“Our Footmarks in Textile Industry Is A Lot Bigger Compared To The Past”

Odak Kimya is active in the printing, packaging, graphics, textile, medical, dye, plastics, automative, mine, ceramics, food and cosmetics industries since 1998. The company provides sales, training, support, technical service and calibration services in the fields of color measurement and management, quality control, laboratuary systems, and physical test equipment.

Odak Kimya, with a staff of 28 employees, has two offices, i.e. one in Anatolia side and other in Europe side of Istanbul. One of the employees is a remote personell who covers and follows-up Adana, Gaziantep, and Kahramanmaraş regions.

Ayla Çuhadaroğlu, General Manager of Odak Kimya, says: “Being a self-sufficient company, gives us great freedom and comfort.” Çuhadaroğlu, stating their difference from their matches as their highly qualified staff, continues as follows:

“We even test for ourselves which product is appropriate for which application. One of the main reasons why our customers prefer us is the rapid service and application support they receive after sales. We attach great importance to providing this trust.”

Can you please share the development process of your company since its establishment?

Odak Kimya was established in 1998 aiming to be a company working on color measurement equipments. In the first years, we were working on the dye and plastics sectors which we defined as industrial. In the following years, our product range expanded each year to include a new sector. In addition to those, we became a supplier who provides thorough solutions in the industry by adding complementary products throughout the years. Advancing our product range in its own pace, provides us a great advantage. Moreover, we are Turkey represenatative of Eizo, Pantone, and X-Rite firms, which are important factors in our development and are considered as the providers of color authorities.

How has your product range developed over the years?

Our travel in colors started in 1998 with dye and plastics industries and gained a new dimension by involving printing and packaging industries in 2000. The activities in printing and packaging side started with printing and ink and continued with pre-printing procedures. Different suppliers indicating that the partner of X-Rite is ideal for them, requested to collaborate with us and our solution providing identity began to sprout in those days. At that time, X-Rite acquired Gretag Macbeth, and suddenly we had a broader product portfolio. In 2014, X-Rite included textile industry, too, under Odak Kimya umbrella. Thus, Odak Kimya has become the only company among all X-Rite partners in the world to serve in all sectors. As a result, we increased our efforts in the textile sector. As of 2014, we entered the dyehouses. At ITM 2018, SDL Atlas officials indicated that they wanted to collaborate with us, and we initiated our cooperation with them, then started to provide services for testing consumables along with sales and service of physical test equipment. Thus, our footmark in the textile sector has grown much more than before.

What kind of work do you do with SDL Atlas?

With SDL Atlas we are experiencing a first in terms of consumption products, which we call consumables. In the global perspective, SDL Atlas, one of the two major suppliers, started marketing its own consumables. At this point, we started to serve companies for devices as well as the test consumables that should be used with devices. The consumables were a great innovation for us. SDL Atlas is one of the leading companies in the world that has proven itself in test equipment. The most important feature that distinguishes it from other companies is that it produces innovative devices.

What are the criteria you attach importance to your productions?

We are a company that likes to provide full solutions. Starting from Pantone, we are able to offer total solutions to a textile customer, from design to final product with color measurement solutions and physical test devices. Or, in case a customer requests an ink dispensing system we have a total solution we can provide including the production of it. In addition, we prefer to work with the top three companies that have proven themselves in their respective sectors. We aim to provide all laboratory-side support to companies starting from design to the final stage of production. We also attach great importance to the digital workflow. We consider the color excellence from design to production as a great priority. We can locally achieve all the projects that are abroad due to our highly qualified staff. When we look at the ultimate purpose of all our products, we can see that color perfection is at the forefront. In addition, we aim to provide a total solution to companies by expanding our product range in SDL Atlas physical test equipment and consumables related to all tests of the textile end-products.

What do you say if you want to emphasize the importance of color in the sectors?

Color is no longer in its place twenty years ago. It used to be an aesthetic quality control criterion and is now considered a functional quality control criterion. In some sectors, logo colors have become the business cards of companies and it is of great importance that the logo colors are identical with the product colors on the shelves. In the textile sector, product color plays the most important role in the decision of buyers.

How do you evaluate this situation in the textile sector?

In the textile industry, the number of colors is too high and the decision-making process for these colors takes too long. When this work is done with a digital workflow, for example; when Pantone’s target color or a color read by any spectrophotometer is digitally sent to the dyehouse, the dyehouse manufactures it or sends out the product. This satisfies both the supplier and the brand owner. Color is moving towards different paths in every industry. Although significant investments have been made in large machines, one very important thing is forgotten: these machines are capable of reproducible production when used with control devices.

Can you tell us about the products of the X-Rite company, that you represent in Turkey, in the textile sector?

X-Rite’s inline color measurement devices are of great interest to denim manufacturers. This device is able to measure the color continuously in the rope dyeing section in the denim sector, provide data notification and present the result of acceptance or rejection within the study. Generally, in the textile industry, the fact that you measure color from wet fabrics during production does not mean that you can achieve the same color at all times. The inline device can measure the color of the fabric from a single point or three different points. It draws a map of all the colors on the batch as the fabric flows from the bottom. In this way, not only one sample but also the color of each stage of the fabric batch can be controlled.

How is the after-sales service of X-Rite products covered?

We are X-Rite’s authorized service and calibration center. Furthermore, we are one of the representative agencies of the company that provides the most technical service. We are the only X-Rite partner in the world, serving in all sectors. There’s another important point. We provide both sales of products and application, installation and training services locally with our own team of experts.

What are your future goals?

We will prove in Turkey all the innovations that X-Rite introduced and its worldwide success. We aim to create a more conscious user portfolio by describing the correct use of the products even better that we supply to our customers. In addition to increasing SDL Atlas’s market share in physical test equipment and test consumables, we aim to increase the sales of SDL Atlas’s innovative test equipment in the sector and to introduce its products as much as possible, which are known globally but unknown in Turkey.

Interview: Kübra KARACA