From Tailoring to Manufacturing: How a Sector Grew Up
Published:
Publisher: Alkur Kapı Sistemleri A.Ş.
By: Reha Kurtuluş
Alkur’s journey had distinct distribution, assembly and manufacturing stages. The chronology records the 1993 foundation, 1999 assembly using imported panels and mechanisms, the Tuzla factory in 2004 and domestic panel production in 2005. The tailoring image describes our company’s learning path.
We do not tell this as a flaw; nobody is born a manufacturer. Every industrial branch begins learning by assembling what someone else has made. The question is whether you stay on that step.
The tailoring years
There is a step above installation, and we are not shy to name it: tailoring. Importing the parts separately and cutting the door to measure here — the fabric from abroad, the cut from us. We did this for a long time, and we owe those years a great deal: tailoring taught us the door’s anatomy by heart. Which track tires under which load, how many cycles a spring truly lasts, where a panel sweats — these are learned not from a catalogue but at the cutting table.
But a tailor has a limit: he cannot weave the fabric. The most critical layer of quality keeps being decided in someone else’s factory.
Starting to weave the fabric
We crossed that limit step by step. First the tracks were brought into domestic production; in 2005 the first domestically produced sectional door panel came off our presses; in time a substantial part of the profiles moved onto our own lines as well. In those same years the need itself was changing: yesterday’s luxury became the standard first of housing compounds and villas, then of industrial facilities. As the sector stretched from the private garage door to logistics sites with loading bays, staying a tailor had already become impossible — the chronology of our thirty-plus years of manufacturing is really the chronology of that necessity.
Growing manufacturing responsibility
Product and site knowledge from distribution helped inform manufacturing investment. Production brought wider design and file responsibilities. That choice does not mean imported products are poor or importers irresponsible; models have their own manufacturing and service arrangements.
Our next steps were new families and infrastructure. Experience helps ask better questions of the next product. Current quality and conformity still need the product’s own documents.
