Interview with Halil Kullemci, General Manager of Biobellinda

Interview with Halil Kullemci, General Manager of Biobellinda In our conversation, Halil Kullemci, General Manager of Biobellinda, answered our questions. Kullemci shared the success story of Biobellinda and provided information about the company's products.  

Could you tell our readers about yourself and your professional career?

As one of three children in the family, we grew up within BioBellinda. I held various positions in virtually all departments of BioBellinda. Now I continue my duties as General Manager with the support of my entire team.

What would you like to say about your company? What are the criteria that define your company? Which sectors do you serve? What are your product varieties?

Biobellinda holds the distinction of being the sole domestic company in Turkey marketing products of its own manufacture through the network marketing channel for over 25 years. According to market research conducted, Biobellinda is among the brands most frequently recommended by women in Turkey regarding products and business model. Globally, Biobellinda is the first brand to market products manufactured in Turkey through the same sales channel for over 10 years in 35 countries, starting with European countries, as well as the United Kingdom and the United States. Our purpose of existence is to provide women with the equal opportunity they deserve and to contribute to enabling all women to play an active role in business life without requiring qualifications, technical specifications, business capital and similar concepts, while not neglecting their home and personal lives. The meaning of the equality symbol in the Biobellinda logo derives from this. Throughout more than a quarter century, Biobellinda works with all its might to transform housewives into strong businesswomen managing their own enterprises. In a world that is digitalizing and rapidly changing, we develop new technologies and produce new products to enable our entrepreneurs to generate income from their homes without being bound by country borders. To briefly mention our product groups: skin care products, food supplements, household and general cleaning products, halal-certified oral care products, perfumes and ammonia-free hair dyes.

What aspects distinguish your brand in your sector? Do you conduct any activities within the scope of social responsibility? How are these activities reflected in your employees, your brand and your sense of responsibility?

Biobellinda users have many reasons to prefer us: our quality and reliable products, specialized service quality for our entrepreneurs, short delivery times, our digital technologies offering new opportunities, and our fair and highly rewarding compensation plan are among the first that come to mind. Our vision can be summarized as standing beside women and nature. For this reason, we maintain sustainability at the core of our business, regard all resources on earth as a trust, and know that they are not unlimited. We shape all our activities and areas of operation with this awareness. We design our production facilities within nature to produce zero waste and without smokestacks. In the operations of these facilities, we use natural raw materials obtained from renewable sources, produce vegan products that biodegrade naturally, track our carbon footprint, and use energy-efficient technologies in energy consumption. Our greatest corporate social responsibility as a brand is to protect nature and the environment and leave a clean world for future generations. This is reflected in the content of our products. We can cite as an example the production of our products to be nature-friendly and respectful, presented to the entire BioBellinda family. I would like to note that at the 3rd Turkey Leading Brand Ceremony held on 15 August, BioBellinda was selected as the Best Network Marketing Company of the Year.  

How have rising costs recently affected your sector? How do you assess the first quarter of 2022 in terms of your sector and your brand? Have you introduced any firsts and innovations to your sector this year? Could you share your achievements?

Much has changed and continues to change since 2020, when we began experiencing the pandemic period worldwide and its aftermath. Along with the global economy, we were affected by the contraction in our country's economy as much as all other stakeholders in other sectors. However, thanks to the dynamism we possess as Biobellinda and our ability to adapt quickly to changes, I am confident that we will emerge from this period having learned new things and grown stronger. As we have experienced in previous crisis periods, the fast-moving consumer goods sector is among those most easily adapting to economic contractions. In 2022, we continue to grow by revising our growth targets according to current economic conditions and by investing in our brand. There will be innovations that will bring new perspectives to network marketing understanding. We will all watch together. In the first and second quarters of 2022, our European market was identified with France as the leader. This pleases us greatly. Our new product ProBio+, which we launched in September, is a product we believe will make a striking innovation and impact in the household cleaning products category through technology that is a first in its sector in Turkey. This product has a revolutionary concept that complements our changing understanding of hygiene and cleaning during the pandemic period. ProBio+ has an objective beyond being environmentally friendly: "A living cleaning product determined to make the world a better place for you." BioBellinda, taking its sensitivity toward the environment and human health a step further, volunteers to maintain the balance of the micro-cosmos in which we live and shares this through its revolutionary new product with its valued customers. The skin and mucosal surfaces covering the human body externally separate us from approximately 100 trillion microorganisms that inhabit various parts of our body as hosts—meaning 10 microorganisms for each human cell. Nearly sterile at birth, the body encounters its first hosts during childbirth, and this beginning contributes to determining our physical and spiritual identity in various ways for the rest of our lives. This microorganism cocktail, which significantly affects our quality of life, is called the "microbiome," and our microbiome is affected by internal factors such as our diet and sleep patterns, as well as by the external environments in which we live. ProBio+ was created to "improve" the environment in which we exist. ProBio+ has been tested against chemical cleaners and disinfectants and has proven to show sustained significant superiority in combating microbiological impurities. All without killing the beneficial ones.

What is the importance of R&D for your company? Could you tell us about the R&D projects you have undertaken recently?

Our group company Berre Kimya, with its professional team, has adopted as its vision producing world-standard product varieties in modern facilities while prioritizing the environment and human health, continuously improving quality management systems, supporting closure of our country's current account deficit through domestic production, and reducing our foreign dependency. In this direction, it continues its operations successfully in different sectors such as food, caravan, cosmetics and cleaning products, enzyme and micelle production in different production facilities established with its own capital. As Berre Kimya, believing that one of the most important needs in closing our country's current account deficit is the capability to produce high-technology products, we began our journey in 2013 to address our country's shortage of domestic and quality biotechnology products. In this sense, we developed R&D projects in cooperation with state institutions such as KOSGEB and TÜBİTAK aimed at enabling production of high-technology products. All these R&D activities are carried out by expert personnel with bachelor's and postgraduate education levels. Following successful completion of R&D supported by KOSGEB and TÜBİTAK in biotechnological enzyme production, we established microbiology and fermentation laboratories within our organization and equipped them with state-of-the-art technological equipment. Following this technical infrastructure and more than 5 years of R&D work, natural-source, non-GMO domestic pure cultures have been produced. Our production of mushroom mycelium, most suitable to our country's production conditions, of high purity, durable and superior quality continues unabated.

Could you tell us about your targets for future years? What innovations await your company in the coming years? Our future target is to not only reach our products to 40 countries but to open up to new distant markets and adapt our products and earnings system to different cultures. On our path to our target, new partnerships and product diversification will be inevitable.