Mr. İbrahim, how was Küçük Group's export performance in 2023, did you reach your export targets? Can you share your 2024 expectations or goals?

First of all, the year 2023 had a bitter beginning with the February 6 earthquake, which caused great sorrow to all humanity. We wish Allah's mercy to all our citizens who lost their lives and condolences to their relatives.

We bring our products, which we produce without compromising on quality, to more than 50 countries, especially Middle Eastern countries, European countries, Balkan countries, Turkic Republics. Our company aims to deepen its relations with both existing and new customers and to establish long-term relationships and to ensure the sustainability of trade. The effects of the February 6 earthquake and the election process that lasted until the second quarter of the year caused 2023 to be more cautious. Despite this, our company, which is on the way to realizing its targets, increased its export volume by 30 percent compared to the previous year. Our goal is to increase our export volume, whose share in total turnover is 25 percent, to 50 percent, and we make our investments and personnel employment in this direction.

In the current conjuncture, manufacturing companies attach more importance to exports. In this context, as Küçük Group, we have set our main goal for 2024 to increase our exports by at least 50 percent.

In your 2023 export activities, did you need to make special adaptations to the needs of the target markets in the technical specifications or designs of your products?

As Küçük Group, we have been carrying out our commercial activities for more than 20 years. We renew ourselves with innovative and R&D studies in our product, facility, service, marketing and organizational structure on the axis of ever-changing technology and global needs. For this reason, we aimed to exceed our own know-how limits with the globalizing world and technological developments. We have chosen targets for new product developments that will keep up with the age, new machine investments and the need to expand our machine park with modernizations in our existing machines, and most importantly, to increase our export volume, which provides the biggest contribution to the country's economy. In this context, our company has completed its investments and started production in the sale of package elevators and entered new markets, especially in Europe and Russia. Package elevator consists of all the products that will make the elevator turnkey operational in an elevator shaft. With our after-sales service support, our production and sales processes have started as integrated in line with the needs of our customers without sacrificing quality in this package elevator as in our other products.

How much do you invest in your company's R&D and innovation activities in order to achieve differentiation and competitive advantage in global markets? What are the tangible effects of these investments on the product development process and your export performance?

Today, businesses face a very different competitive arena. In an environment where product differentiation is becoming more and more difficult, global markets and competitors are increasing, and a different customer structure that is increasingly difficult to satisfy has emerged, they have started to apply different marketing methods and strategies. As Küçük Group, we believe that the concept of value created for the customer is one of the most important elements in achieving competitive advantage. In this context, one of our main goals is to define value, create value and achieve customer loyalty by delivering value.

As a company, we wish to combine the traditional marketing approach with the value-based marketing approach. It is both to contact new customers and add them to the portfolio and to provide deepening in terms of product diversity in our existing customers. In this way, in addition to increasing market share, increasing customer share is also important for us. We continue our work with a young and dynamic team and a modern machine park with the latest technology, reflecting our company culture, which we have created with the facts of superior quality, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer value, to the world with us.

What are the effects of the European Green Deal and related regulations on your company's production and export activities, how do they affect your market choices and targets?

Our company already has a zero waste certificate for waste from production. At the same time, since April 2022, all electricity needs of our production facility have been met with the rooftop ges project. Preliminary research is being carried out on zero carbon emission in the issues to be complied with within the scope of the European Green Deal. In our facility, in this context, it is planned to convert the vehicles used in the factory to electrically powered models. At the same time, production wastes arising from semi-finished products and raw materials are separated, recycled 100 percent and included back into the production process. Considering the exchange rate and commodity-driven price increases in raw material prices, 100 percent recycling of waste and its inclusion in production provides a significant cost reduction. Naturally, more competitive prices are offered to customers in the foreign market. Within the scope of the green consensus, we plan to prevent the waste of consumables by completely transforming our production facility into a digital system. In this context, we face important opportunities to export to European countries.

How have fluctuations in global supply chain management and challenges in procurement processes affected your company's production and export operations? What are the strategies you have implemented against these challenges?

In 2020, with the start of the pandemic process, the economies of countries around the world had a difficult time. Especially the aggressive increases in raw material and commodity costs created a negative atmosphere all over the world, especially in developing countries. In 2021, although a rapid recovery process was initiated with the results of vaccine studies and pandemic incentives, the continued spread of more contagious Covid-19 variants on a global and regional scale, as a factor weakening the recovery, was an indicator that risks continued. In Turkey, domestic policy preferences have led to high exchange rate volatility since 2021. Until 2023, the February earthquake and the election process affected the economic fluctuations. With the disruptions in raw material production due to the pandemic worldwide, transportation in the supply chain has become an important problem.

Today, drone and missile attacks on international ship trade in the Yemen region in the Red Sea, where 12 percent of world trade takes place, have negatively affected the global trade flow. Ships coming through the Red Sea either had to set a new route from the south of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope or cancel their voyages due to security risks. The new route extended the travel time by two weeks. The almost 4-fold increase in freight rates had a negative impact on costs.

Although negativities are seen, the proximity of our country's geography to Europe and the lower costs compared to the Far East may lead to new opportunities.

Finally, what is your company's vision for the next 10 years in the elevator industry? What are the key strategies you have identified to achieve this vision?

As Küçük Group; we are one of the domino stones of the sector with the innovative approaches we bring to the sector, which keeps pace with change, attaches importance to innovation and R&D studies and plans its investments in this direction. We pursue a policy of continuously contributing to the national economy by producing without compromising on quality, sales and after-sales support policy. In the next 5 years, we aim to increase the share of our exports in our total turnover to over 50 percent and to be among Turkey's top 500 industrial enterprises. We continue to move forward by renewing on this path without deviating from our goal.