Amazon in talks to enter Turkish market for home textile products

E-commerce is growing rapidly in the world, but in Turkey it is in its initial stage. Amazon, a global e-commerce giant is in talks with the Ministry of Economy to enter the Turkish market. Amazon is very big in the U.S. and Europe and has, recently, been very pleased with their structuring in China and India, as well as Brazil. According to Amazon, Turkey will be the next successful market.

Amazon met Turkish exporters and visited home textile companies. Amazon officials presented possible ways of cooperation and also provided information regarding trading methods in the Amazon platform.

Top executives of Luxembourg-based Amazon Europe, including Shibu Thrakan, Otavio Alves, Krishna Murali and Gül Sönmez, who were hosted with support from Turkey’s Ministry of Economy, met Thursday with exporters from the Denizli Exporters’ Union (DENÄ°B)

Thrakan said that Turkish companies can be involved in the Amazon platform under the Amazon brand or with exclusive brands and products they will develop specifically for the platform.

Highlighting Turkey’s favorable geographical location, Thrakan said that the availability of daily shipments to almost every point in Europe is an important advantage.

DENİB Chairman Süleyman Kocasert said that they expect Amazon EU to quickly increase its purchases from Denizli within a short period of time.
Kocasert said, added that cooperation with Amazon platform will provide essential increase for the country’s trade.

There have recently been very positive developments regarding Amazon’s point of view toward Turkey. Turkey has a strong potential for e-commercial business. Amazon noticed that as well.

Kocasert noted that e-commerce has a share of less than 5 percent in the total exports of the home textile sector. They aim to increase e-commerce infrastructure by two, three or even fourfold. In the next three years, the share of e-commerce in Denizli’s total trade volume will increase above 5 percent and they will be talking about two-digit figures for 2023.

Denizli is a center for Turkey’s home textiles production. Products from the city are exported to 165 countries worldwide. Turkey is also one of the largest home textile suppliers of Europe. The overall home textile exports in 2015 were recorded at $3 billion, and the major markets for exports were Germany, the U.S., U.K., France and Russia.

Amazon.com is a U.S.-based e-commerce and cloud computing company, founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994, in Seattle, and it is on Forbes’ most innovative companies list. Operating with 341,000 employees worldwide with annual sales of $135 billion, the company’s market value for 2017 is $427 billion.

According to recent figures, the city’s towel exports to the U.S. increased by 23 percent during the first eight months of the year and were recorded at $55 million compared to the same period last year.