What is the export trend in the new normal?
Covid-19 pandemic dramatically slowed down a number of export markets including our strategic markets especially in March due to both curfews and lockdowns and the closing of malls. We had delays in operational processes, as well. Our stable export trend in March-April, when the negative impacts of Covid-19 were quite obvious, started to have a swift recovery in May-June through dominantly online marketing activities. In early May with the controlled normalization process, the markets re-opened and processes sped up with an upward momentum in turnover. Especially as country-wide quarantines began to get loose, long-closed sales channels re-opened and consumers started to buy their needs they had been postponing, the volume and traffic in sales points went up. Since Turkey’s industrial infrastructure in all the sectors is quite strong from the east of Germany to the west of China, I believe the export potential is also massive.

What are the actions Arzum is taking to adapt to the new normal?
In this period of time, we take careful steps as everybody else does. We keep on investing and innovating. We take on the challenges created by the pandemic, and try to turn them into opportunities and continue with our operations and plannings from where we left off. We even keep on bringing new collections and new products to our consumers. As a response to this period, we launched Arzum Natura series keeping in mind people’s longing for nature.

To what degree do you think the changes in consumer demands during the pandemic will last?
We think that the consumers’ habits for healthy eating, prefering food to boost their immune system, getting active and caring for personal and domestic hygiene will become permanent in the “new normal.” We also predict that consumers will continue to base their shopping strategies on function, benefit, and price. Social and environmental awareness and new sustainability expectations that rose during the pandemic will, we suspect, be permanent. We will support our customers with new products and services respecting all these considerations.

While we 'Stayed Home,' consumers met their needs via e-commerce. How active is e-commerce in the business of small home appliances?The pandemic has shown us once again how important investing in e-commerce is. The small home appliances business is already pretty active in e-commerce. Consumers are honest about this. During Covid-19, using multiple channels and shopping via e-commerce in social isolation have gone up dramatically. As a sector, we are in luck; however, we are among the businesses that have invested in online operations more than off-line operations in years. We reaped the fruits of the investments we have done so far. We had been working on Arzum App for a while and completed our processes in this period. We launched Arzum app for our customers in the past months. We keep on investing in the business. For instance, we set up a vehicle fleet specifically for our e-commerce channel. With this fleet, we will avert any potential logistic setbacks when demands get higher.

Considering Turkey’s location, what do you think should businesses focus on in the aftermath of Covid-19?
Turkey, being in the junction of 3 continents and surrounded by seas from 3 sides, has a logistic upper hand. Additionally, she stands out as the strongest in terms of the region’s road and airline transport. Therefore, I think that Turkey will advance drastically in terms of logistic and production power in the upcoming years. I find it significant that we take on operations that feature our cultural values from the past strategically; for instance, we managed to have our Turkish coffee listed in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List in December 2013. We should also invest in technology and have our strength from the past ready for the future.