Podcast
When the lockdowns closed the office, our warehouse sales days moved to a live broadcast. Once a month from April 2020 to June 2021, fifteen episodes — all still up, each with a summary below.
How the industry's margins eroded, where domestic manufacturing stalled, where the supply chain broke. Candid conversations with colleagues that have not lost their relevance.
Created by: Alpay Küçük and Reha Kurtuluş
The season finale, the fifteenth broadcast. Four fifths of a door is metal, input costs multiplied, door prices stood still — no firm sustains that by undercutting the next one by five per cent. Alkur's founding idea: learn a product the country lacks, localise it, turn the import into an export.
The fourteenth broadcast. When an imported finished panel costs less than the sheet steel bought to produce it: the unsustainability of exporting raw material and buying the processed product back. Choosing to rebuild the Hendek production layout rather than push sales while prices swing.
The thirteenth broadcast. Successive rises in sheet steel, polyurethane and plastic feedstock that never reached door prices. The dealer structure planned for the second half of the year: exclusive representation city by city. And on the r-tec side, a single 24 VDC board that runs the whole garden range.
The March 2021 broadcast. Why sheet steel and polyurethane prices multiplying while door prices stand still cannot hold. The continuing dependence on imported steel, copper, aluminium, plastics and printed circuit boards, and a proposal for a common price list.
The four things that decide whether a firm changes brands: quality, availability, spare parts and price. The idea of turning units removed in the field into a zero-cost spare parts stock. An observation on how well a digital trade fair suits this industry.
The first episode with a guest; the product agenda with the technical sales lead. A universal remote that can learn other brands' remotes, hardware and software work on remote range, standardised board settings, and the r-technic mobile app that works without an internet connection.
Closing 2020. How raw material prices doubling in a matter of months makes export planning impossible. Most boards returned from the field turning out to be repairable, and an open invitation to experienced people who had left the industry.
Introducing the r-technic support portal: installation videos, wiring diagrams and technical data for every product, in Turkish and English, in one place. How exchange-rate instability makes cost — and therefore the selling price — impossible to fix.
Broadcast from the Hendek factory at a gathering with industry representatives, on the plant's eleventh anniversary. "Every factory is a fortress" as a guiding line, and the current account deficit. How sheet-thickness clauses written into tender specifications create unfair competition.
Twenty-seven years of change in the industry: from installing American and European doors to exporting doors to Europe and America. A critique of competing by cutting prices rather than raising quality, and the growing need for common sense as margins fall.
The format of the broadcast and the production timeline: panels in 2005, industrial electrics in 2006-2007, remote and shutter boards in 2007-2008, the r-tec umbrella in 2012. Product development discipline: test in-house, run a field beta with colleagues, take the feedback, then go to series production.
Working philosophy, and an open admission of mistakes. The "cards that came back like coal" story from twenty years as a European brand's distributor: fitting a new product without learning it, then blaming the product. Why the line between consumer-grade and professional-grade duty classes matters.
The right question in the localisation debate: not where the components come from, but where the added value is created. The difference between a firm that manufactures and a three-person import office. Why arguing for domestic production is not a way of steering customers to one brand.
The whole world's dependence on Asia for electronic intermediate goods, and why investing in those goods matters. The call to "add one domestic brand alongside yours": every seller carrying at least one local manufacturer. Building a dealer network selectively, the technical video archive and a deliberately plain price list.
The first episode. How the warehouse sales days held on the last Wednesday of every month in Istanbul moved to a live broadcast under lockdown — on the fifteenth anniversary of Turkey's first domestically produced sectional door panel. Eroding margins, the pressure created by the race to the cheapest, and problems collecting payment.
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