IT WAS A FIRST IN TURKEY WITH ITS LEMON COLOGNE
Could you tell us about yourself and the origin story of your company?
“My grandfather Eyüp Sabri Tuncer, who was born in 1898 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, immigrated to Istanbul with his family at a young age and then came to İnegöl. After losing his father in a very short time, he started his business life at a young age, and after gaining experience for a few years, he started his first works by opening a store in İnegöl. With the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, it opens its store, which was called bonmarşe, in the capital Ankara, in order to continue its activities. Eyup Sabri Tuncer was a disciplined, hardworking, honest and entrepreneurial. He prefers to give the brand his own name in order to make his customers feel that he is someone he can always consult. He carries out promotional activities and marketing activities, which we did not see very often at that time, and prepares catalogs that he personally drew. It promotes its colognes, called lotions, free of charge, by placing coupons behind these special catalogs. He also tells about where it is sold and its usage area by pouring cologne into the hands of the arriving passengers at the Ankara Train Station at the same time. In this way, queues begin to form in front of our Ulus store, laying the solid foundations of our journey that has continued until today.
In the 1950s, my father Sabahattin Tuncer started his business life and assumed the responsibility of the family business. Essences used in colognes were imported from abroad at that time. My father, who is interested in plants and essence production, writes letters to big companies abroad, conducts research on essences and starts to acquire resources with all his means. With a reply from a Swiss-based essence company to one of the letters he wrote, months later, the foundation of domestic essence studies is laid. In 1967, his essence studies yielded results and he developed his own lemon cologne formula, breaking new ground in Turkey. It starts to produce the first local lemon cologne essence formula of our country. There is a serious decrease in our raw material prices with domestic essence production, and this is reflected in the prices of cologne. Again, there is a period in which queues form in front of our store and our sales are affected positively. By expanding these works, it adds different essences for scented colognes, and the increase in this diversity creates a serious increase in our production capacity. As the third generation, I took over the task from my father Sabahattin Tuncer in 1994. A year later, we established a highly modern, fully computer-based production facility with a high production capacity on an area of 7000 m2 Lalahan, Ankara. The increase in our production capacity also formed the basis of our search for new products and markets. We added personal care products and home care products as well as cologne, which constitutes our main product category, and delivered all of our products to the world under our own brand. We have achieved many firsts in a short time. We have included Braille Alphabet for the blind in our products. We became the first cosmetics brand in Turkey to have a vegan and vegetarian certificate. We were among the first signatories in the cosmetics industry under the umbrella of the United Nations Global Compact. As a 99-year-old family company, it is very important for us to preserve our values and carry them to the future. In this sense, I can say that we are both traditionalist and innovative.”
What are your product types?
“We add a new one to our product categories every year. Apart from our products in the cologne category, which is the starting point of our brand, which has become a classic and has reached everyone for four generations, we continue to offer various products in the personal care and home care categories. While we carry our brand to the future, we always pay attention to listen to our customers and understand their needs. We continue to develop our product range according to the needs. We are advancing step by step towards our goal of a world brand with our exports to seven continents under our own brand, of more than 600 product types that we currently offer in different categories.
With the awareness that new product development is a long-term process that requires care and time, we continue to develop new products with the appreciation and guidance of our consumers. Our brand, which has made an impact in a new category with fluoride, titanium dioxide, sls, sles, paraben, sugar, salt, dye-free toothpastes in recent years, offers paraben -free and gluten-free liquid soap, body lotion, shampoo, baby products, etc., with vegan and vegetarian certificates. We constantly invest in product development with our personal care products, and fully respond to the evolving and changing needs of society. In the home care category; surface cleaner, kitchen soap, room fragrances, baby laundry liquid and disinfectant products. We are also making an important innovation in the sector with our gluten-free products, which we developed with the demands and sensitivities of our users with celiac disease.”
“BRINGING THE CONCEPTIONS OF ISTANBUL AND SCENTS TOGETHER FOR US WAS AN ESSENTIAL APPROACH”
In the cologne field, your category called “The Scents of Istanbul” is at the forefront. What was your inspiration for the emergence of this category? What way did you adopt?
“Our country has a very rich infrastructure in terms of cultural values and heritage. Istanbul is the only city in the world that combines many values. As you know, a world city, everything about Istanbul is unique and admirable. We decided to bring together a deep-rooted and special city with a brand like us, which has been working on fragrance for 100 years. Thanks to this, our product series “The Fragrances of Istanbul” was launched. Our source of inspiration is undoubtedly Istanbul and its historical beauties. It was an indispensable approach for us to bring together the concepts of Istanbul and fragrance. We planned it to be a product that will be sold at the gates of Turkey that opens to the outside, and that foreigners can take to their loved ones as a gift. We positioned our product in these areas. In our cologne series, we have 12 different varieties that stand out with their scents ranging from Galata to the Maiden’s Tower, from Topkapı Palace to the Spice Bazaar. It has been a highly acclaimed series since the first day it was put on the market.”
You are a company that adopts the understanding of “cultural value”. What strategy do you pursue towards this understanding?
“Our founding date is 1923. As a 100-year-old brand, we think that we carry cultural values together with the commercial equivalents of our long-term works, the products we produce, and the relationships we develop in the business world. In fact, every brand acquires and develops corporate culture elements over the years. If your roots go back a hundred years, your savings provide value and difference. Eyüp Sabri Tuncer brand blends tradition, culture and values with innovation while moving forward. For this, we closely follow the trends and studies in the world, especially in recent years, we have been focusing on digital transformation. In order to make original works, you need to internalize your cultural values and keep up with the future at the center of all these works. I am also the Chairman of the Board of the Centennial Brands Association, of which 100-year-old brands in Turkey are members. Together with all our members under the umbrella of the association, we are making projects that will carry our historical and cultural values to the future.”
Can you tell us about your products that you can describe as “our consumers’ favorites”? What do you think is the biggest reason for choosing this product?
“This is a difficult question for us. Because our customers have different favorites in each category. A situation supported by the research results is that we are the first brand that comes to mind when talking about cologne. While our classic lemon cologne, which has been at the forefront among our colognes for a hundred years, constitutes the cornerstone of our brand, I can say that in recent years our customers have shown high interest in our different scented colognes, which we call scented colognes.
In addition, our natural olive oil liquid soap and natural olive oil hand and body lotion products, which have been admired in the market for many years, are also among the favourites. Recently, our toothpaste products that contain natural extracts and do not contain fluoride, titanium dioxide, sls, salt, dye, paraben, gluten are among our products that have been highly appreciated by our customers. We take on a role that adds and develops innovation, instead of being involved with standard products that are always available in the market and have the same ingredients. Therefore, our products decompose easily on the shelf and are welcomed by our customers.”
WE REPRESENT ALL THE BEAUTY OF THE COUNTRY’S HISTORY AND CULTURE IN THE INTERNATIONAL AREA
What about your export activities?
“Currently, we are exporting to more than 70 countries with our product range of more than 600. From America to Korea, from Europe to Mauritius, we bring people from different geographies together with our products. We have hundreds of different sales points at home and abroad. The number of countries and sales points is increasing day by day. We attach great importance to international fairs in particular, we participate in all fairs in the world, which are important for our industry. Our brand and products attract great attention and are welcomed at the fairs where we open stands. Representing our country and our brand in this way in the world always honors us and enables us to develop our goals to do better. In this sense, we have the mission to represent all the beauties of our country’s history and culture in the international arena.”
As Eyüp Sabri Tuncer brand, when you consider the Personal Care sector, how do you evaluate the production and consumption volume in this area?
“As an important brand in the cosmetics industry in a period of almost 100 years, I can say that we are in an industry that has an advantageous position. When we examine the data in the world, it is predicted that the cosmetics industry will reach 760 billion dollars in 2025. In our country, as can be seen from the reports of the Ministry of Commerce, it is a sector that grows by 10 percent every year. We have all seen that the need for hygiene products has increased during the pandemic period, especially while personal care and home care products are among the sine qua non of our lives. We have become a sector that is not adversely affected by changing consumer habits in such difficult times. As we have limited resources in terms of raw material production, we have seen together how important domestic production is in this period of increased consumption. However, when we examined this process in terms of our brand, we saw that digitalization and having an automation system are of great importance. Thanks to our good digital infrastructure and the fact that we have automation systems, we are in a volume and position that can easily meet the big demands in hygiene products in the sector.”
What do you think about MG International Fragrance Summit which was held for the first time this year?
“MG International Fragrance Summit, which was held for the first time on the World Fragrance Day, we had the opportunity to meet with many names from the world of fragrance and outside the industry. I would like to state that the MG International Fragrance team, which provided me the opportunity to participate as a speaker under the titles of “Everything About Fragrance” and “Timeless Fragrances”, carried out a very successful event in cooperation with Marketing Turkey. In my opinion, holding such meetings which gather people or organizations with a common denominator from different sectors will lead to an awareness in the fragrance sector and thus will provide development to the sector.”