Brad Saltzman and his wife, Nancy, opened and closed three artisan ice-cream shops in Los Angeles over a 14-month period. But that was long enough to gain the attention of the royal family of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Saltzman, who owns the L.A. Creamery company with his wife and a partner, Stephen Bikoff, opened the first shop at Canoga Park’s Westfield Topanga mall in November 2010. He opened another at the Americana at Brand in Glendale the following April, and a third in the Westfield Fashion Square mall in Sherman Oaks in May. By the end of October, all three locations had folded.

Today, L.A. Creamery is a Chatsworth company that produces about 4,000 ice-cream sandwiches and 700 pints of ice cream each month for a handful of local restaurants and gourmet food markets. It no longer has any retail stores.

The royal family of Abu Dhabi stopped by L.A. Creamery in April. Saltzman said no one knew the family had visited until a month after the fact, when he received an e-mail from the director of real estate for Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development & Investment Co., asking for a meeting to discuss a deal to license the brand in the Middle East.

“I remember thinking, ‘Is this too good to be true?’ ” he said.

The development and investment company is behind some of Abu Dhabi’s most prestigious tourism projects, including Saadiyat Island, a planned cultural center that will feature the emirate’s version of the Guggenheim and the Louvre. Saltzman met with representatives three weeks later at a Beverly Hills hotel to get the ball rolling.

He said that the deal is not yet official, but the major points are in place. The deal will call for 20 L.A. Creamery locations in the Middle East in the next 10 years; seven to 10 of those will open as soon as possible.

The development and investment company will pay L.A. Creamery for the rights to open stores, and the ice-cream company has already turned over its recipes.

Marcia Schurer, president and founder of Chicago-based food consulting company Culinary Connections, said L.A. Creamery was fortunate to get this deal.

“Now they might be able to recoup the money they lost doing those retail units,” Schurer said.

But what makes Saltzman think L.A. Creamery stores will succeed in the Middle East when they failed so quickly in Los Angeles?

“The dessert category is huge in the Middle East,” Saltzman said. “But no one is doing what we do over there in terms of organic dairy with all natural ingredients.”