Making Up

ISTANBUL — Attending a Turkish fashion trade fair has become a complicated business over the past year, but finally the industry has banded together to launch a definitive showcase for the Turkish ready-to-wear sector. Sort of.

Shortly after two rival summer shows divided exhibitors and visitors for the second time in a year, industry leaders decided that the confusion could not continue and announced their backing for a single twice-yearly show.

Provisionally called the IF Istanbul Moda Show, the event, organized by the IF Council of apparel associations, will make its debut Feb. 8 to 10 at the CNR Expo.

“The sector has enough problems and even enemies targeting it from the outside. At such a critical time, we need to support each other with ever-greater strength,” said Reha Erekli, the new head of the 14-member IF Council, referring to the setbacks suffered by the Turkish apparel industry due to the rise of China as well as high taxes and unfavorable exchange rates at home.

The division last year into two rival fairs — one established edition run by IF at the TUYAP exhibition center, the other, CNR’s newly organized Istanbul Moda Show, held at its own halls and backed by the powerful Istanbul Textile and Apparel Exporters’ Association (ITKIB) and Trade Minister Kürsad Tüzmen — could not have come at a worse time for the Turkish clothing sector.

Although the latest figures released by the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly (TIM) show improvement over recent performances, they disguise an industry struggling to transform even while it is still protected by a three-year extension of some quotas on Chinese goods until 2008. Textile exports rose by 17.4 percent and rtw by almost 3 percent through the third quarter.

Last year, Turkish rtw exports stood at $13.4 billion and textiles at $5.5 billion, with more than 70 percent of that going to European countries. Statistics suggest those numbers are likely to rise further this year.

But behind the rise in numbers lies a shrinking sector, as smaller players unable to compete either on quality or price go under while a lucky few manage to raise the bar to higher-quality, higher-priced goods and brand recognition. The textile and clothing sector, once the engine of Turkey’s exports, is no longer its biggest money earner.

Suleyman Orakcioglu, leader of Istanbul’s rtw exporters and a powerful ITKIB figure, is optimistic about Turkey’s prospects, but complains that the environment for investment here is poor. “We can see that not enough investment is being made in the areas of producing value-added goods and developing new technologies. There is a need for cooperation between the sector and the state,” he said.

Umut Oran, former president of the International Apparel Federation, suggested that, in their panic to compete with China’s plans to double exports in five years, Turks were not making the best use of their resources. “Every manufacturer should not turn to fashion design and not every designer should invest in production. There is a need to combine forces,” he said.

The two rival fairs failed to harness still-limited outside interest in Turkish labels and tarnished both the image and performance of the emerging Made in Turkey marquee, which received a boost from events such as ITKIB’s New York (Jan. 23 to 24), Milan (Feb. 14 to 16) and London (April 3 to 4) fashion fabric exhibitions.

Last year, halls at both venues displayed an embarrassing amount of unclaimed space. CNR went overboard at its Istanbul Moda Show to promote top designers and signed most of the bigger local brands, including women’s line Ipekyol and men’s label Damat, but had few categories and didn’t live up to the hype. IF showed a wider variety of products at TUYAP but lacked the support of standout labels. The resulting exhibition was a mishmash of children’s wear, knitwear and underwear, crowding out disparate women’s and men’s wear lines.

“The recent disagreements…have begun to prevent our sector from showing its true strength, both in terms of content and in terms of trade,” Turkish apparel trade bodies said in a joint statement.

So it is with great enthusiasm that the organizers of the new fair attack their task.

“I expect all eyes to be on this fair. This one will be a show of strength,” said Gul Orundas, international marketing manager at CNR Expo.

The advertising budget for this show is nearly four times that of Istanbul Moda Show, at around $1 million, and a big media campaign is being promised, targeting Europe, the U.S., Russia and the Middle East. The number of exhibition halls will increase to six from four at the previous Istanbul Moda Show. The number of categories will rise to include sections such as underwear, knitwear and accessories, while categories including eveningwear and plus sizes will expand; the number of catwalk shows also will increase. Potential exhibitors are being groomed in order to make the best possible impression, as well.

With Trade Minister Tüzmen and ITKIB now backing the joint show — after playing instrumental roles in the original split — the new Istanbul show seems to be a big reunion.

However, industry followers were surprised to learn that, after all the news conferences and trumpeting of unity, a show will still go ahead at TUYAP on Aug. 23 to 26.

“We have been running the fashion fair for eight years, and we are just continuing to do our job,” said TUYAP’s Basak Ozugergin, who acknowledged that the big backers were not, for the moment, going with them.

The lengthy debate over venue, the lack (so far) of a name and the announcement that in 2008 both organizers would again be free to bid to host Istanbul’s main fashion show indicate that uncertainties remain about the future of Turkish fashion exhibitions.

This could herald trouble, diverting attention yet again from the job of improving the product at hand. Many visitors to both of last year’s shows said much remained to be done before they would be impressed, from bringing forward the season on display and imposing more stringent standards on the exhibitors to many individual brands styling their fashions away from the overt tastes of Turkey’s current biggest client, Russia, to produce a more widely appealing international look.