Jimmy Key

Günseli Ünlütürk 
Jimmy Key | Member of the Board of Directors

"Nebim Solutions make our company stronger."

Günseli Ünlütürk, Member of the Board of Directors of Jimmy Key talked about the young adult apparel industry, their targets for 2012 and their collaboration with Nebim. Jimmy Key is focused on casual chic. Ünlütürk said that they follow the world fashion and create different collections, comfortable and chic pieces with a lot of options. They intend to do more than what is expected in order create a collection that remains young.

As a company whose vision is differentiation in young adult fashion, how do you assess the young adult apparel market today?

In Turkey where the majority of the population is young, the young adult apparel industry is continuously growing. Therefore, many foreign brands are investing or waiting for an opportunity to invest in our country. Turkey with its large young population has become the most important market for many foreign brands. We think that this market will continue to grow.

In the meantime, one interesting trend that we see in the young adult fashion lately is that they like to combine casual looks with more classical styles. Since Jimmy Key emphasizes casual elegance in its collections, young people prefer our brand.

Can you tell us about the customer profile of Jimmy Key?

Since we are an Izmir-born brand, we have a young and energetic identity and style that invigorates us and our target market. Therefore we have targeted 20-35 year old men and women who love themselves, love fashion and who want to be comfortable, yet elegant at any time of day. While preparing our collections, we followed the global fashion trends and tried to blend what we saw with our own ideas to create our own designs. We are trying to exceed expectations by creating a collection that offers active wear, casual wear and business casual styles that can remain youthful. In the meantime, in order to succeed in foreign markets and regional sales we are trying to highlight our global brand identity.

Jimmy Key is one of the private brands accepted into the TURQUALITY Support Program, the world’s one and only government sponsored branding program. How did this come about?

About four years ago we were included, along with 8 other firms from our sector, in the TURQUALITY Support Program. We met all the requirements with utmost care and attention during this process. We especially placed serious investments into our R&D activities. I would say that we are one of the leading brands in R&D in Turkey.

We need to emphasize that the support of the TURQUALITY Program has enabled our growth in foreign markets and facilitated our entrance into new markets. The TURQUALITY Support Program particularly encouraged us to enter the Ukrainian market. We entered this market by opening an office, a showroom and a store in Kiev.Compared to prior periods, our sales in Ukraine grew by 300%.

Also, we benefit from design and advertising support.  In our opinion, this is a well-designed and managed program that gained a lot of importance among Turkish brands.

Can you tell us more about your international operations?

We have stores in Cyprus and Ukraine. In Cyprus, we have four franchises and a company that we established in the second half of 2010; in Ukraine, we have one shop, 11 franchises and more than 30 retail stores. In 2012, starting with Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, we want to open stores and grant franchises in our neighboring countries. In other words, we want to expand into our neighboring countries with whom our trade relations are thriving. As you well know, there is a considerable and unsaturated market and no economic crisis risk at the moment in our neighboring countries. 

How was the year 2011 for Jimmy Key and what are your objectives in 2012?

2011 was a productive and successful year for our exports, for our subsidiaries Sun Tekstil, Ekoten A.Ş. and for our retail brand Jimmy Key. Our export customers continued to increase the share of their fast purchases. In 2011, we invested mainly in shopping malls; we opened stores in existing shopping malls as well as new shopping malls. The increase of our sales points enabled us to reach more consumers. If you invest in the right locations and offer superb service then you can count on getting a positive return on your efforts. Jimmy Key made an impressive progress in 2011, especially in the Ukrainian market.

As a group, we grew our sales by 40% and reached 135 Million Euros in 2011. Almost half of our sales come from exports. We owe this success first and foremost to our experienced and top notch employees, their dedication and hard work day in and day out and finally to our business model in line with our vision we created in 2000.

We can summarize our objectives for 2012 as follows: opening more stores through a franchise system, to reach more consumers at more retail points, and especially opening stores in our neighboring countries

Can you tell us about your Internet sales activities? Since when are you active in online sales? Are the profit levels satisfactory compared to traditional methods?

We have been selling from our own Web site for four years and from third party Web sites for two years. Turkey is in the top ranks of Internet usage among Europe and the rest of the World, and there is still a huge potential in this area. Using social media, it is possible to reach a large audience with little cost. Up to few years ago, consumers had reservations about shopping online. But thanks to improvements in encryption, introduction of virtual cards by the banks, increases in security measures and the entrance of reputable firms with their reliable service, the number of online customers grew substantially. Of course, this affected us as well. Online sales are more profitable because there are neither store nor labor expenses. Also, campaigns can be created and implemented very easily and quickly. The low visual expenses and the accessibility are huge advantages. Factors such as these make the online sales very crucial for us. Currently, our online sales only make up 5% of our total sales; our goal for this year is to increase our online sales to more than 15% of our total sales.

Can you talk about your partnership with Nebim? How long have you been using Nebim products? Which Nebim products and applications are you using? What are the benefits that you achieve?

We have been partnering with Nebim for about 7 years now. We use Nebim extensively for store tracking, retail & wholesale sales, warehouse management, order tracking, CRM, product management and accounting.

The biggest benefit Nebim applications offer is the fact that the whole team can access and check the relevant information instantly, using the same platform. This increases customer satisfaction, productivity of our team and gives us confidence in our strategic as well as daily decisions. The ability to apply the performance system based on measurable criteria to all the departments is the result of flexible and practical reporting from the Nebim Business Intelligence module. In the retail sector, where competition is stiff, the ability to track sales instantly, to get fast data by customer, location, sales staff, product group, product and time basis, makes our company stronger in purchasing, product management and marketing decisions. The productivity of our systems, the ability of periodic measuring and the capability to understand our shortcomings and to offer solutions, enable productivity, profitability and development of our staff.

Nebim CRM and Product Distribution Management are the two applications that we focus on extensively these days and we have started to see the benefits. We can analyze the customer data in detail, plan special activities specific to a region and store, and implement these very quickly. We were able to increase our loyal customer portfolio substantially in this way.

Nebim Gold Solution Partner, Giltaş, in the Aegean Region, reinforces our partnership through their constructive relationship with our team, their progressive and customer-centered approach, their experience in this sector and their guidance, especially in new projects.