target markets: US and Japan
Producers of Turkish socks are developing projects to increase their exports. The Socks
Committee, which is preparing projects to increase socks exports within the Istanbul Apparel
Exporters Union, is carrying out intensive studies for this purpose.
Ozkan Karaca, who chaired this committee, stated that the two countries were identified as
the target market. Explaining that they are the USA and Japan, Karaca said: “The US is the
world’s largest importer of socks by importing socks of US$ 2.2 billion annually. Germany is
second with US$ 1 billion 20 million imports, and Japan comes third with about US$ 1 billion
socks imports. In two countries other than Germany, namely the USA and Japan, our market
share is low. We need to increase this.”
“We started joining the Las Wegas Magic Show in the US as exporters of socks,” he said.
“And we started to get good results from this show. We are also attending the Shanghai
International Hosiery Purchasing Expo in China, the largest sock supplier in the US. This fair
is a good platform where both US buyers, as well as buyers from Japan and Australia, come.
By participating in this exhibition, we are trying to get a chance to enter these markets. Our
goal is to be able to get more shares in the world’s largest market than the US and to put the
US into the top five of the countries where we export the most socks.”
Özkan Karaca said that by 2020, they aim to export US$ 100 million worth of products to the
US market and that they would like to make Turkey one of the five biggest export destinations.
Turkey and China in competition
Turkey and China, which export 85% of their exports to EU countries, are experiencing
intense competition in this market. When we look at the situation of the two countries in the
EU market, it seems that China is slightly ahead of Turkey. According to Eurostat, the
difference between the two countries according to the export figures for 2016 is US$ 43
million.
Özkan Karaca stated that he was the first in the EU market offering the price advantage over
Chinese produce. According to Karaca, and the most important advantage of the socks made
in Turkey is that they are three hours away from the EU and can be delivered in a short time
of around three days. The disadvantage is that most of the socks factories operate in Istanbul, where the labour, input and production costs are high. According to Karaca, Turkish socks
workers should establish factories in Anatolia where government support is at hand and
labour and input costs are low. “At this point, it can come to a level where it can compete
with China in price maintenance.” he said.
