Interview with Selim Genç

In the interview we conducted, Selim Genç, Founder and General Manager of Selge Kimya A.Ş., answered our questions with sincerity. Genç spoke about the vision and objectives of Selge Kimya.

Could you tell our readers about yourself and your professional career?

I was born in Amasya in 1970; I came to Istanbul when I was only two weeks old, and it became the center of both my education and working life. Since our childhood coincided with the 1970s, I think we were one of the most fortunate generations. We experienced firsthand everything depicted in Turkish films from that period. But what was nice was that even the wealthy girl from the neighborhood was in the same school as us. They also shopped at the neighborhood grocery store as we did. And though there were no credit cards, we could buy things on credit at the grocer's account. Every neighborhood had as many playgrounds as you wanted and there was always a neighborhood fountain. In neighborhood matches during the summer we would sell water and everyone would drink from the same glass, but no one would get sick. That is how we grew up. From age seven onwards, every year during school holidays I found and worked a job of my own accord—at a grocery store, a hardware store, a haberdashery. Starting from my middle school years, with the advantage of living in Sarıyer, the most beautiful district of the Bosphorus, I guided tours for years during the Arab frenzy that lasted until 1989. The year we got into university, at the historic Özsüt Pastry Shop on Bebek beach—the most charming neighborhood in Turkey, owned by our neighbor, dating back to the 1900s—I did every job there was: waiting tables, working the cash register, and operations management. While studying at university on one hand, I was earning my bread from stones on the other, and I enjoyed it greatly. You cannot imagine what treasures this period gave me that would become fundamental in the years ahead. I described that period in such detail to explain something that we even do in our own families today: creating a family environment where we do all the work so our children won't be tired does not benefit them but harms them. We do not realize that we are making them antisocial and that even if they have a successful school life, they will face difficulties in their professional lives and great hardships in relationships and friendships. On a visit to one of Turkey's major industrial companies, our colleague the general manager told us about a very intelligent young person who had graduated first in his class from one of Turkey's best universities and spoke several foreign languages, but who could not last six months at the company. Because this young man had zero social life and communication skills and could not adapt, they had to part ways, sadly. Let us raise our children as human beings, not as racehorses, and let us teach them love, sharing, and hard work. Life will surely open a beautiful path for them. I graduated from Mimar Sinan University's Department of Turkish Language and Literature in 1994. For seven years, I pursued teaching, my childhood ideal, under the Ministry of Education until 2000. I had to leave the teaching profession that had been in my heart since childhood because material conditions were insufficient. For 20 years I worked as a sales and market development manager in the chemical raw materials sector at leading companies: Bayegan, Veskim, and Likit Kimya. Here I would particularly like to express my gratitude to Ercüment Bayegan of the Bayegan family. He is the person who brought me to this sector and opened a new path for me. He holds a special place in my heart. In order to apply the modern methods and experiences I had planned for years and worked on at the companies where I was employed but was not given the opportunity to implement, I founded Selge Kimya A.Ş. in 2020.  

What would you like to say about your company? What are the criteria that define your company?

Selge Kimya aims to be and consistently implements a company that reflects the experience gained from the companies where I worked for years, remedies the deficiencies I observed, gives confidence to its employees, profits while letting them profit, prioritizes happiness and peace, and shows respect and affection to its customers, suppliers, and employees. I believe that today many of our companies have no idea how the physical structure of the work environment affects employee performance. Viewing expenditures on this as unnecessary actually demonstrates the value given to personnel. Research has proven that the performance of employees in companies that make the work environment spacious and pleasant increases exponentially. Our principal objective is to treat customers not as a source of profit but as friends and family members, approaching them sincerely, providing them with accurate information, procuring their products at the most reasonable price, providing the highest quality service, and ensuring continuity without causing production problems. We continue on this path with work colleagues aligned with these objectives.

Which sectors do you serve? What are your product varieties?

Chemical raw materials trading covers such a broad area that there is no sector it does not enter. With 23 years of experience, we plan to serve nearly 40 sectors within our knowledge. Currently, we serve approximately 15 sectors such as detergents, pharmaceuticals, leather, cosmetics, textiles, textile auxiliaries, agriculture, paints, metals, footwear, ceramics, and construction chemicals, and we are increasing the number of these sectors every day. When we founded the company, we prioritized these sectors in which we planned and are stronger because we know both foreign suppliers and domestic users very well in these sectors. With the increased importance of hygiene and personal care during the pandemic period, the cleaning and detergent sector has especially risen to the top. The agriculture sector is also an area in which we are particularly ambitious, especially in the Mediterranean Region. I have long said that agriculture will be the pride of our country's exports. All of our customers in this sector have made tremendous progress over the last 10 years and now hold a very large share in exports, which naturally reflected in the raw materials market, and their contribution to our revenue growth is very significant. The textile and textile auxiliaries sector is already one of our main groups. Although we have a very good network with these sectors, we do not yet consider ourselves sufficient and continuously raise our targets. The most difficult part of what we do is naturally obtaining financing and the most important thing we must focus on is ensuring payment collection on sales made. Because uncollected sales are not sales. That is the first thing we tell our work colleagues. Selge Kimya, with its technical team's experience, knowledge, and accumulated expertise in providing turnkey project consulting and product know-how for the establishment of new chemical raw materials factories that will make significant contributions to our country's economy and reduce imports, aims to guide investors and develop our industry. We receive considerable requests from both domestic and foreign sources on this matter.

What is your domestic and international sales volume? According to which criteria do you determine your sales potential?

As we enter our third year of operation, we are experiencing the satisfaction of being at least three times ahead of the target point we set at founding. I can say that the strategies we implemented during the pandemic period were very beneficial during this process. In sales, the continuation of our work under the Selge Kimya umbrella with companies we have known and worked with for years is a positive return of the service we have provided to our customers over the years. Abroad, our work with Iran and Azerbaijan has begun for now. We will expand our team as soon as possible to increase the number of countries where we export. The increase in exports, which gives us breathing room in cash flow management, will significantly contribute to our company's growth rate.

What is the importance of R&D for your company? Could you tell us about the R&D projects you have conducted recently?

We have had excellent work particularly on new products for the leather, cosmetics, and textile auxiliaries sectors. Our SELTOF 100, SELTOF 200, and SELTOF 300 products, which we have started trial production and sales on, have borne fruit as our first R&D work. Furthermore, we can say that in the work conducted by our cosmetics department, new essence products addressing different sectors will soon be ready for sale. Presenting these products first to the Turkish market and later exporting them to the whole world under our own brand will be a great source of pride for us.

Do you carry out any work within the scope of corporate social responsibility? What is the reflection of these activities on your employees, your brand, and your sense of responsibility?

Selge Kimya is active in its region to the extent of its capacity in corporate social responsibility projects. One of our foremost founding objectives is this as well. As the years pass, I hope we will all see how serious we are about this matter. As a former teacher, our goal is to become a light for our children who have had to abandon their education or could not attend school due to material difficulties, and through our support, to raise a generation that continues to study and advances confidently into the future. I believe we will be able to do this, God willing. Additionally, with the thought "Protect nature so that the future is saved," we have a Selge Family Forest project in our plans that we intend to establish on behalf of our customers.

Could you tell us about your objectives for the coming years? What innovations await your company in the years ahead?

When founding Selge Kimya A.Ş., we want to create a solid foundation for our children—particularly my son who is currently at university—that is, for future generations. To be an exporter selling to all corners of the world, a producer that has created its own brand, and a company known and recognized in every city in the domestic market, creating employment and exports that benefit our country—these are Selge Kimya's main objectives. As someone who knows that the target is not the ceiling but beyond the ceiling, we will tell this to our children, to the generations that come after us, with love and respect, never tiring of explaining that nothing beautiful is achieved easily.