Our first stop was Global Nutritech, an animal feed supplement company. The founder had gotten his PhD and worked in the US for a competitor and then decided to return to Turkey as his parents got older. He started this company with $40,000 of his own money (many Turks avoid taking bank loans) and is on track to hit $1 million in sales this year!
One thing we noticed with both of the companies today is that they were going after mid-sized customers rather and the big guys. I am not sure if this is indicative of all Turkish businesses, but I got the sense that some of them aren't ambitious enough. They also don't seem to see the value in taking loans or other financing in order to expand their businesses.
Next we met with the Governor of Kandira, who's name was Hamza. The system in Turkey is such that there is a governor for a region, who is appointed by the central government and also a mayor for the region/city who is elected. This seems like a good setup because the governor can make the difficult decisions without worrying about re-election. Maybe we should adopt something similar in the US? Our current system doesn't seem to work too well.
Following the visit with the Governor was a trip to ICM, which builds napkin folding and toilet paper rolling machines for the paper industry. It was hotter than hell in their factory, but after a tour they took us into the engineering office which was air conditioned. I thought it was cool that they provide a shuttle service and lunch for all their employees, just like Google! Apparently this is common in the rural areas and people will take or decline jobs based on things like the shuttle availability.
After that we went out to Koceili to meet with their chamber of commerce. The feedback we got form business is that the chambers are sort of worthless, even though it's required that you become a member. This wasn't too exciting to be honest, but we did get some free time downtown and were able to grab a beer. At the bar, the bartender went around with some lemon scented alcohol for everyone's hands...sort of like an old school version of Purell.
We also happened to see the Prime Ministers helicopter landing because he was giving a speech in the area. Too bad we didn't get to go to that though (not that we would have understood a word, but it was obviously a pretty big deal.)
That night we had dinner on the Sea of Marmara and I saw with the ICM industrial engineer and his American wife Rose. She was really into technology so being surrounded by people who worked at Google, Paypal, and Apple sparked some great conversation.
Good food, good drinks, and good fun! It was a long and sleepy ride back to the hotel in Istanbul (about 2 hours).
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