This week, we visited Favor Fashion brand and chatted with Mr. Burak Ötük about the place of textile in the touristic souvenir sector and our fair. Mr. Burak has a message for the fair visitors: “We have very nice surprises especially in this coming fair. So those who don’t come will regret it.”
We share the rest of the news with you.
1. Can you tell us about your company? When were you founded as a company and in which field do you operate?
Our company was established in China 19 years ago. We started trading in Guangzhou, China. We were always in China until the pandemic, that is, until 2020. Then we were forced to come to Turkey during the pandemic. We did not return either. The pandemic continued there for a very long time. After 7-8 months, we decided that we had to do something in Turkey and we created the infrastructure for our trade here. We have been in Turkey ever since. It has been 5 years. For 5 years now, we have been doing this business in Turkey.
If I summarize what we do, we supply the textile part of the gift sector. What I mean by textile, of course, the upper groups are predominant. T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts or bicycle collar sweatshirts, which we call hoodies. Of course, there are groups for women, men and children. There are groups divided into cotton groups, digitally printed groups. But we can imagine something like this to make it ring in our heads. When you go to Paris, you see t-shirts with the Eiffel Tower or I Love Paris on the front. That is what we do. We design and manufacture that collection professionally.
There are 43 countries. For 43 countries. There are over 100 cities in these countries. So from Amsterdam to Barcelona, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Sweden, Norway. We are present in most places you can think of, where there is tourism. We are not everywhere right now, but we are in most places. Our product has been sold from Alcadras Island in San Francisco to Reykjavik in Iceland. Thank God, it continues to be sold. So people prefer us because we do this job professionally. Because we give people package delivery. Our customers who come with their own design are very few. They usually just give us an idea. Here I am here, these are famous here. Most of our customers ask if you can make me a collection. We first make the collections with our designer friends. What kind of materials will we use? What colors will we use? We create a collection by following the fashion. Then we present this collection to our customers, after they like it, we make our samples, we send our samples, we take orders for the works that are approved, we make the orders and send them to them.
We mostly work with wholesalers. Because we are manufacturers, it is very difficult for us to do business in small quantities. It is the wholesaler who can buy in large quantities. We make these products in bulk to wholesalers, to any souvenir wholesaler in Greece or France or Paris, with the logic of earning from the version with a low profit margin. They in turn distribute these products to the stores they work with. Afterwards, our business usually goes on RPT. In other words, RPT comes from the best-selling products. Products that do not sell are eliminated. They are not manufactured more.
2. Can you also have customers who come to you with their own design and say, “I want this kind of product”?
A customer who gives his own design especially wants to do everything himself. From the label to digital printing, there is also stone printing on it. We have one special customer who is involved up to that point, that is, where, on which inscription, what color stone will come. But for example, he leaves the fabrics to be used for the fittings to us. He gives the graphical part. But again, since he believes in our experience in the rest, he says that you decide these too. We make them too. We send the sample. We make the sample according to the fabric that best suits those patterns, the fit that best suits them, and get their approval. Then we start manufacturing. We have such a process.
3. So what are you planning to exhibit at the fair? Which product group are you planning to stand out with?
As Favor Fashion, we have participated in over a hundred fairs. In our 20 years in this business. We have passed a hundred. So I can say that the majority of them are in Asia. In China, Hong Kong. These are the product groups we have been exhibiting for years. The textile field of gifts. We have a good recognition in the sector. When it comes to Favor Fashion, when you knock on the door of any wholesaler in Barcelona or Paris or Norway today, when you say our name to any gift wholesaler, 90% of them are likely to recognize us. Because they must have seen us at a fair. Either we are working or we have shaken hands, we have met him.
Since it is an area we specialize in, we don’t want to diversify too much. In other words, we don’t have an idea like let’s make evil eye beads or prepare a collection of glass groups. Thank God, the work we are doing is satisfying us right now. If it continues like this, we won’t have such a quest. But of course you never know. What the conditions will show in the future.
As a novelty, for example, in this upcoming fair, we have been coming with different prints on simpler products because fashionable works can sometimes go wrong, but in this fair, in the upcoming fair, we are going back to fashion more. We will be designing more modern, futuristic products over different molds. Obviously, we have a change in our shell. This is something we have been thinking about for the last two years. This year we will exhibit it at the upcoming Souvenir Expo Turkey.
4. So what do you promise to the customers who will come to your booth? What can a company that comes to your booth find in you?
We have few competitors in Turkey. Turkey is actually a textile paradise. There are many companies doing textile business, but there are not many companies doing gift textiles. There should be one or two companies participating in the fair with us. I mean, the reason for this is that the profitability is a bit low. In other words, it is a sector that is earned from version. You need to have enough customers so that you can provide that version. Otherwise, there are no satisfactory profits with small quantities in this sector. This is also due to this. Maybe we don’t have any competitors in Turkey, but there are companies in Pakistan, India, China, Bangladesh that produce textiles at very reasonable prices and send them to Europe with low taxes, and send them to America with low taxes. They are our competitors. That is why it is always up to us to come up with something different from the products made there at those prices.
Both in terms of quality and design, we will now add more fashion into the business, especially in this coming fair. We plan to evaluate these and prepare a collection accordingly. Therefore, our biggest promise to our customers who will visit us at the fair is that they will find a collection at our stand that they cannot find in other regions. They will find products to sell especially related to souvenir clothing. In short, they will find products to sell. Because this is what every wholesaler wants, this is what every retailer wants. He wants to hang the product to sell in his store. We promise that we will exhibit them and we are looking forward to all of them.
5. Is it only the wholesalers that matter to you, only abroad or do you have a different approach?
We already have over 90% of our export business. As Favor Fashion, we made an investment in Cappadocia. We established a wholesale company there. We opened a wholesale store. We are satisfied, we brought a new breath there, we made a Cappadocia collection, we made a Cappadocia collection, it was very liked and it is very active, but our priority has always been export, it is progressing faster, but the reason why we made these products for the domestic market is that we made these beautiful products in our own country, frankly, we started with Cappadocia, we also did something for Istanbul, but let’s say trial works. For the domestic market, time will show the situation of the domestic market in the future.
But right now, we are a company that exports 90% and 95% of our business. Our priority is therefore exports. Europe is of course our first market, apart from the Middle East and Asia, America has been in a bit of a decline recently due to the extremely competitive environment and the prices in China have become very favorable. But we hope that it will improve there as well. In the near future, our trade there will hopefully increase again as before.
6. Do you have a message for the visitors of Souvenir Expo Turkey?
They come to the Favor Fashion booth to find products to sell. In other words, souvenirs are a very good sector. I have been doing this job for 19 years and I really love it. When you go on a business trip, there are very few sectors where you can both vacation and trade. That’s why it is a valuable sector and a sector that has a version.
It is a sector that is sometimes inversely proportional to the economic situation. If there is a crisis in a country, tourism increases in that country. Therefore, in order to know the value of this sector, it is necessary to create beautiful things. It is necessary to create a constant innovation. We are the party that does this. In the textile sector, we have always brought innovation to the sector. We will continue to bring innovation. Especially in this coming fair, we have very nice surprises. So let’s say that those who do not come will regret it.
