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Interview with Ozlem Ozel

Ozlem Ozel
Ozlem Ozel
Marketing Director
Marsala
Marsala

Will establish own R&D centre before year end
Family-owned textile business Marsala was founded in 2015 by Mehmet Çetin Özel. Özel started her business life in Kayseri in 1940 by retailing fabrics. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, Ozlem Ozel, Marketing Director, Marsala, shares her views on what gives Marsala an edge over its competitors in the domestic and export markets, and its plans to achieve environmental, economic and social sustainability.

Give us a background of Marsala, how it has progressed through the years after its inception in 2015.

Marsala Textile was founded in 2015 by Mehmet Cetin Ozel, member of a family that specialised in textiles since 1940. Ozel, who is a textile engineer and partner, has led his family company to grow internationally. As of 2015, it had an annual turnover of US $25 million (exports of US $15 million included). The same year, he transferred the family company to other family members, and along with Ozlem Ozel founded Marsala Textile with the aim to become a well-known fabric brand all over the world. Ozel knew that time is more important than anything else in fabric production. With an experienced and qualified team, advanced technology and production facility, Marsala Textile produces the best fabric and provides service to foreign and domestic garment manufactures of men, women and children’s clothing.
 

What are your core competencies for the export markets? Which fabrics and blends are popular there?

Our core competencies can change every season. But in general, we use sustainable and natural products like cotton, organic cotton etc. If we use polyester, we prefer to use recycled polyester.

What experiments are you doing with your fabrics and designs according to current trends?

We prepare a collection based on upcoming trends where we try to use some new yarns or new yarn mixes.

Who are the leading designers/design houses associated with you as on date?

Our in-house team designs all the collections. We are called Marsala

What is unique to Marsala which gives it an edge over its competitors?

While using our experience and production capabilities, our customers become part of our team and we work with all dedication as if we are an affiliate department. Our expectation from our product is always higher than our customer’s expectation. Our aim is to present current and new fashion trends with an impressive collection to our customers with new fabrics every season.

What are you going to showcase at this year’s Munich Fabric Start?

We will present our 22-23 Autumn-Winter collection. We have very good preparations for the same.

What steps do you take to ensure sustainability across your value chain?

As Marsala, we have rolled up our sleeves to leave a better world for our future generations, starting with the principle of “Sustainability is not a new trend, is the future…”. Although the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to sustainability is environmental protection, the concept of sustainability is actually a holistic approach that includes ecological, economic, and social dimensions. Sustainability has three basic components. These components are environmental protection, economic growth, and social development. These concepts should be managed in a balanced way to ensure sustainability. At Marsala, although we operate in the textile sector that harms the environment and consumes a lot of natural resources (first and foremost water), we think about what we can do about these things every day.

On Environmental Protection: We adopt sustainability as a basic principle and focus on the fact that the environmental resources are limited, and therefore we should use these resources rationally. In this way, we will be able to preserve the integrity and resilience of our ecosystems. For this, we review all our processes in production together with our R&D team and undertake projects and make investments every day to produce as much as possible with minimum water and energy consumption. We know that the investments we make will return to us as protection to our environment and natural resources.

On Economic Growth: Again, by taking sustainability as the main principle, we aim to achieve economic growth that will bring prosperity to the society without harming the environment. We want to focus on human welfare while the consumption of goods and services increases in the world.

On Social Development: As with our basic principle of sustainability, our first preference is our employees and then every person we touch. We support social development of people through many activities to achieve satisfactory level of health, life and education.

At Marsala, we always prioritise people--the most important resource. Although we are only a 6-year-old company, we know the importance of R&D as well as people. We contribute to the future of our country by making all kinds of R&D investments. We invite all companies to do R&D studies and investments.    

Where do you source the raw materials from?

We source the best raw materials for our collections from all over the world.

What has been the impact of the pandemic on the sourcing part and how are you managing the same?

We managed our stock needs well by taking strategic decisions during the pandemic times. We constantly review our decisions by holding strategic and regular meetings with our experienced management team.

What are your top 4 goals for the future?

- To be a world leader in clothing fabric production
- To be the cleanest producer in our field with least energy consumption
- To be the most preferred company by our employees
- To provide better quality and faster service every year compared to the previous year

Do you have any expansion plans or announcements to make in this year?

We will establish our own R&D center before the end of the year.

Which are your major export markets? Which new markets do you plan to explore?

Our major export markets are Spain, Italy, France, England, Russia and America. We have plans to explore all over the world, but also want to improve our exports to Spain, America, France and Russia.
Published on: 11/08/2021

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.