To reach production capacity of 50 mn garments by 2025
Founded by Mesut Toprak in 1977, Taypa is a Turkish denim apparel supplier. Burak Karaaslan, General Manager, Taypa, spoke to Fibre2Fashion about the major boosters which will drive the Turkish apparel industry in future, Taypa’s major achievements in past 3 years and the kind of innovations it is focused on.
What is unique to the Turkish apparel market? How is it different from the rest of the world?
Turkey has a decades long textile manufacturing history. Today it is one of the world’s most important textile and apparel manufacturing hubs, 6th largest supplier in the world and second largest supplier to the EU.
We have always been at the forefront of innovation and apparel design with an advanced integrated apparel market where the yarn, fabric, accessories making, cloth manufacturing, garment finishing, and related activities can all be sourced in the same territory. Besides, the apparel industry in Turkey is constantly developing and it is one of the pioneer countries that adapted itself to meet sustainability requirements. This provides many advantages to retailers and wholesalers in terms of innovative product developments, faster delivery and their near-shoring and sustainability strategies.
How many brands do you cater to? Which are your export markets?
Taypa produces denim apparels for 15 fast fashion and whole-seller brands. Our main export market is Europe and due to free trade agreements, we can produce and deliver garments with zero customs duty. Besides Europe, we export to the US and Asia in certain amounts on yearly basis.
How does the process start when working with brands? What are the unique demands brands come up with?
As Taypa, we can provide services for two different business models. It gives us the advantage of having know-how from different angles and this flexibility makes us unique from the rest.
The start of the process differs if the brand has a retailer (fast fashion) or a wholesaler origin. The fast fashion model is characterised by newness, lower cost, and four to six weeks delivery. Our Product Design & Development (PD&D) team prepares collections every month based on customer’s brand identity and latest trends with stock / quality focus on fabric selection, finishing and techniques.
In a wholesale model, you don’t sell products directly to the consumers. Usually, the garments arrive at the shops between one year to eight months. A wholesaler allows you to reach a larger customer base. Therefore, our focus as PD&D is paying attention to the quality from fabric selection to finishing and to make sure that the garments fall into low to mid fashion level so that they are liked by a wider audience.
Unique demands lie behind the needs. Retail always wants to be at the forefront with latest trends and aggressive selling prices. Whereas wholesalers want to have the right amount of newness with quality and price value of the product.
Going ahead, what would be the major boosters for the apparel sector of Turkey?
The pandemic will inevitably have a short-term and large negative impact on the apparel market. However, there are often opportunities in difficulties. Looking back at 2020-21, the major booster is going to be fast delivery, quality production, making AI available for intelligent manufacturing, and continuing to improve sustainability with circular economy principles and responding to the needs of Generation Z with individual designs.
Could you tell us a bit about how it all started for Taypa? Who is/are the founders of the group?
Founded by Mesut Toprak in 1977, Taypa is a Turkish denim apparel supplier known for its know-how for authentic denim. Toprak started his trading business with fabric development and sales in Istanbul. After years of significant hard work and successes, he invested in apparel manufacturing in 1989 and shaped Taypa Group as one of the biggest apparel producers especially in Turkey as well as in Egypt, Algeria, Serbia.
What kind of innovations would you like to bring into your business going forward?
In response to the new digital wave, many fashion brands and retailers are under pressure to innovate while at the same time being cost-conscious. Brands have started to improve their speed to market, as well as automate their core product design, manufacturing, and supply chain process.
To respond to these needs, we have created a digital showroom that provides 360-degree view of the garment and trained our PD&D team for 3D design which we are currently using for customers. These are the steps we have taken in areas of sales & marketing, and product design & development.
In the production area, we have mainly automated our processes and are still investing in AI to improve transparency, shorten lead time, increase productivity, product quality, and worker efficiency and motivation by digital bonus system. We have established Digitay, our own technology company to support all our needs in terms of IT and software.
What do you see as some of the main problems regarding sustainable fashion facing the industry now?
One of the main problems in our industry regarding sustainability is the conceptual confusion. I suppose the reason for this confusion is profit based marketing strategies.
In general, we hear a lot about recycling, but I think we should first talk about reducing it. What I mean is reduction of energy, water consumption and wastes. Our sustainability motto is to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Therefore, we continue to invest in green energy and reduce-reuse water usage.
How has the company grown in the last 3 years?
We have grown by 40 per cent since 2018. Due to the unprecedented global pandemic, our growth rate stopped in 2020. On the other hand, European brands started to accelerate near-shoring strategies at the beginning of 2021 and their production demands significantly increased in Turkey. Therefore, the current forecast shows that we will finish 2021 with a high success record.
Taypa has always seen constant growth and development for 44 years and still carries that ambition to be a globally acknowledged apparel maker. With this vision, we established our first apparel manufacturing plant abroad in Egypt in 2010. Till today the Egypt manufacturing facility is successfully producing and developing apparel goods for the US market with duty-free advantages.
The second, biggest investment came along in Algeria in 2017. Tayal Spa was established with Turkish-Algerian partnership to become the largest integrated Textile Industrial Zone of Europe and Eastern Mediterranean basin with a total area of 2.5 million sqm.
Last but not the least, we made our third investment in Serbia in 2018 and launched a fully automated production facility in 2019. The goal was to provide near shore production facility with sustainable principles for European brands in the heart of Europe.
What disruptions has the pandemic brought into your business?
In March 2020, it was reported that Global Fashion Brands had refused to pay for over $16 billion worth of goods since the outbreak of COVID-19. When the pandemic hit Europe and the US and stores were forced to close, many brands and retailers responded by pushing the risk down the supply chain, cancelling orders placed before the crisis, some of which had already been shipped. Clearly March, April, May 2020 was devastating for all of us. During these difficult months we decided to stay wise with an ethical understanding of partnership and despite everything we continued to deliver the needs of our customers. By June 2020, Turkey started to receive orders again and we started to see signs of normalisation.
In what ways are you able to keep the company green without sacrificing the end product?
Based on the reduction principle, we focus on the use of green energy and reduce water consumption by reusing our wastewater. So that reduces our impact on nature drastically without sacrificing the end product. Recently, we finalised our solar panels project which produces electric power for our factory and provides for 45 per cent of our energy needs.
There is another project to reduce water consumption and reuse wastewater which will be finalised by September. With the combination of ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis technologies, we will be able to reuse our own wastewater and reduce water consumption by 55-60 per cent.
China is increasingly getting side lined by countries all over the world in trade. Is Turkey benefiting out of it?
Global brands, especially Europeans, have started shifting orders from China to Turkey. We have these results for several reasons. Buyers and designers can’t go to China due to coronavirus worries and travel restrictions.
Manufacturing costs have become almost equal between China and Turkey due to increase of China’s transportation cost and exchange rate of Euro - Turkish Lira. European companies prefer near-shoring and want to be more flexible and efficient by diversifying their supplier sourcing. Last but not the least, in the light of all this information, global brands are closely looking at the ''total cost of ownership'' where they realise that Turkey provides faster delivery at cheaper prices.
What are your main struggles now and do they differ from the times before Covid struck?
It is difficult to think of the apparel industry without struggles. It is in the nature of what we are doing. But If we compare before and after Covid struck, the main difference is the customers’ growing demand of sustainability and traceability. This probably created challenges for some players in the industry but did not really affect us as we were already investing in them and were ready to respond to these demands.
As an apparel manufacturer, what is your USP?
We live in the most competitive period in history. No matter what industry you’re in, you face huge competition. You have access to the entire world…the potential is limitless. Based on this, our unique strength is the ability to think like the customers’ designers and buyers, understanding their needs before they even ask for them, genuine relations on every level and being transparent from fabric consumption to carbon emission.
What are your long-term plans as a company?
We are planning to reach production capacity of 50 million garments by 2025. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary that we enhance our sales and marketing channels. Therefore, our first studio- showroom was opened in Barcelona in June 2021 and we will continue to expand our offices in rest of the world in the coming years.
As Taypa with 44 years of apparel know-how, we aim to become
Europe's first choice of a near-shoring manufacturer which produces fast,
delivers quality with principles of sustainability.
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