“I Think That Important Sectoral Exhibitions Like IGM, Contributes to the Country’s Economy Seriously”
The ready-to-wear and garment industry is among the spearheading sectors of the Turkish economy with both employment numbers and export revenues. The sector, where there are 18 thousand exporters and nearly 39 thousand manufacturing enterprises, is among the primary sectors in the country’s employment with 657 thousand people working only in production. Together with the retail and textile sector, its total employment number exceeds 2 million.
While the share of textile and apparel in the total industry as production value is 6.4 percent, its share in the manufacturing industry is calculated as 13.7 percent.
In addition, the sector demonstrates that it has a rapid and widespread employment capability by providing employment to 15 people with an investment of 10 thousand dollars. For this reason, the ready-to-wear and garment industry realizes production in 81 provinces of our country and exports to 200 countries.
The exports of the ready-to-wear and garment industry increased by 21.1 percent between January 1 and October 20, 2021, and reached 16.1 billion dollars. With the current trend, the ready-to-wear and garment industry is expected to export 20 billion dollars in 2021. The ready-to-wear and garment industry foresees a 10% increase target in 2022 exports.
We interviewed with Mustafa Gültepe Chairman of İHKİB for our newspaper IGM News. Gültepe stated, ‘‘International exhibitions, which made a name for themselves and which are comprehensive, organized in Turkey and IGM exhibition will make a great contributions to the national economy and export volume.’’
‘‘Large-scale Investments will be Made in Anatolia in the Forthcoming Period’’
The ready-to-wear and garment industry has been on the agenda with its recent investments. Ready-to-wear manufacturers have made Anatolia a production base with the giant manufacturing facilities they have established. What do you think about the investments realized all over Turkey?
We, as İHKİB, put forward the assessment of Istanbul as a fashion center and Anatolia as a production base as a sectoral perspective in our sectoral vision document and exercise program. In addition, we carried out activities for our industry to adopt this vision.
Recently, there has been a rising interest in our country from foreign customers. Especially in big markets such as the USA, Turkey is among the important options as an alternative to China in the search for suppliers. For this, we need to increase our investments and improve our manufacturing capacities.
It is vital for our industry to use the investment incentive system and to identify Anatolia as a production base by our sector. From this perspective, we also had a study that put the investment incentive system on the table and revealed how the incentives serve the companies in our sector, with its deficiencies and development suggestions. We shared the problems we identified with this study and our solution proposals with the relevant public authorities.
At the point reached today, we are in the days when Istanbul has been adopted as the center in operational processes in our sector, and Anatolia has started to be preferred especially for large-scale investments.
For example, Batman, which is a small city compared to its surroundings, in the Southeast region of Turkey, is the city where approximately 11% of the total investment, namely 1.5 billion TL of 13.5 billion TL, has been made since 2012 when the investment incentive system was implemented, and where our industry has invested the most.
Mardin, Diyarbakır, Urfa, Malatya are other important cities in Anatolia that our industry has invested in. Despite the pandemic last year, we continued to make new investments. Mask and protective clothing products emerged as new investment items. More than 3 billion TL investments were made in these products, especially in Anatolian cities.
In brief, in the ready-to-wear sector in Turkey in the 2012-2020 period; a total of 2,227 companies provided employment potential of approximately 344 thousand with fixed investment of 13.2 billion TL. Batman, Mardin, Diyarbakır, Şanlıurfa, Malatya became the leading provinces in terms of employment. In the 6-month period of 2021, 371 of our companies made a fixed investment of 1.75 billion TL and applied for incentives for 43 thousand employments. In addition to Batman, Mardin, Diyarbakır, Şanlıurfa, Adıyaman, Bitlis, Ordu and Şırnak were the provinces where the investment was directed.
In the forthcoming period, we will need more investments depending on the developments in the global value chain and the competitive characteristics of our industry. We anticipate that large-scale new investments will be made, especially in Anatolia.
What are the main factors of your global export success as ready-to-wear and apparel manufacturers?
The Turkish ready-to-wear and garment industry distinguishes itself from its competitors in many areas such as its agile and flexible production structure that can meet various needs of buyers, compliance with environmental and social standards, sustainable manufacturing structure, design-oriented high value-added production, and qualified workforce. Thanks to these features, Turkey stands out as one of the leading supplier countries in line with its high competitiveness in the ready-to-wear and garment industry.
In addition, our sector has the capacity to respond to the demands of the leading buyers on the basis of different sub-product groups, from women’s outerwear to socks, from denim clothing to underwear products.
Turkey ranks 5th in the world in the fashion industry. Do you have a road map that you have determined as İHKİB to place yourself at the top 3?
In order to further the strong position of our industry in the world, as İstanbul Apparel Exporters’ Association (İHKİB), we create and implement road maps that will strategically guide our industry.
The vision document titled ‘‘Short, Medium and Long Term Road Map of the Turkish Ready-to-Wear Clothing Industry’’ has been published for the prioritization and planning of sectoral strategic projects and studies.
The following 6 strategic topics have been identified in the Vision Document:
- The most digital supply chain
- 5 Turkish brands in the global top 100
- Manufacturer leading in efficiency
- Pioneer in fast fashion design and value-added products
- «Made fully in Turkey»
- Expanding our abilities in the retail value chain
Afterward, the following main application areas and action plans that can be carried out in these areas were revealed by concretizing with the ‘‘Foolproof Work Plan’’.
- Restructuring in Production
- Developing Major Players at Every Stage of the Value Chain
- Developing a new Designer-Industry Collaboration Model
- Creating 5 Turkish Brands Worldwide, Global Promotion, Perception Management, and Lobbying
Within the framework of this road map, various projects have been started to be carried out by İHKİB. It is aimed to develop the export capacity of the Turkish Ready-to-Wear and Garment industry in a sustainable way and with structural changes through these projects.
‘‘Making new investments is essential’’
Turkey has recently demonstrated to the whole world that it is an important supplier of textiles. Export companies are working with 80-90 percent capacity. What are the steps to be taken in order to maintain and increase this success?
As the Turkish ready-to-wear and garment industry, it is important to increase our share in the US market, which is the world’s largest buyer in ready-to-wear and garment, with an import volume of more than 100 billion dollars.
We have all the infrastructure and production facilities necessary for us to be among the important suppliers of the USA. However, our sectoral capacity utilization rate, calculated as 81% as of September 2021, indicates that we need to increase our capacity in order to advance our share in a large market like the USA.
Therefore, we think that it is essential to make new investments in order to increase our sectoral capacity.
As İHKİB, what are your projects to support garment and ready-to-wear manufacturers and exporters and to increase the share of the sector in world exports?
As İHKİB, we have many projects to support ready-to-wear and garment manufacturers and their exports and to increase the share of our industry in world exports.
In this period, the main axes of our projects focus on sustainability, digitalization, and within this framework, the development of human resources. Among the most important of these are the IPA II and IPA III projects realized with EU funding.
Within the scope of the IPA II project, it is aimed to support and accelerate the digital transformation of the sector, while within the scope of the IPA III project, it is targeted to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of the sector.
In addition, human resources and education are among the important areas of our development. The ‘My Preference is Textile Engineering’ project, which will let the department of textile engineering attractive in order to develop our human resources for the future, and the innovative idea marathon project that we are running at vocational high schools and now at the university level can be counted as the main ones.
On the other hand, we continue our initiatives through all kinds of media, tools, methods, and collaborations in order to promote our country and our industry and increase market opportunities in potential markets in our region, such as the EU, being our main market, Russia and the USA, the world’s largest ready-to-wear market.
“The Sector Needs IGM Exhibition to Shape Its Investment Needs”
What are the contributions of international exhibitions, which made a name for themselves and which are comprehensive, organized in Turkey to the country’s economy and exports?
International exhibitions, which made a name for themselves and which are comprehensive, such as IGM, organized in Turkey will make great contributions to the country’s economy and exports.
Such exhibitions constitute an important platform by bringing together important collaborators, buyers, sellers, and manufacturers within their own sectors and creating a serious synergy between these collaborators.
Such branded and established exhibitions are important for both country and sectoral promotion.
We also attach great importance to sectoral specialization exhibitions organized in the country. For this purpose, we, as İHKİB, will hold our own sectoral exhibition in February 2022 for the first time using the Istanbul Fashion Connection (IFCO) brand at Istanbul Fair and Congress Center.
Can you please elaborate on the contributions of the IGM 2022 Exhibition, which will be held on 8-11 September 2022, to the ready-to-wear and garment industry, investments, and exports?
IGM 2022 Istanbul Garment Machinery, Spare Parts and Sub-Industry Exhibition fills the needs of the ready-to-wear and garment industry and plays an important role in this field.
The ready-to-wear and garment industry needs the IGM 2022 Exhibition and its continuation in order to follow the current developments in machinery and its parts and to shape the investment needs when necessary.
Interview: Dilek HAYIRLI
