commercial development in Lagos, undertaken as an owner rather than a developer building to sell. What we build stays on our own balance sheet, which sets a higher specification than a scheme built for exit.

  • Site acquisition and assembly
  • Residential and commercial schemes
  • Refurbishment and repositioning
  • Built to a standard we intend to keep

03

Property management

Direct, hands-on management of the family’s own portfolio — tenanting, maintenance, collections, and the day-to-day administration that determines how a building performs.

  • Tenanting and lease administration
  • Planned and reactive maintenance
  • Collections and reporting
  • Capital-expenditure planning

04

Partnerships

Joint ventures with operators and families who want a shareholder rather than a counterparty. We invest where the other side wants an owner involved in the business, not a lender or a buyer.

  • Joint ventures and co-investment
  • Cross-border trade and representation
  • Family-to-family succession situations
  • Long-term shareholder capital

Businesses

Where the name has been, and where it is now.

AJ Zabadne speaking at a lectern beside a head table at an Elite Sterling Security event

Current · United States

Elite Sterling Security

Founded by AJ Zabadne in 2013 and led by him since, Elite Sterling Security supplies ballistic-resistant apparel and tactical equipment to police forces, military customers, and private clients. It applies the family’s manufacturing background to a category where specification and testing decide the product.

  • Ballistic-resistant apparel and tactical equipment
  • Police, military, and private-sector clients
  • AJ Zabadne, President and Chief Executive
Shopfront signage reading Zabadne and Co Ltd with an Akai sign alongside

Historic · Nigeria

Zabadne & Co Ltd

The original business: a Nigerian distributorship that became a manufacturer, holding the Nigerian representation for American and Japanese home-appliance and audio brands, and running a factory that employed more than eight hundred people at its height. It is the business everything else was built on.

  • Manufacturing and assembly in Nigeria
  • Distribution and brand representation
  • Home-appliance and audio agency agreements

See the full timeline

The Gulf

Dubai.

A family market since 2012, and the base for its dental distribution business.

Zabadne Sterling DMCC

Dental distribution across the Middle East

Registered in Jumeirah Lake Towers, Zabadne Sterling held the exclusive distribution rights for Lumineers, LumiBrite, Sapphire Plus and DenMat products across the Middle East, North Africa, the GCC and Kazakhstan. Walid Zabadne ran it as chief executive and owner, with his son Khalid as chief financial officer.

  • Exclusive territory: Middle East, North Africa, GCC, Kazakhstan
  • Principal: DenMat Corporation — Lumineers, LumiBrite, Sapphire Plus
  • Registered in the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre free zone
  • Walid Zabadne, Chief Executive and Owner; Khalid Zabadne, CFO

Dubai property

Held, not traded

The family holds a portfolio of offices, houses and apartments in Dubai, acquired to keep and managed directly — the same approach taken in Lagos a decade earlier.

Dubai is a permanent base rather than a single venture, and one of the three property markets the family holds, alongside Nigeria and Syria.

  • Commercial offices
  • Residential houses and apartments
  • Held directly, managed by the family

Syria

Damascus, where it started.

The family’s origins are in Damascus. Three generations later it is investing there again, and Syria is where Rock Vision is most active today.

Holdings

Property in Syria

The family holds buildings, land and homes in Damascus and across Syria.

  • Residential and commercial buildings
  • Land
  • Homes

Active work

Trade between the United States and Syria

Rock Vision International Investment is registered with the commercial registry in Damascus, and trades goods and services between the United States and Syria. The first line is clothing apparel, shipped from the United States into the Syrian market.

This is the trade the first generation built in Nigeria, in the other direction: secure the goods, move them, and run the distribution behind them.

  • Import and export between the United States and Syria
  • Clothing apparel — the current line
  • Logistics and distribution

Registered in Damascus, No. 22574, January 2026.

Third generation

The name carries on.

Walid Zabadne Jr.

Walid Zabadne Jr.

Chief Operating Officer

Walid Zabadne Jr. is Chief Operating Officer of Rock Vision Investments, where he runs the company’s day-to-day operations.

His current focus is the trading business — the import and export of apparel between the United States and Syria — alongside the family’s property holdings in the United States, Dubai, and Syria.

His background is in marketing. He founded Moonlight Marketing Solutions, which he continues to own and run, handling brand, campaign, and lead-generation work for its clients. He brings more than a decade of commercial experience across retail, sales, marketing, property management, and real estate in the United States — including residential leasing with Greystar, the largest apartment manager in the country — and real estate in Dubai with Tanami Properties. He started in the family’s businesses at Elite Sterling Security in 2013, working alongside his father through 2021.

He holds a business degree from the University of Colorado Denver.

Read the family history

The line

  • Walid Zabadne — Lagos from 1952. Distribution and manufacturing.
  • AJ Zabadne — Owner and Chief Executive, Rock Vision Investments. Tourism, aviation, dental distribution, security, and the Damascus trade.
  • Walid Zabadne Jr. — Chief Operating Officer, Rock Vision Investments. Trading, operations, and property.

Three generations, in business continuously since 1952.

Working with us

Partnerships.

If you are looking for a partner who will take an ownership position and stay involved in running the business, tell us what you are building.

Discuss a partnership