Elektroteks poised for exports

Electric electronic brand Elektroteks shipped its competitive goods to 35 different countries in three years.

Established in Bursa in 1990 to render service on electric electronic items, Elektroteks later started to produce spare parts, automation and bed-furniture machinery. Manufacturing almost all machines for the mattress production, Elektroteks has been following up all latest trends and technologies to offer the best. Speaking about their operations, Serkan Guler, Sales Director of the company, claimed that Elektroteks was the best quality manufacturer in East Europe and stated that they were striding to make it one of the most recognized world brands in mattress and quilting machinery manufacturing. Maintaining its place in the domestic market Elektroteks has realized exports to 35 countries in three years and targeted to double its exports in the new year. Pointing out that they manufacture their machines at international standards Guler stressed that their products were of high quality, practical and economical. Following is his responds to the questions of Sleep Tech:

First of all, can you briefly describe yourself?

Yes, of course. My name is Serkan Guler and I am the sales director of Elektroteks. Actually, regardless of the title all of our administration staff are engineers, and we are all involved in R&D, designing etc. That is to say, I more have this title since it has to belong someone. So, in spite of appearance, I am a mechanical engineer and one of the two sons of the founder. On the other hand, I recently graduated from Bogazici University. However, I have been involved in designing, researching, administration, sales and any other aspect of the company activities for years. But of course, from now on, I suppose that I am going to be much more effective as a full time engineer here.

Could you please let us know about the history of Elektroteks?

Elektroteks is a 23-year old software and electronics company. The core business originates from electronic and software solutions to weaving industry. Then in 1995, under the brand of “SAYGER”, Elektroteks started to develop software and control solutions to machinery manufacturing industry in different sectors, such as woodworking, machining centers, water-jets, recycling systems, etc.  Then these developments in control systems bring us into automotive industry as a robotic system integrator to Renault, Honda, Fiat, and so on. So after long years of experience in these fields, somehow we found ourselves as a mattress machinery manufacturer, while we were doing some little stuff for our robotic applications in our machine workshop. Then with a big and increasing demand, we grew in order to meet the demand. Now we are almost 6 times bigger than we were 3 years ago, and this growth is in progress with the same magnitude. I think the key of this success comes from well technical infrastructure (especially in software and electronics capabilities) and quality oriented designing mentality instead of cost oriented one. Although we do not have an active marketing team or people, we started to export 35 different countries in 3 years while we were keeping local market share at the levels of %80-%90 in our products range.

You produce mattress machinery; can you briefly explain the functions of these machines?

We produce almost all the machines for mattress manufacturing industry except spring machinery. We are specialized in single-double needle quilters, mattress production lines, border production lines, hotmelt gluing systems, packing machines, tape edge machines, and so on. They are all simply, what the mattress manufacturers need a group out of them, according to their capacity and products’ range. Besides all, we always develop newer ones, again for mattress industry.

What kind of new projects are in progress for the mattress industry?

Actually, we all the time have new ones, and we are not very slow (actually quiet rapid) in designing and producing new systems.

In the short run, I can put the systems in order like:

Full mattress border production line machines. It is state of the art, all the stations of the border production come together. The line is consisted of, multineedle border quilter, double heads border quilter, full automatic handle sewing and setting, hole drilling, border cutting, and border closing units. The project is fully finished and the production level is about %70. Of course the biggest advantage of the system is the removed labor requirement and the standardization of the product.

Automatic Hemming System, which is used right after quilting machines in order to sew four edges of the panel, then this process will connect the quilting section to mattress production line, with the advantages summarized as easy tape edging, higher quality quilting and availability to work with thicker material for quilting. Of course biggest advantage is the ability to work fully automatic machine without any operator. The design process of the system is almost finished and in a few weeks, the production of the hemming system is going to start.

Finally, in the short run, we have other projects, which are relatively simpler, but they are going to be much more sophisticated than the market has nowadays. They are consisted of some machines for mattress packing and mattress assembly.

When it comes to the long-term projects, we are now in the researching process and we are going to develop some unique designs for mattress production lines and quilting systems in order to standardize and automate the process.

How does process of research and development proceed in Elektroteks?

Actually we do not have any schedule in order to stimulate R&D. We have a technical team of 8 people, 7 out of this 8 are engineers, I do not know how, but I think we were all looking for this kind of team and sector in our lives. For instance, in the evening I go home (usually lately), then I have a dinner, and start to read news, some articles, maybe watch movie, and I somehow find myself watching some videos for mattress production, looking for some specific material to be used in particular project or I remember one problem of a customer, then start to research what have been done, what have not been done, what can be added, what can be removed for this specific issue. In the morning we all come together, and I usually see all the other members have something different to tell, I think we are all same. So, we just start and usually our R&D machines’ production time is not much longer than any standard machines of us. But of course, while we are thinking what we can make, we do not care how the control software can be done, because we always figure it out in couple days at the end of production. This is also one of the biggest powers to develop.

What kind of components do you use for your machines? Do you have any import of the goods?

Machinery manufacturing has a longer supply chain compared to a mattress. That is thy, we work with almost 400 different suppliers ranging from raw materials, numerous mechanical components, electric components, electronic components, motors, control devices, pneumatics, sheet metal suppliers, sewing machines, hotmelt equipment, conveyor belts, and the things that I can remember now. When it comes to the higher volume suppliers, we usually work with the producers who have a branch in Turkey. If they do not have one, we work with main importers of the brands. Especially for complex control systems, servo motors, some high precision mechanical components, sewing machines, we are one of the biggest OEM customers of the suppliers in our field, and we work with high volume and rapid flow stocks. Apart from these, although we always try to minimize the number of specific components on the machine in order for the customer to reach the material everywhere in the world, we import some sewing machines, some electronic components and some advanced alloys for specific points. The countries that we import from are USA, Germany, China, Taiwan and Italy.

Which countries do you export?

When it comes to the export markets, we already have the brand of ELEKTROTEKS in 35 different countries, and this happened in last 3 years only. As a brief list; West and Central Europe (Germany, Spain, Holland, Austria, etc.), Eastern Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, etc.), Russia, Middle East, North Africa, Central Africa, Central Asia and South America are our export markets. That is to say, we have only Far East, Australia, and North-Central America left as regions.

What is your capacity and what is your export share out of the total sales volume?

When it comes to capacity, we have about 30 different machines and they are all make to order products. So it is not very possible to give a capacity for in these circumstances. But the capacity is always increasing and going to be at least double until the next year, now we became 85 inside the company, and keep hiring while trying to automatize our production processes as well. When it comes to the export share, during the year it changes from %65 to %80 depending on the season in terms of sales volume.

How was 2013 for Elektroteks?

2013 was a great year for us, in terms of the growth rate we again doubled both the capacity and demand, and we got into different countries mostly with their one of the most prestigious brands in mattress industry. Also from and aspect of prestige, it was very important for us to send machines to Germany and Spain where our competitors are very strong. Moreover, I see that the mattress industry in Turkey is quiet strong and grows faster among different countries. I really appreciate all of the industry members because of the fact that this makes us be proud when we go to other countries. If we could have played a role in this development, this is the biggest thing that we can possess.

What are your plans for 2014?

For 2014 our main plans can be stated as: increasing the capacity, extending the product range, increasing the functionality of existing products, standards documentation and international branding. In order to implement all these, we already started building the new factory which has 10 000 m² closed and 3 000 m² open area; we already started standardization process; supplied some new components to adapt to existing systems in order to increase the functionality and velocity, and finally we are going to invest in some machinery and computing tools in order to satisfy our engineering and quality control works.

Would you like to say anything to finalize?

I thank you for this interview. I also would like to give my thanks to whom read this interview till the end. I hope all the members of this industry obtain what they aim, and respect all the members of this industry as a new member.