Regarding the export activities in 2020, Stefanos Parizyanos, General Manager of Istanbul Ila Elevator said; ‘‘I would like to start by saying that our company has achieved or even exceeded its export targets this year under the current pandemic conditions’’ and stated that the primary reason for this was the increase in orders on the basis of the country and company they currently work in.

Stefanos Parizyanos stated that, “Since the companies we work with are satisfied with us and the elevators we send, this situation is reflected as an increase in new orders. We reap the fruits of the designs we have built by combining the right engineering and designing projects with quality products. In addition, we signed a partnership agreement with a company outside the sector in Libya at the beginning of this year. This firm has taken its position in the Libyan elevator sector with firm steps by investing in a showroom, website, social media and engineer team related to elevators in Benghazi and Tripoli cities. We are happy that we were able to receive the positive feedback of this joint work during this year, when Libya was experiencing serious problems. In terms of exports, we can count countries such as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Libya, Iraq, India and Lebanon. The country where we work most actively in European countries is Serbia and partly Greece. Since our exports to European countries are very low, one of our goals this year was to obtain a product type certificate for our package elevators and to receive more orders from this region. We have almost achieved this goal these days as we entered the last month of the year. Our package product designs and tests are almost completed, and our certificate shall be issued soon.

Stefaos Parizyanos continued his words as follows: “My personal background in the sector is over 20 years, but my firm dates back to the past 6 years. Export continuity and branding are the phenomena that proceed in parallel. Branding should not be considered only as branding by the firms, branding of Turkey is more important! Every company should consider this as a priority. My personal belief and view is that the better the perception of ‘Made in Turkey’ is managed, the more positive return shall be. The perception of being always the cheapest shall not always help us achieve positive results in the long run. The most important point to carry the ‘Turkish Brand’ perception to a higher level in order to increase the added value and profitability of the products or package elevators we produce. Our first goal in 2021 is to provide better service to our existing customers and to ensure that they receive more orders. For this reason, we invested in our engineering and design programs, increased our quality control in our contract manufacturing, concluded agreements with better business partners and aimed to bring the price-quality ratio to the most appropriate level.

"As everyone knows, when our sector is concerned, market intensity is in developing countries and reconstructed countries."
As everyone knows, when our sector is concerned, market intensity is in developing countries and reconstructed countries. Since these regions generally work in a price-oriented manner, the value-added sales provided by these countries remain limited. Even though selling to these countries is perceived as gaining from the demand, it can tire your production structure. However, exports to countries with high added value both direct you to more technological, innovative, engineering-prominent productions, and enable you to improve your firm and stand out through the added value it provides. When we examine this year in which so much negativity was experienced, our company shall close the year with an increase of 20%. This is a great success for us. Our increase in terms of export is also close to this. Through our satisfied customers that we gained in exports in 2020, I think our increase in exports in 2021 shall surpass the increase in the domestic market. In addition, I believe that 2021 shall be a good year if some of our newly designed products that we plan to launch in the domestic market with our own brand contribute in line with our goals. The only thing i can say about the kind of work that should be done to improve our exports as a sector is that every exporter company should keep the brand equity of "Made in Turkey" as the the priority. In order to achieve this, we need to use technology more beneficially, manage the production processes well, be reliable, keep customer satisfaction as the priority and stop working with the focus on prices.