Turquality: A branding programme to promote Turkish excellence in apparel production & marketing

At the end of 2004, Werner International was appointed as the sole management consultancy company in charge of providing strategic guidance for the set-up of the Turquality branding programme. This ambitious project, which is promoted by the Turkish ministry of trade and industry, aims to upgrade the international image of Turkish-made products. It also strives to provide the industry with a strong stimulus to upgrade and reposition on the higher segments of the now global market.

In conjunction with ITKIB, the Istanbul Association of Textile and Apparel Exporters, the apparel industry has been selected as the “pilot” industry to develop the programme and its procedures, then transferring them to other industries later this year.

Werner International was appointed as the mastermind of the industrial part of the programme due to its vast and international experience. The Turquality programme mainly consists of two complementing activities. On one side, there is the development of a “quality manual and accreditation scheme” which defines the quality standards which applicants will be required to meet in order to be accepted in the programme and for use of the Turquality logo and brand. On the other side, an articulated auditing programme is currently being implemented with the aim to “benchmark” Turkish companies with international best practices - building on Werner’s wide experience in this field all over the world. This part of the project is particularly focused on each company’s organisation and processes. The purpose is to provide each participating company with a dynamic tool to identify its weakness areas in the path towards excellence. This will be done according to each individual companies’ own, specific strategies.

Therefore, Turquality will be much more then a branding programme. It will also become a very versatile platform for member companies to be supported while they strive towards excellence and to successfully compete with today’s highly dynamic international markets.

This is a very unique project which is such a complex mix of marketing, quality upgrading and strategic positioning, to be implemented for the first time in Turkey and, possibly, in the world.

The concept of Turquality was announced by the foreign trade undersecretary, Mr Kursad Tuzmen, who informed that already 821 firms have applied for government incentives provided for high-quality Turkish brandname exports. He said that this proves that Turkish exporters are gaining awareness of quality. Mr Tuzmen said that Turkey is known in world markets as a country which delivers orders on time and which produces high-quality products. However, some Turkish firms create a very negative ‘Made in Turkey’ image in some countries for the sake of short-term interests, he said. Quoting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates, he said the world economy is expected to grow by 4.2 per cent next year and merchandise and services trade to grow by 7.8 per cent next year. He added that the Turkish export industry can have a larger share of this increase only by producing high quality goods.