A country that has and maintains global brands is one that has global organizational skills

If you don’t have organizational skills, you cannot create a brand. And without global organization skills, you cannot create a global demand. LC Waikiki, a Turkish brand on this course, has 370 stores in Turkey and 45 stores abroad. And when I say abroad, I don’t mean Northern Cyprus or something. The company opened its first store abroad in Romania. This was followed by Egypt, Albania, Iraq, Kazakhstan, and Poland. LC Waikiki has developed organizational skills. It has been taking firm steps to becoming the Zara or Mango of children’s wear. Does Turkey support the company in becoming a global brand? Not really. On the contrary, it directly sabotages the process of brandization. The latest example was the additional taxes imposed on fabric imports. Turkey is doing wrong, paying attention to the strongest and loudest lobby. The voice of the consumer goes unnoticed.

After I started to see many children wearing LCW products, I made some quick research. I learned it was a Turkish brand. LC stands for Les Copains in French. The original founders of the company were French. The name of the famous Waikiki beach was added later. Thus, the brand name stands for the children of Waikiki beach. It has a concept. In 1988, Taha Tekstil, owned by the Küçük family of Turkey’s Malatya, started working as a subcontractor for Waikiki. Later, they took over the company and LC Waikiki became a Turkish brand. Now they run an entire value chain from design to sales. In the meantime, they are teaching us how a global brand should be. They handle each and every task in the value chain at the lowest cost and highest quality possible. They have the ability to think globally.

A country that has and maintains global brands is one that has global organizational skills, meaning that its companies have global mobility. This has a bundle of prerequisites. In today’s world, having competency in English is one. Second, companies have to know in which country each phase of the value chain should be run. Can you imagine how much information this decision requires? Here is a short list for the readymade garments sector: first, you have to carry out the design for products that match the concept of your brand. This obviously includes R&D activities to develop new types of fabric. After all, readymade garments sector does not necessarily refer to low-technology. The next phase includes the manufacturing and the dyeing of fabric. Then, the fabric is woven and knit. Also, transportation is needed in between each phase. We are talking about a huge network of relationships between several countries. The latest study by TEPAV economist İdil Bilgiç Alpaslan at TEPAV Blog reveals that companies that are able to manage such networks become global brands. And, of course, this network must be managed under a series of time constraints. For instance, the target might be to furnish all stores with new products each month. LC Waikiki is where it is today because it can manage such chain of relationships within a time constraint. This is what can be called a global organizational skill. In brief, Turkey needs more companies like LCW.

Why does Turkey not help such brands flourish? In fact, this entire process allows consumers to buy higher-quality products at lower prices. When designing its industrial policy, however, Turkey pays attention solely to providing investment incentives for a few producers. Why? Because of a pristine ailment of neglecting the consumer. In agricultural policies, in industrial policies, in all. The voice of consumers is dominated by the influence of strong and loud power elites. Would the European Union accession process have lingered for fifty years otherwise? Would brands older than I am still be unrivalled? The obvious answer is no.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 05.02.2013