As we were making our final evaluations on the last day of Marble Izmir, we visited the stand of İnan Maden. During our sincere conversations with Ali İhsan Yeniev, board chairman of İnan Maden, we not only evaluated the Izmir Fair but the whole sector. “Everybody has missed the fair,” he said and continued his words: “Even though there are no Chinese buyers at the fair, quarry owners and block sellers are quite happy. Our expectations from the fair have also been met. Leading companies in the sector state that cut-to-size products receive a lot of demand. However, we need to open a parenthesis here…”
We opened the parenthesis. Ali İhsan Yeniev started underlining the problems: “Our average income per ton is still low. The sales are going up, but the profitability is not. There is a nice famous saying in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. “Everybody complains about the situation, but they are happy with their minds.” This is exactly our case. I don’t know if there is another sector in which the problems are diagnosed well but the treatments are wrong. We produce cutting and drilling machinery for the marble quarry, and we are the Turkish representative of the two important brands of the world. Even though we have achieved a good point in consumable material, diamond wire, and cut-rock board sales, we receive some ridiculous prices and service offers. The sector analyzes everything through the prices and quality remain in the background. They don’t understand that the price and value are two different things. When my client decides to work with me, he also buys my 35-year experience.”
Lastly, we talk about wired cut-rocks. Yeniev concluded his words mentioning Belgium: “Quality has an infrastructure. We’ve analyzed Diamant Boart’s factory in detail with a special permit. It’s like a space center. There are stone samples from all over the world. There are more than 20 microscopes that are connected to computers. They make analyses. A newly-manufactured product experimented on mono boards and mono-wire S/Ts. Just imagine the R&D investments. It sells multiwire wires for 4,5-5 million square meters of granite every year. And some people can still say “I produce better than them.” Here’s the issue about Turkey: They want the product to be cheap, good, and long-term. But quality is not cheap. When you notice the quality, you tend to buy it. There is a tendency towards wired cut-rocks in the sector. Because it reaches amazing cutting speed. We can see where the sector is going. We might exhibit at the next year’s fair as a representative of a qualified wired-cutter that is suitable for our quality standards. “
