Çorap Sanayicileri Derneği Yayını
Yıl 9   Sayı 28   Eylül/Ekim 2009

DA KONG HAS FULL CONFİDENCE IN TURKISH MARKET

PFD Dosyası İçin Tıklayınız

Mithat Aracı

Established 1956 in Taiwan 53 years ago, Da kong has reached 2,500 machine production capacity by exporting to over 40 countries mainly China, Turkey, Indonesia, Thailand and South Africa.  Da Kong entered into Turkish market about 15 years ago in 1994.  In order to exploit Turkish market’s full potential, Da Kong established its own representative office at the beginning of 2004.  Mainly after 2004, Da Kong sold over 1,500 machines to 50 firms and considers Turkey among its most important market.   

Being sponsor of the CSD iftar dinner on August 25, 2009, we interviewed Charles Chao about Da Kong’s latest projects and the Turkish socks industry and its place in the world.

How do you think the Turkish and world socks industry is affected by the global crisis ?

Before responding your question, I would like to congradulate Mr. Hüseyin Özturk for being the CSD head.  I am sure that the Turkish socks industry will benefit deeply from the work of Hüseyin bey and the CSD board members.

Returning to your question, starting from the financial sector at the end of 2008, global crisis later on spread to the real industry and resulted in an excess capacity all over the world. This has quickly reduced the real industry investments.  Parallel to the world, we are recently experiencing a small increase in machine investment in the Turkish socks industry. This is an indication that Turkey has already seen the bottom of the crisis and started showing signals of recovery.

Turkey in 2009 has started to benefit from its proximity to the European market.  In addition, due to the financial constrains of the European buyers that have been forced to work with low inventory levels, Turkey has started to enjoy last minute orders. On the other hand, Chinese socks producers, on the contrary to Turkey’s producers, are able to compancate their export sales losses by concentrating on their massive domestic market.

How does the global crisis affect Da Kong ?

In chinese, crisis is described by Wei and Ji characters that represent “danger” and “opportunity”. This means that a well managed crisis can easily be turned into an opportunity. With this idea, in the first half of 2009 in order to place Da Kong to a higher level in international markets, we established a company called Sunrise in Brescia, Italy. This new investment will not only help us to design our own control box but will also bring us closer to the new Italian socks machine technologies.  With the help of a group of Italian technicians that has already started working with Da Kong, we started several project that the Turkish and World socks market will surely benefit from. The advantages of this investment to the Turkish socks industry will be machines of a more advanced technology at an affordable price.  Among the projects already started, we launched the first in the world 8 color (7+1) capable socks machine in Turkey along with the world markets in September 2009. 

Why is the Turkish market important for Da Kong ?

The Turkish market is important for Da Kong because the Turkish market is among the markets that produces the highest quality socks in the world. Lately, Da Kong’s successfull sales performance and market share increase in Turkey was due to its better quality, price and service compare to other European machines. I have observed the fact that Da Kong has filled the gap for the search of a high quality machine with an affordable price segment that produces quality socks Turkey requires. 

I am sure within a year, we will all see a different and better Da Kong. With its new Italian image, I trully believe Da Kong will strengthen its position in the Turkish market once the crisis ends and socks machine investment starts.