She is a psychologist… But a psychologist who left her main profession and said “I found peace in stones! Ahu Çelik, owner of Misra Marble.
INTERVIEW: Hasan ERCAZİP
It is important to see the signals in life. Mısra Marble was a company with strong signals recently… Both with its product quality and presentation skills, it seemed to say ‘I will do great things’… We went, saw and met the name behind these signals. On 8 March International Women’s Day, we started a conversation with Ahu Çelik, who holds the steering wheel of Mısra Marble. As the saying goes, ten talents in ten fingers… Ahu Çelik is such a woman… She is self-confident, ambitious, assertive and planned…
As it is 8 March, we start with the concept of women. Mrs. Ahu states that increasing the weight of women will add a very good vision to the sector and continues: “Everywhere a woman touches makes a difference. A woman can look at an event not from one angle but from all sides. In fact, since women in Turkey are brought up as if they need a constant power in front of them and lack self-confidence, they do not come to the fore everywhere. I am the daughter of one of the leading families in Isparta. “But my father always pushed me to work from the moment I finished school. I have worked as a psychologist, as an optician, in an insurance company. The culture of struggle must be embedded in the soul.”
So how did a psychologist enter the natural stone sector? Let’s move on to the main topic. Ahu Çelik starts to tell: “My father was doing R&D work. When I was little, I used to go to the quarries with him. 3.5 years ago, the situation of taking over a quarry arose. I was going to put my hand under a burden that even men have difficulty with. It was a difficult decision. “After school, I tried working as a psychologist for a year. Yes, my work was good, I was a preferred psychologist, but I realised that I felt happier in marble. I kept in touch with psychology. “Now I want to go upstairs and progress as an industrial psychologist.”
We move on to the story of Mısra Marble… How does Ahu Çelik see the distance the company has travelled in 3.5 years under the management of someone so foreign from the sector… She summarises it as follows: “Actually, everything is about embracing the business. I have adopted and loved the quarry very much. The feeling there is nowhere else. Stones really have a soul and energy. There is a birth simulation in the quarry. How do you take a baby in your arms and raise it? Mısra Marble is like my baby. When I look at it today, if we are becoming a preferred company, it means that we are walking on the right path. We work intensively with countries such as China, Italy, India, Egypt, Dubai and the USA. Of course, the quality of our stone is the biggest advantage for us. Our stone is called Ragno Rosa. In Italian, Pink Spider means Rose Spider. In this respect, it also resembles my hometown Isparta. The polish purchase rate is between 102 and 105. It can be used in every area from hotel lobbies to exterior facades, from poolside to stairs. It is also an ideal stone for bootmatch construction.”
Finally, we come to the targets. 5 years later, where does Ahu Çelik imagine Mısra Marble? She starts with ‘God willing’ and ends her words as follows: “We set out with our Isparta quarry. Now we are opening a new quarry in Afyon. We will produce Violet here. Then we are planning a factory investment. 5 years later, we aim to be a company with 5 quarries. The most important thing is to ensure customer satisfaction with quality and controlled production. My wife’s support in sales and production is very valuable. The fact that our team consists of people who think and adopt the company as much as we do makes our work very easy. I am constantly reading about marble and improving myself. Our aim is to become a reputable company whose name is equivalent to quality not only in Turkey but also worldwide in the medium term.”
