Düzey, Turkey’s largest sales and distribution company of Koç Holding operating in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, continues to grow and develop its own brand Ekin in the pulses category. We talked to Ceren Sungu Kutlay, Düzey’s Assistant General Manager, about Ekin’s brand positioning and their collaboration with the International Service and Taste Academy (USLA)…
Before we get into the details of your collaboration with USLA, could you tell us a little about the journey of Düzey’s own brand Ekin?
Sure… Before talking about Ekin, I would like to talk about Düzey, Koç Holding’s largest company in the fast-moving consumer goods group. As Düzey family, we have been trying to bring Turkey’s most popular brands together with their fans in the strategically important food sector for nearly half a century, and we have been maintaining our leadership in the sector for years by reaching nearly 200,000 points all over Turkey with 8 regional directorates, 62 sub-distributors and 70 mobile dealers.
We can say that Ekin is the apple of our company’s eye. It is a brand that meets consumers with the trust and privilege offered by Düzey. Inspired by the rich gastronomic culture of Anatolia, which has a wide cultural mosaic due to hosting many civilizations from ancient times to the present day, Ekin took its place on the shelves with 7 different products in the legume category, including lentils, chickpeas, dried beans, rice and bulgur, which are popular varieties of local gastronomy as an integral part of Anatolian flavors and food culture. In these days when the healthy eating tendencies of consumers are increasing, we aim to introduce everyone from 7 to 77 to Ekin pulses, which are vegetable protein, fiber store, highly nutritious and suitable for the taste of our people.
How was the collaboration with USLA? We would like to hear the details of the project from you.
As the Düzey family, we are happy to have reintroduced our 37-year-old brand Ekin to consumers. We chose the International Service and Taste Academy (USLA), one of Düzey’s major customers in the Out-of-Home Consumption sector, to carry out all marketing activities for our long-established brand. We are accelerating our communication activities by entrusting our oldest brand to our oldest customer. With the recipe videos we shot at USLA, we started active communication to offer both healthy and delicious recipes to our consumers. We also had the opportunity to contribute to a social responsibility project by working with USLA. We have prepared a special area for our Ekin brand in the USLA Shop. We offer our consumers the opportunity to purchase our Ekin bakery products, pulse bags, and cards with our delicious recipes. We donate the proceeds from this sale to non-governmental organizations.
So, where do you want to position the Ekin brand? Will we see new products in the Ekin portfolio?
Ekin contains our local products produced with the labor of our farmers in the fertile lands of our country as a result of our detailed research that we meticulously carry out for a long time in the selection of raw materials. In this context, we always see ourselves as a brand that supports local agriculture and production and offers quality products to consumers and we prioritize this. As for new products, I can say that as Ekin, we will continue to add local and traditional flavors to our product portfolio. In fact, we recently added dry ravioli to our product family. In the medium term, we aim to enter much more different categories and to take part in the Basic Food and Snacks categories with more varieties under the Ekin brand.
When we look at the pulses category, how are consumer purchasing trends shaped? What kind of strategy does Ekin adopt in line with these trends?
When we look at the category-specific consumer buying tendencies are quite different. In the pulses category, there is a tendency to move forward through habits and affordable products. We can see this from the consumer researches and outputs we have conducted. We are trying to create a brand positioning that will appeal to many different audiences by breaking these habits. As Ekin, as I mentioned before, we adopt a brand strategy that will touch target audiences from all walks of life by emphasizing that we are a brand that prioritizes domestic agriculture and quality.
Will we hear Ekin more often with such collaborations? Can we get information about your future projects?
We can consider this cooperation with USLA as a long-term one. In the coming months, we will organize workshops under the name “Flavors from Ekin” at USLA where we will experience our products together with the consumers. Apart from this, we continue to produce beautiful projects to expand our sales area and increase our awareness by reaching target audiences. On our “Flavors from Ekin” page on Instagram and YouTube, we share delicious recipe videos using our Ekin products with our chef Çağrı Burak Sağlam. I would like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to follow our “Ekin’den Lezzetler” Instagram page so that you don’t miss our delicious recipes.
