EİB Invests in Design

Ege İhracatçı Birlikleri, which exceeded its 2021 export target of USD 16 billion and advanced to USD 18 billion in exports for 2022 through an export strategy centered on digitalization, sustainability, design and innovation, participated in Design Week Turkey 2021, held between 16-18 November, with four design competitions. Jak Eskinazi, Coordinator Chairman of Ege İhracatçı Birlikleri, stated: "With our EİB Fashion Design Competition, our Leather Think Leather Production and Design Competition, our AMORF Natural Stone Design and Project Competition, and our Breaking the Mold Design Competition, which brings together three of our sectors for the first time with furniture, textiles and natural stone used together, we are building a future that designers will create with an economy of high added value and thinking beyond the era. Because now everyone, every sector needs to do things 'really' differently, to have different perspectives." Eskinazi, noting that they have produced hundreds of designers for Turkey over 17 years, emphasized that the four sectors for which design competitions are organized achieve exports well above the Turkey average.

USD 36 billion in exports in the past year

"Our ready-made clothing and apparel sector, which reaches USD 20 billion; our textile sector reaching USD 10 billion; our furniture sector reaching an export volume exceeding USD 4 billion; our natural stone sector reaching USD 2 billion; collectively achieved USD 36 billion in exports in the past year, climbing one step in global exports each year. Ege İhracatçı Birlikleri made a very intensive effort in shaping the design support notice to support companies' design offices. Thanks to this notice, many of our companies established design offices, and at the same time our companies that already had design offices developed further. Today, our sectors are carrying out high added-value exports with a strong design ecosystem." Burak Sertbaş, Chairman of Ege Ready-Made Clothing and Apparel Exporters Association, reminded that when considering the quality and added-value strength of ready-made clothing and apparel exports, they are traditionally Turkey's sector with the greatest trade surplus and net exporter by far. "We were pioneers in the design mobilization with our EİB Fashion Design Competition, which we have been organizing since 2004 to create profound changes in our country. Our young people transcended national borders with their original, innovative designs and made their names known to the world. Last year we processed the TECH-TILITY theme, which brought together nature and technology, featuring sustainable designs when we held our final online. In 2021, Turkey's average export unit price was around USD 1.3, while in the same period Turkey's ready-made clothing sector's export unit price was USD 13, and our average export unit price as EHKİB was in the USD 17 range. Our target is to increase our export unit price to USD 20 and above. This picture is very concrete proof of the ready-made clothing sector's years of investment in design."