The founder of the world-famous “Sony” corporation Akio Morita has said: “Man does not know what he wants until he is shown this”. It is this formula that the modern-day business abides by, a business that in conditions of globalization has turned the entire world into one huge market, with circulations of colossal goods and capital flows, and has made the exhibition business an independent industry with a turnover running into billions of dollars.
Today exhibitions are not just an element of marketing and a kind of route reconnaissance in the run-up to commodity invasion. Today exhibitions indicate the speed of national economic development, they are barometers predicting economic change in a given country. Every year all of the world continents hold exhibitions of any kind and scale, from large international ones, featuring products by hundreds of companies and staged in the areas of thousands of square metres, to local exhibitions that are supposed to provide information for local trading firms. But whatever the size or status, an exhibition is always a compass and a sail for entire regions to take their bearings and follow the course of business priorities in their economic development efforts.
“Turkel” was set up in 1993, and in just five years the company decided to focus on arranging narrowly specialized exhibitions of Turkish-made goods and equipment in the following areas: construction, fabrics, ready-made garments, leatherwear, the light industry equipment.
Although “Turkel” was set up only recently, it has strong business positions. It leads the 24 Turkish companies, licensed by the national government to stage exhibitions, in the area coverage, the frequency of arranging exhibitions and the size of exhibition space.
To date “Turkel” has held exhibitions in 25 countries on the four continents, with the exception of Australia, the number of exhibitor companies has topped 6,000, while the overall exhibition space has made up 145,000 square metres. Since it was set up, “Turkel” has arranged exhibitions in Hungary, Greece, Ghana, Denmark, Israel, Spain, Kenya, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and other countries.
The biggest in its class international exhibition of fur- and leatherwear “LeShow”, which is annually staged in Moscow, is a kind of the company’s business card.
The leading Turkish companies in other business sectors, and also foreign companies are happy to cooperate with “Turkel”. The company database contains some 35,000 addresses and telephone numbers of potential exhibitors, whose interests and wishes are a must for “Turkel” project managers.
For a company to become successful, it should carefully plan its performance. So, before “Turkel’s” Board of Directors takes a decision on holding a certain exhibition, as well as on the exhibition status, the company’s specially designated unit carries out a market research of a given country or area. The company normally has plans for a year ahead, and today “Turkel” has a clear idea of what exhibitions it will stage in 2012. The company usually holds an average of 17 exhibitions per year, - that’s “Turkel’s” annual output, with one exhibition normally added to the figure every year plus the company opens up one more area every year. Turkel sees Russia as one of its top priorities so in order to coordinate all its business there, Turkel long ago setup a liason Office in Moscow. Personnel, too, must match the new task standards. – Originally the central office was run by only 8 managers, but today the combined personnel of the central office and the Moscow branch makes up almost 100 employees.
