The LC Waikiki brand was born in 1985 in France. The French designer George Amoual and his partner had decided to create a new brand based on bright colours and outrageous designs and market it in the French ready-made clothing sector.
George and partner came up with the name of their brand while on a business trip. Seeing a magazine advertisement for the famous “Waikiki Beach”, they got excited and thought that it would be an ideal name for their brand. Adding the letters "LC," which come from the French word for "friends" (Les Copains) they created the brand name, LC Waikiki.
Within a short time, the brand became well known throughout France, resulting in skyrocketing sales. In 1988, while searching for a supplier to meet increasing production demands, they started working with Taha Textile. At this time, Turkey's textile and ready-made clothing sectors had begun to establish a reputation in international markets for raw material procurement and production. Collaboration with Taha Textile exceeded the expectations of LC Waikiki, which moved to strengthen the links between the two companies. Taha Textile, through its venture with LC Waikiki, was able to expand investments, becoming even more successful in its own right. In the end, it formed Taha Group, which is now a major manufacturer for important internationally renowned brands.
This group founded Tema Textile in 1991 with the goal of cashing in on its strength in manufacturing and creating a brand that could be exploited within the context of a product marketing strategy. Tema Textile obtained the Turkish licence for the French LC Waikiki, which was one of the most important export customers of the Taha Group. It then set up a system of franchises through which LC Waikiki products were sold wholesale in Turkey. At first, all designs of LC Waikiki came from France, but in 1993 the first design unit within Tema Textile was established. The design department, comprising French, English, Turkish and Italian designers was one of the biggest design organizations in Turkey at the time. Although its initial aim was wholesale trade, in a short period of time, Tema Textile managed to gain acclaim both from investors and consumers with its succesful collections prepared for the youth and children's clothing markets and its effective marketing strategies. This lead to a continuous increase in corner stores. Drawing strength from this success, Tema Textile founded an independent design unit for the adult ready to wear clothing market. By the time of the Group's retail attack in 2000, LC Waikiki had almost 700 vendors throughout Turkey.
In 1996, as part of its strategy of entering the retail market, it founded Tema Retailing Inc. with the intention of opening its own stores to sell LC Waikiki products instead of operating a franchise system. In 1997, just as the Taha Group was researching the feasibility of establishing its own brand, the partners of the French company LC Waikiki decided to sell the brand. The rapidly growing sales of LC Waikiki in Turkey during this period led the Taha Group to buy all rights pertaining to the LC Waikiki trademark instead of creating its own new brand. LC Waikiki thus became a Turkish brand.
Subsequently, the Taha Group decided to pull out of the French market in order to concentrate on restructuring the company, especially concerning the nature of its collections and retailing philosophy. During the same period, it made a decision to radically reduce the number of franchises and, concomitantly, to dramatically increase investments in retailing. Following this period, the number of LC Waikiki stores started to increase rapidly from the original 21 stores.
From the year 2000 on, Tema Retail Inc. focused more on its identity as retailer and opening its own stores, and accelerated its project to open contemporary stores where LC Waikiki collections could meet the customer. Following this radical decision, the Taha Group decided to operate its production and retail companies in two separae groups. The production companies began to operate under the Taha Group and the companies operating in the ready to wear retail industry began to operate under the Tema Group. Both the Taha Group and the Tema Group began to take rapid steps in order to grow in the production and retail fields respectively.
In the year 2000, Zirve Architecture was founded to develop and apply the store concept of the Tema Group and Taha Giyim was founded to carry out the domestic supply operations of the group's brands. In addition to the domestic supply company, purchase offices were opened in China and Bangladesh. Tema Retailing made the decision to offer through its LC Waikiki shops other collections that appeal to various consumers having different lifestyles. These include, for example, the Southblue and XSIDE brands, which the company introduced in 2000. The Southblue brand appeals to men and women who prefer basic chic when it comes to fashion. Given its orientation, XSIDE appeals mostly to young generation in the 15 to 25 age range.
Today the Tema Group prefers to supply the products it sells in LC Waikiki stores from other domestic and international companies instead of Taha Group companies. The Taha Group has adopted a growth policy independent of LC Waikiki, by producing for other leading international brands instead of producing for our own brands. The Taha Group is among the significant suppliers for world famous brands including Marks & Spencer, Top Shop, Next and Timberland and has decided to invest overseas in order to increase its competitive powers in global markets, and has taken the first steps towards founding production plants in Egypt and Bangladesh.
Both with its past in the field of production and with the successes gained in the ready to wear retail industry with the LC Waikiki brand, the Tema Group is a leading group in the Turkish ready to wear-textile industry.
The Tema Group's turnover for LC Waikiki stores was 346 million YTL (258 million USD) for the 2005 annual period, and this sum reached 495 million YTL (352 million USD) with a 43 % increase for the 2006 annual period. Today the Group manages a industry-leading store chain 180 LC Waikiki stores in 47 cities of Turkey that serves millions of people.
For detailed information about the Taha Group please visit the group's website.
www.tahagroup.com
TEMA GROUP • TEMA HOLDING A.S. |
TAHA GROUP • TAHA TEKSIL |