Arif Varolan, General Manager of Düzey, said: “We are happy with each project that weimplement with Ekin, and we are excited about the projects that we plan to implement in 2024.”
ISTANBUL (AA) – Düzey, a Koç Group company operating in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, has brought together the Ekin brand and its management team at the International Service and Taste Academy (USLA) workshop.
According to the statement released by the company; Arif Varolan, General Manager of Düzey,and the senior management team entered the kitchen with Usla’s Chef Hakan Şen and displayed their skills in the kitchen with the menu prepared with Ekin products.
Ekin, which was promoted this year with the motto ‘Anatolia’s Traditional Flavor Secret’, continues to meet with its fans on the shelves not only as a flavor story, but also as the narrator of Turkish food culture due to its connection to fertile lands, the supporter of local producers with its vision of respect for labor, and the companion of good food culture with its flavor varieties.
Mr. Varolan, General Manager of Düzey, stated that this event was not only a dining experience, but also a meeting point that emphasizes the mission of the Ekin brand and the story behind the taste, and added: “As a team, we expressed the values that lie at the heart of our brand with healthy and creative menus. We are happy with each project that we implement with Ekin, and we are excited about the projects that we will implement in 2024.
Ekin, the growing brand of ‘Düzey’, has signed a delightful collaboration with USLA!
Düzey, the largest sales and distribution company of Koç Holding operating in the fast-moving consumer goods sector in Turkey, continues to grow and..
Düzey, the largest sales and distribution company of Koç Holding operating in the fast-moving consumer goods sector in Turkey, continues to grow and develop its own brand Ekin in the pulses category. We have talked to Ceren Sungu Kutlay, Assistant General Manager of Düzey, about the brand positioning of Ekin and their collaboration with the International Service and Taste Academy (USLA)…
Before we get into the details of your collaboration with USLA, could you tell us a little about the journey of Düzey’s own brand Ekin?
Sure… Before I talk about Ekin, I would like to talk about Düzey, as the largest company of the Koç Holding in the fast-moving consumer goods group. As Düzey family, we have been trying to bring Turkey’s most popular brands together with their fans in the strategically-important food sector for approximately half a century, and we have been maintaining our leadership position in the sector for years by reaching out to nearly 200.000 points all around Turkey with 8 regional directorates, 62 sub-distributors and 70 mobile dealers.
We can say that Ekin is an apple of eye for our Company. It is a brand that meets with itsconsumers with the trust and privilege offered by Düzey. Inspired by the rich gastronomic culture of Anatolia, which has a wide cultural mosaic due to hosting many civilizations from theancient times to the present day, Ekin has taken its place on the shelves with 7 different products in the legume category, including lentils, chickpeas, dry beans, rice and bulgur, which are popular varieties of local gastronomy as an integral part of the Anatolian flavors and food culture. In these days when the healthy eating tendencies of consumers are increasing, we aim to introduce everyone from all age groups with the Ekin pulses, which are a store of vegetable proteins and fibers, highly nutritious and suitable for the taste buds of our nation.
How is the collaboration with USLA? We would like to hear the details of the project from you.
As the Düzey family, we are happy to have re-introduced our 37-year-old brand Ekin to consumers. We have chosen the International Service and Taste Academy (USLA), one of Düzey’s most important customers in the field of Out-of-Home Consumption, to conduct all marketing activities for our long-established brand. We are accelerating our communication activities by entrusting our oldest brand to our oldest customer with confidence. With the recipe videos that we shoot at USLA, we have started active communication to offer both healthy and delicious recipes to our consumers. We have also had the opportunity to contribute to a social responsibility project by working with USLA. We have prepared a special area for our Ekin brand in the USLA Shop. We provide our consumers with the opportunity to purchase our Ekin bakery products, pulse bags and cards that contain our delicious recipes. We donate the proceedsobtained from these sales to non-governmental organizations.
So, where do you want to position the Ekin brand? Will we see new products in the Ekin portfolio?
Ekin contains our local products manufactured in the fertile lands of our country with the labor of our farmers as a result of our detailed research that we have meticulously conducted for a long time in the selection of raw materials. Accordingly, we always view ourselves as a brand that supports domestic agriculture and production and offer high quality products to consumers and we prioritize this. As for new products, I can say that as Ekin, we will continue to add local and traditional flavors to our product portfolio. In fact, we have recently added dry dumplings to our product family. In the medium term, we aim to enter much more different categories and to take part in the Basic Food and Snacks categories with more varieties under the Ekin brand.
When we look at the pulses category, how are the consumer purchasing trends shaped? What kind of strategy does Ekin adopt in line with these trends?
When we look at it by categories, the consumer buying tendencies are quite different. In the pulses category, there is a tendency to move forward through habits and affordable products. We can conclude this from the consumer researches and existing outputs. We are trying to create a brand positioning that will appeal to many different audiences by breaking these habits. As Ekin, as I have mentioned before, we adopt a brand strategy that will touch target audiences from allsegments of life by emphasizing that we are a brand that prioritizes domestic agriculture and quality.
Will we hear about Ekin much more with such collaborations? Can we get information about your future projects?
We can consider this collaboration with USLA as a long-term one. In the upcoming months, we will organize workshops under the name “Ekin’den Lezzetler’’ (Flavors from Ekin) at USLA where we will experience our products together with the consumers. Apart from this, we continue to create exclusive projects to expand our sales area and increase our awareness by reaching out to target audiences. On our “Ekin’den Lezzetler’’ page on Instagram and YouTube, we share delicious recipe videos by using our Ekin products with our Chef Çağrı Burak Sağlam. I would like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to follow our “Ekin’den Lezzetler” Instagram page so that they do not miss out on our delicious recipes.
