We performed an enjoyable interview with Mr. Alpago Üresin who is R&D and Factory Director of Flormar Company. And talked about development process of the company, areas of activity and the great success of Flormar.
Could you tell us about yourself and your professional background?
I was born in 1971. I graduated from the department of Chemical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and received my graduate degree at the same university. I then attended Brussels Vrije Universiteit where I received a cosmetics safety assessment certificate*.
Prior to embarking upon my 16 years of experience at Flormar, I worked as production manager for 4 years at a cosmetics firm that manufactured locally. In short, I have been professionally serving the cosmetics industry for more than two decades.
Over this period, I have taken direct responsibility and developed projects across several fields ranging from production to quality control and quality assurance, raw material and packaging purchasing to R&D and product development processes, and I continue to do so.
I am currently serving at Flormar as R&D and Factory Director as well as a member of the Board of Executives. I am married with one daughter. I am fluent in English, German and Italian.
*This certificate authorizes its holder to conduct Safety Assessment under 1223/2009 EU Cosmetics Regulation. Brussels Vrije Universiteit is among the world’s most competent universities in this field.
What would you like to say about Flormar, which was acquired by the Şenbay Family in 1970? How would you describe Flormar’s place in the Turkish cosmetics industry?
Established in Milan, Italy, the capital of art and fashion, Flormar moved to Istanbul, which is situated at the confluence of Europe and Asia, in 1970. One of the most dynamic makeup brands of the world thanks to the inspiration it draws from the endless energy of this city,
Flormar has reached 40,000 sales across 110 countries. The brand dedicates itself to developing innovative products by blending chromatics with art, the brand is among Turkey’s top 500 exporters.
In 2008, we started our retail journey, which we continue at full pace with 950 stores in 250 cities worldwide. According to a report by world-renowned research company Euromonitor*, we are proud to be selected as the fastest growing brand globally in the color cosmetics brand.
We are opening a new store every four days and selling 250 products every minute to our consumers, continuing our leadership in Turkey while maintaining a leading role in many markets.
In 2012, we combined our forces with Groupe Rocher, which has been a family company for three generations to grow both our business family and our brand.
This merger marked an important step on our path to becoming a leading beauty brand thanks to which we continue our achievements against global competition.
As a brand, we promote Turkish goods and image to women of the world in the international target markets.
We are part of the state-supported branding program Turquality with our production and export goals. We build our efforts on our years of experience and team of experts.
Last but not least, I would like to note that we use raw materials and packaging in accordance with cosmetics regulations, we do not test on animals and we hold ISO 9001:2008, GMP and Halal Certifications for our manufacturing operations.
*Euromonitor, Reinventing Global Color Cosmetics, 30/11/2016, London.
What are your products? Could you tell us about your quality assurance policy for your product portfolio?
Offering under a single roof a young, colorful, fun, and vibrant shopping experience as well as a vast portfolio covering everything from skincare to makeup, accessories to perfumery,
Flormar aims to be the beauty brand that stands closest to women with its accessible prices without compromising on quality.
Holder of ISO 9001: 2015, ISO 22716:2007- Cosmetics-Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) , Health Ministry-GMP and Helal 22:2013 certifications, Flormar’s Quality Control Department tests products in its modern laboratories at every step of its production and conducts high-quality control.
And this quality control is inspected through internal and external audits by international auditing firms and export customers. Each stage of production, all steps in our raw material and packaging purchasing processes are kept under supervision and control.
Quality is the main criteria we focus in order to keep customer satisfaction at a high level. This approach also reflects on our business partners. Assuring our quality is of great importance to us. We build healthy relations with our suppliers and do our job right the first time.
We carefully select and train our suppliers and include them in our quality management system. Accordingly, we provide our employees with a work environment where they can realize themselves and bring out their skills, ensuring their participation in continuous improvement and productivity growth.
We ensure continuous improvement and development through training and suggestions. This way, we strive to make efficient use of our resources, discharging in the best manner our responsibilities towards our customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders and the community.
What is the volume of your domestic and international sales?
As a brand that undertakes to become best friends with women who enjoy expressing themselves through colors, follow the trends, and most importantly, want to look beautiful in every situation, Flormar aims to continue its stable growth and double its business volume every three years.
With a size of more than EUR 60 billion and an average growth rate of 7%, the global makeup market contributes more than 20% in the growth of the total cosmetics industry. And the size of this market is EUR500 million in our country. As Flormar, we are proud to be the leader in this sector with a share of more than 20%.
Could you share with us your thoughts on R&D?
I can say that our vision of being “an innovative beauty brand that stands closest to women” is the most important parameter that triggers the R&D process at Flormar. Being innovative is among our most important values. As the R&D unit, we fully embrace this value.
We support studies, trade fair organizations and training technology, which is part of innovativeness. Accordingly, we encourage out of the box thinking, creativity, and marketable solutions. Like every other industry, the cosmetics sector also feeds from advancing technologies.
Technology means much more than machinery to use: raw material, formulation, and packaging technologies also constitute very important parts of our business. We try to follow all of them closely and to be the first to implement them.
Could you tell us about Flormar’s investments in R&D?
In an environment where technology and means of social communication develop so rapidly, we don’t have the chance to keep our distance to cosmetics trends. All these digital tools also help us with our business development processes.
It has become so easy to learn about innovations thanks to these tools that we are now putting more thought into our product development work to see what we can do differently than our competitors and how fast we can do it. We are a young team or researches.
Our structure allows us to be open to innovations and sharing of knowledge and different technologies. Our R&D, Product Development and Marketing teams regularly meet to discuss the matter. We hold regular meetings to discuss experiences, information, trends and new products.
At these meetings, each team member shares all information and physical materials that could provide input to the product development process. Cosmetics is a very dynamic industry. Following the global developments and rapidly adapting to innovations is the most basic rule of becoming a leader in this industry.
We join numerous trade fairs, seminars, and training both in Turkey and abroad to add to the know-how of our innovation team.
We come together with international trendsetter firms and advisors to discuss the product groups the industry focuses on, the performance of textures, popular colors, and packaging solutions, develop them and carry out projects.
What is your most recent product release in the market? What features does it have and which technology was used to manufacture it?
Our most recently released product is “Kiss Me More Lip Tattoo”, which has drawn quite a bit of attention and made an impression also thanks to our marketing activities.
It is a smudge-free liquid mat lipstick with intense tinting properties. In creating this formulation, we used the “comfortable permanence”, which is among the most recent trends.
Our formulation’s permanence is supported through the use of technology to jellify thin oils in various structures and coated pigments and enriched with Vitamin E. Kiss me More has a smooth, creamy texture with its long-lasting special formula, and can be applied effortlessly with its soft sponge applicator.
Thanks to its rich ingredients, unlike other permanent mat lipsticks, it ensures easy application without creating dryness on the lips. It’s light texture gives a no-makeup feeling.
What technology and R&D targets do you have in the pipeline for the coming years? Could you share with us the factors that determine these targets?
For the last 5 years, we have been following Far Eastern brands and products in particular. We examine and analyze extremely well.
In line with the strength of our innovativeness and the basic needs of our target audience, we started to enrich our creativity and continue to generate new products by combining different products with our know-how and technology.
What measures are you taking as you manufacture for a sustainable environment?
I can say that the method of reducing the waste at the source is our priority (i.e. using both sides of each sheet of paper). For waste we cannot reduce at the source, we use the method of separating at the source. We have separately defined waste containers for each type of waste.
We send for recycling our packaged waste to ensure their use as secondary raw materials and contribute to the environment by using less of our natural resources.
We separate at the source the contaminated and hazardous waste we cannot recycle, store them in temporary storage areas, ensuring their final disposal through licenses firms without collecting them. In production areas, we have chemical spill kits wherever chemicals with hazardous chemical markings are present.
This way, in the event of a spill, we collect them on the spot before it spreads out and ensures that it is sent to licensed firms for disposal. To increase the environmental awareness among the employees, we organize environmental trainings both as a part of our new recruit orientation program and our annual training plan.
Could you tell us about your social responsibility projects?
Corporate social responsibility is an area we value immensely and where we aim to achieve great projects over the next five years. As self-criticism, we have not yet achieved the level we aimed for in this field. But we want to launch a project that will make an impression both in local and national levels soon.
We have already launched our efforts and meetings to achieve this. In addition to the corporate projects we planned, we also created a team of volunteers inside the company. We have a social responsibility club comprised of our colleagues.
As part of the club activities, we aim to work in a variety of fields ranging from shelter visits to participation in organizations held to benefit various foundations and to transform this awareness into part of the corporate culture.
