Mavi is one of Turkey’s greatest retail success stories, with more than 220 stores in Turkey and a host of international boutiques in locations including New York, Montreal, and Berlin.

Not bad for a company that started out as a manufacturer producing denim for other brands.

As the 2013 Westfield World Retail Study Tour learned on a visit to Mavi’s Istanbul headquarters, the brand started as a family business, with 40 years of experience in producing premium denim for labels such as Tommy Hilfiger, Burberry, Hugo Boss, and Ermenegildo Zegna. Cüneyt Yavuz, GM of Mavi, told Tour delegates the background behind the brand’s creation.

“The family were already producing denim and said, why don’t we start our own brand?

“They wanted to make it unique and different, not be a copycat,” Yavuz said.

In 1991 the name Mavi, which means ‘blue’ in Turkish, was chosen with a view to becoming an international player.

Five years after its launch in 1996, Mavi hit the world stage, having already become a market leader in Turkey, entering the US, Germany, Canada, and Australia as a wholesaler.

Despite worldwide success early on and a reputation as Turkey’s first international brand, retail growth has only begun to skyrocket in the past two to three years. In 2010 Mavi still derived more of its profit from wholesale than retail.

An innovation called the Mavi Denim Kitchen and a huge above the line advertising campaign in 2011 changed all this.

The Mavi Denim Kitchen store design is now synonymous with the brand and uses components of denim processing both as design elements as well as to convey key information about denim’s heritage. Denim Kitchen could even almost be considered a brand of its own.

“It’s hard because blue jeans are blue jeans, but we’re trying to position ourselves as denim experts,” said Yavuz on the Denim Kitchen concept.

“Previously we had more of a wholesale selling mentality, but now we’ve moved to give more access to the product so you can touch, feel, and help yourself to the product without assistance.”

Store sizes have increased from 150sqm to around 500sqm to accommodate the Denim Kitchen and expanded product categories.

In 2013, jeans are Mavi’s hero item, with the product growing at 20 to 30 per cent, although the brand now produces across all apparel categories, from underwear and socks, to t-shirts, childrenswear, and accessories.

This has prompted a recent rebrand, dropping the word ‘Jeans’ from the Mavi name.

Growth has also come from venturing beyond Istanbul and capital cities.

“We used to focus on cities, but now we’re everywhere, and we create lots of hype where we open.

“We’ll always have our headquarters in Istanbul, we want to have an Istanbul-based global company so we remain locally close to the consumer,” says Yavuz.

In 2012 Mavi’s profit came in at $56 million Turkish Lira (A$31 million), off net sales of TRY$520 million (A$291 million). Annual same store growth was a whopping 50 per cent.

In the previous year, 2011, net sales were TRY$130 million lower, at TRY$390 million.

International growth is a focus moving forward, with the Turkish entity now the sole owner of all Mavi operations, having this year taken over the US and Canadian business from a local operator. More stores are also on the way for Germany, where Mavi is the fastest growing denim brand in the country.

Back at home, with such a young population in Turkey, Mavi has stepped up its marketing game, targeting men and women from 20 to 30 years old with what it calls a “premium masstige” offer.

“A lot of work has gone into our product and product quality,” says Yavuz.

“You can’t cheat women on quality, they know what to spend on and what the right price should be. Women shop around.

“Our staff didn’t have a 360 understanding of what they were trying to offer, so we changed that.”

The brand has increased its customer relationship management and now boasts 3.4 million loyalty card holders, with the bulk of transactions made by these customers.

Overall, marketing spend is two to three per cent of Mavi’s budget.

Its Facebook page has amassed 1.2 million fans – a presence managed by a dedicated social media team of 14 built over three years.

“Consumers are spoiled with choice. Most of our energy is around communicating what Mavi stands for, it’s less about product when it comes to social media.”

This story originally appeared in Inside Retail Magazine’s August/September 2013 edition as part of our exclusive coverage on the 2013 Westfield World Retail Study Tour.

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