01 December 2005

Turkey: the furniture industry

by Pietro Stroppa

Mosder In order to gain information about the furniture industry in Turkey I went to the headquarters of the Furniture Industry Association where, in addition to its secretary, Mr. Hakan Ara, I also met its President, Mr. Muzaffer Cilek who informed me of the following
'Our association, called Mosder was only founded in February 2003 and today boasts 63 associates. Our objective is to increase membership in order to provide the members themselves with more and better services.
Mosder's aim is to develop the trademark and image of Turkish furniture throughout the world.
Last February, a Turkish delegation exhibited at the IMM fair in Cologne (Germany) and the results were extremely promising owing to the high quality of our furniture, its original design and competitive prices'.
Our largest problem, at present, is the fact that there is no census of furniture industries in Turkey neither are there any reliable statistics about the sizes of same.
This is a fundamental issue in terms of creating a marketing programme and planning initiatives.

Mr. Cilek, what concrete iniatives are you likely to adopt to develop Mosder?
'Our target is to have a global view of the markets and, at the same time, to develop collaboration with bodies dealing with promotion, i.e. fairs, Turkish associations, professionals and experts in the sector. In collaboration with Istanbul's University of Design, we will organize a competition, with prizes, for the best furniture designs. Naturally, promotion abroad will continue with exhibitions. In order to give you an idea of the demand for furniture in Turkey, I can tell you that starting from nothing in 1990 we then had seven years of development.
1n 1998, the sector entered a critical phase which resulted in a progressive decrease of sales until 2002. After 2002, sales increased but, at present, market demand is only satisfied with 80% of our production capacity'.

Although we would have liked to have published a list of furniture manufacturers, as previously mentioned, this was not possible.
Our publishing house will continue with its search for the names of manufacturers, which can be seen on our internet search engine www.datalignum.com: ask for the password to datalignum@datalignum.com