Si tamu justru memperkerjakan tuan rumahnya, dan tuan rumahnya juga senang kok. Dan masih banyak Sahin-sahin yang lain.
http://www.sahinlerholding.com.tr/EN/b-sahinler-forbes.asp Companies & Strategies Forbes Global ForbesIn 1982 Kemal Sahin, then 27, opened the doors to his new gift shop on a busy commercial street in Aachen, Germany. The Turkish immigrant didn't want to start his own business-he had to. Sahin had just earned a tough engineering degree on full scholarship at Aachen University. He had expected it to lead to a good, entry-level job in German industry. Instead, he was told that he'd have to leave the country; since he was a foreigner, he couldn't obtain a work permit in his chosen field. There was only one loophole. He could stay if he went into business on his own. So with DM5,000 (at the time, about $2,000) saved from summer jobs in a metal factory, he did exactly that. Now, 47 and still in Germany, Sahin breaks into a broad smile when he recalls that 40-squaremeter gift shop. There, he worked 18-hour days selling white cotton T shirts at rock-bottom prices to local Gastarbeiter (foreign laborers) and to students at his alma mater. "I did everything myself," he says. "Bookkeeping, storage, sales, even deliveries." Sahin smiles a lot these days, with reason. His tiny shop has evolved into Sahinler Holding, the largest Turkish-run business outside Turkey. Germany's community of 2.5 million Turks hosts other notable business figures, but Sahin's business dwarfs the rest in revenue ($975 million [Euro 1.1 billion] in 2001), employees (1,700 in Germany, 11,500 worldwide) and international reach, according to the Association of Turkish Businessmen & Industrialists in Europe. What's more, Sahin's rocky path to success has become legend for other self-employed Turkish immigrants. A prodigy from a farm family in an isolated mountain town, he came to Aachen with just an old suitcase, two packs of cigarettes and most of the first tranche of his scholarship money pinned inside his jacket. Commercial life after college was no less of an adjustment. For the first few years, he couldn't get any Germans to work for him, A large national distributor, he says, insultingly told him over and over that he didn't know the first thing about retailing. Frustrated, he opened his own retail outlets-he now has 350 of them in Germany. Sahinler has its headquarters in Würselen, a few kilometers outside Aachen. With 27 subsidiaries in 12 countries, including the U.S., the group manufactures and sells clothing both wholesale and retail. It is the fifthlargest children's clothing maker in Europe, according to TextilWirtschaft, a trade magazine. In a fitted beige sweater from Gap, matching cotton slacks from his own Adessa retail outlet and German-made brown suede shoes, Sahin wears well his self-proclaimed role a's a multicultural entrepreneur who's come into his own. (Like 80% of his fellow Turks, he hasn't taken German citizenship.) When Sahin was getting started, "there were very few Turkish or other foreign companies in Germany," he says. "Germans classified us as menial workers. Some of them didn't even want to do business with us-let alone work for us. To put it simply, a lot of convincing needed to be done." The earliest clients of his gift shop wanted prayer mats, tablecloths and teacups. Then he began to win over German students with a table outside the cafeteria at Aachen University that peddled low-cost T shirts. In those first few years, Sahin formed his business philosophy. "I realized that there are good virtues in Germany-the people are reliable, punctual, organized and loyal. And, I said, these are virtues my business needs to adopt. But there are also good virtues in Turkey-the people are friendly, service-oriented, flexible and creative. I took the good virtues of each culture and left aside the rest." The late nights Sabin spent stocking shelves in his shop, delivering to customers after hours and getting to know the locals shaped his success. "I never would have had such an understanding of the business if I'd come straight into this from university. So now I believe that it's important to learn everything from the bottom up. That's what I advise everyone today-my sons, my staff Turkish entrepreneurs, young German businessmen." Financing seemed an insurmountable hurdle at the time. In his first year, Sabin struggled every day to keep up inventory. Sahin knew that an enterprise run by a foreigner with no collateral had no chance for financing from a bank or staterun support programs. "No bank would lend to me," he says. "I didn't even try." Then a slip-up at one supplier in his second year solved his cash-flow problems. One day he received twice as many rugs as he'd ordered. He couldn't pay for such a large shipment, so the supplier told him to pay for the second half at the next delivery date. Spotting an opportunity, Sahin got other suppliers to cough up similar modest lines of credit. Soon, however, delivery and distribution problems from his Turkish suppliers (late orders; green shirts instead of the requested blue ones) had him in Dutch with customers. Sahin decided to go into production himself With financial assistance from his family, Sahin opened a small factory in Turkey, then acquired more. Now there are 18 there producing Sahinler products for distribution in Europe and the US. The tiny gift shop had evolved into the textile company Santex Moden (now a subsidiary of Sahinler). According to Sahin, it wasn't until 1987-five years after he opened his gift shop's doors-that a local bank offered a commercial loan at the going market rate. "There were times when the problems in building my business seemed gigantic," he says. "But I learned one thing. There's no problem that can't be solved. And many problems also brought me luck." When German sales growth peaked in the mid-1990s, Sahin pushed into the U.S. but struggled from a lack of name recognition and quotas on textile imports from Turkey. But European licensing agreements with Warner Bros., Walt Disney and MTV helped him build recognition in North America. He built a factory in Romania and another in Bulgaria, from which he can export more to the U.S. without exceeding its quotas. Now 25% of exports from the Turkish factories go to the US., says Sahin. He says that his private-label clients include Ann Taylor, Everlast, Liz Claiborne and Nautica. Sahin still has total control of his enterprise; he has considered partial offerings but pulled back. His oldest son, 17, just finished being a summer intern in the business. Sahin is rarely absent when political or business delegations from Turkey visit Germany, and his voice is heard by politicians in Berlin. He recently published his autobiography. Sahin has used this high profile to get across his message. "I want other young entrepreneurs to know that they can succeed in Germany, but (they can do so] only if they're reliable, able to raise their own funds and willing to seek advice," he says. Meantime, "Germans have begun to realize that entrepreneurship can save their economy." he says. A half dozen other Turkish clothing enterprises have sprung up in Aachen's vicinity, according to that city's Chamber of Commerce & Trade. "Kemal Sahin's success motivated me to start my own company," says Veli Demirdizen, who came to Germany in 1980 to study business at Aachen University. Demirdizen was a salesman for Sahin for five years before founding DMD Mode Vertriebs in 1998. A children's clothing company with just five employees, it posted sales of more than Euro 3 million last year and expects that figure to double in 2002. "Sahin was my role model," Demirdizen says. "He still is." In-but not fully of-Germany According to the Center for Turkish Studies at Essen Universty, there are 59,500 Turkish-owned businesses in Germany. They include small, family-run fruit sands and self-service laundries, cement producers, tourism operators and consultants that cater to immigrant startups. These businesses generate $15 billion in annual sales, according to estimates by the accounting firm KPMG. That's expected to mora than quadruple by 2010, producing $66 billion in sales. Of nun-Germans, the Turkish business community is already the largest contributor to the German economy, currently $2 trillion. Germany has the highest number of self-employed immigrants in Europe (285,000 according to the Organisation for Economic Coorporation & Development). This statistic is all the more impressive given the country's strict labor laws, difficulty in obtaining financing and citizenship, cultural aversion to risky startups and negative stereotyping of foreigners. Indeed, there is still little infrastructure in Germany for the most challenging part of starting a company-raising funds. "German banks, even today, are incredibly cautions," says Esref Unal, president of assaciation of Turkish Businessmen & Industrialists in Europe. "For many young enterprises-whether foreign-run or not- not even such collateral as houses or cars will be taken into consideration. So many Turkish residerts (of Germany) who start businesses do so with their families' life savings."
