He is a hunter. A hunter who saw the course of the sector a few years ago, who goes after boutique, different and not so popular stones wherever there is one. Of course, popularising the stones he finds in an instant is the same feature. In our interview 2 years ago, we had called him “the man who changed the game” Şahinler Marble Chairman Ahmet Şahin… We had visited Şahin, who realised the fashion for boutique stones in advance, at his slab gallery and talked about his targets.
The slab warehouse was not a surprise for us, but Şahinler Marble took a new step in the meantime. It expanded its portfolio by adding a block field right next to the warehouse in Denizli. Today, the company, which exports both blocks, slabs and cut-to-size products, never gives up its boutique stone habit. While summarising his marketing logic, Şahin said, “We set out by turning to the stones that everyone else breaks and throws away. Because we have never looked at stones through the eyes of architects and customers. We looked at the matter through the eyes of the customers, we imagined how that stone would look in a project. This was our biggest success. Today, we have become a company that exports to 50 countries.”
He underlines that we had touched upon the things discussed in the sector today in the interview two years ago and adds: The main problem in our sector has always been oversupply. We considered producing a lot as earning a lot. “But I think we didn’t get enough reward for our labour and the great risk we took, because our strategy wasn’t right. The right thing to do was to produce less and of high quality and sell it at the prices we wanted. “Today, almost everyone has reached this point. There is no other way to adapt to these new competitive conditions.”
