Çiğdem Kurucuk, GNT Tekstil's Deputy General Manager for Sales and Marketing, and also a company partner, answered Enfotek's questions.
Çiğdem Kurucuk, GNT Tekstil's Deputy General Manager for Sales and Marketing, and also a company partner, answered Enfotek's questions. Having been in the textile industry for 21 years, experienced ready-to-wear expert said: “We aim to import and export from our own company. Exit here, entry here. For this, a program like EDS is an obligation,” he said. Çiğdem Kurucuk's statements are as follows:
Hello, Ms. Cigdem. Can we get information about GNT Tekstil from you?
Established 21 years ago, GNT Tekstil is a company that makes complete exports, mainly to England, Italy and France. We have an annual export of approximately 1 million pieces of knitted fabric, T-Shirts, Sweatshirts and Men's Polo T-Shirts. Approximately 300 people work in 2 buildings in a closed area of 13 thousand square meters.
What would you say about the future of the ready-made clothing industry?
In fact, it would be more accurate to say that there will be change for the future from now on. From our point of view, we have improved in quality compared to the past. When we were a company of 40 people, we were working with Germany. There is a big difference between our point of view at that time and our point of view on quality now. The customer portfolio has also developed at the same rate. As a textile, they want a more environmentally friendly, sustainable apparel from now on. They want people to leave the house in the morning with the clothes they buy, go to the gym, go to the workplace, go to a social party in the evening. Everyone has to adapt to it.
What are the pleasant and difficult aspects of the ready-made clothing industry?
It's great to see the products we've created. In particular, we, as GNT, produce high quality products with beautiful visuals. According to everyone, their own products are beautiful, but ours has a special place... As a team, we have a very integrative and loving staff. It is also good to contribute to the Turkish economy. I can say these are the good aspects. The hard part is time. I wish we had a little more time. The time between the design and the entrance to the store is very limited. The biggest problem is time. Apart from that, the changing economic conditions, the economic problems of Europe, the decrease in the number of units per model, the increase in the number of models, in other words, the sales strategies are becoming more difficult.
How many years have you been using EDS? Why did you choose it, how is the usage going now?
We have been using EDS for 5 years. We used EDS years ago as well. However, the customer portfolio changed and we broke away from EDS. But now, looking back, I can say that we should have started EDS earlier. I would recommend it to other companies; It would be better to start earlier. Since we work with difficult customers, we cannot use EDS 100 percent effectively. However, we are slowly making up for our shortcomings… As for our preference for EDS; people from textiles installed this system. Honestly, we haven't researched any other ERP program either. As Tuğrul Tamtürk (ENFOTEK General Manager) is my classmate and textile engineer, he has come up with a logical and useful system for everyone because he knows the industry and has experienced and seen the problems there.
Speaking of school, what advice would you give to the students of the Faculty of Textile Engineering?
Of course, the Textile Engineering Department was more interesting when we were students. But not so now. However, textile is an industry that will never end. The importance of Turkey never diminishes for textiles. Because we are very close to Europe, we contribute to them in time. Therefore, the textile industry will always be active. In addition, one of the best aspects of this profession is that while computer engineers work in many different fields, this is not the case in the ready-made clothing industry. I think it is very enjoyable to apply everything you have studied in school in business life. It is also a pleasant and active sector in terms of the products you create.
Coming back to Enfotek, what would you say about Enfotek's consultancy services?
We have always felt the support of Enfotek with us. They always understood us and offered solutions for the questions and innovations we asked. We also want to do much more. This was also effective in our conversion to EDS. While we are talking among ourselves, we have not settled in yet, but we want to be able to access EDS data from mobile even while we are sitting at home. Ready-to-wear is already an expensive industry for people. However, the existence of a system within the system that reduces dependency on people is very important. I think, a mobile system, a mobile application that shows the stages and the cost will be very useful in order to gain speed.
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You have just emphasized the social area of human and mentioned the changing conditions. So what do you do as GNT Tekstil for corporate social responsibility and sustainability?
We attach great importance to these issues. Because the industry is going to that way. We have ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certificates. We want to carry out our every business by adapting to the world, nature, environment, world and technology, that is, by adapting to changes. ERP is a system that requires discipline. There may also be resistance to EDS in many companies. However, there is no such problem in our company. We are a company that has adopted a nature-friendly and sustainable production method at every stage from design to production. With all its employees. We even abide by laws that the government has not made legally. If necessary, we set our own rules and pay attention. We apply to our customers and say check us out. We get our certificates. We take care of our fabrics.
On the other hand, we also have our own brand. It is only sold abroad. Our products are made according to customer requests, but we especially pay attention to social adaptation, sustainable and organic products in our brand. Since we can keep these issues under control, we can progress faster in our own brand. So even if we wanted to, we can't get ourselves audited. That's why we took our own precautions. We brought our occupational safety specialist to the company. We have ISO 9001, ISO 18001, ISO 27001 certificates. Now our goal is to get the YYS (Authorized Economic Operator Certificate). All our work is on it. We aim to import and export from our own company. Exit here, entry here. As GNT, we don't just have apparel. We also have knitwear, washing and embroidery departments. We aim to enter fabric, process it here, pack it and go abroad. So, a system like EDS is an obligation for us.
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