The organizer of KTM fairs, ECR Fuarcılık General Manager Ümit Vural said, "We would like to thank our participants who showed interest in the International Textile Machinery Fair KTM2020, in which we organized on September 24-26, by taking all necessary health and safety measures during the Covidien-19 period, at the time of struggle as the whole world experiencing. International KTM fairs have now become traditional. The importance of the organization, which we have been organizing steadily since 2014, has once again emerged in this period in which we called as the new normal. The fairs, which now have tens of thousands of visitors from every country with the thousands of participants, have substituted by the regional compact fair organizations. '
As one of the most prominent industry centers of the textiles, Kahramanmaraş has once again welcomed textile technology manufacturers and the state of the art technologies with its sixth edition with the participation of 108 global companies. With 3,480 professionals from neighboring cities and proximity areas to Kahramanmaraş, such as from Gaziantep, Adana, Bursa, Denizli, Istanbul, Kayseri, Şanlıurfa, Malatya and Osmaniye successfully visited KTM 2020.
"Regional and Compact Fairs Will Have More Importance"
Ümit Vural, General Manager of ECR Fuarcılık, made a statement for the KTM 2020 Fair, “The International Kahramanmaraş Textile Machinery Fair (KTM), organized for the sixth time this year, will create great opportunities for our industry. With its successful organization since 2014, this fair has become traditional. I would like to thank the textile exporters associations ITHIB and ATHIB, especially the Kahramanmaraş Metropolitan Municipality and the Kahramanmaraş Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the stakeholders who has supported the fair and who has contributed to the organization of the fair.’’
The First Fair of the New Normal
The new fairs that enter our lives with Covid-19 will most likely be national fairs all over the world. All of the Global fairs planned to be held in the world in 2020 have been canceled or postponed. "As of 2021, fairs with thousands of participants will lose their importance, and regional compact fairs such as KTM will come to the fore." Mentioning about the significance of the fair, Vural emphasized the following point, '' After the new normal followed by the recovery of Covidien-19, in Europe and in Turkey, Kahramanmaraş has given primary importance once again with its regard as the center of the textile industry, a fair hosting the first textile machinery fair, after the new normal era. We have achieved an organization, followed with interest lodged by all technology manufacturers and sector representatives around the world, by taking all essential health and safety measures."
"It is necessary to be a pioneer in change"
Ümit Vural, General Manager of ECR Fuarcılık, describes current period as an "age of change"; “We are in an age in which those who resist this change are erased from the stage of history and those who cannot keep up with the pace of change lose their right to live. In this new era, even following the change is not satisfactory, it is necessary to be a pioneer in the change itself. We could see companies that keep up with this change at the KTM 2020 Fair. In this new normal, industry has found a new way of success that is underlined by the Vural who said the following," Compared to the KTM fair visitors last year, there was a 50% decrease in visitor figures, but the overall rate has increased in terms of exhibitor satisfaction. In this new normal, only professionals who wish to do business visited the fair. KTM2020 Fair has also reached an important trade volume. No one visited the fair with the intention of buying a promotional Swiss army knife or collecting catalog brochures. It was only visited by those interested and concerned. This has increased the satisfaction of participant firms. In Turkey, where the fair held, due to its location advantage and due to its proximity to the adjacent cities with just an hour distance and with its positioning at the middle of the circulating textile investments, KTM Fairs have become an attraction center. It is gratifying that textile companies planning new investments at the KTM 2020 fair have negotiated and have made purchasing decisions with success.’’
Ümit Vural stated that Kahramanmaraş, which has reached an export figure of more than $ 1 billion today, is one of our cities that draw attention in terms of foreign trade volume in production and export disciplines and that 61% of Kahramanmaraş's exports are made up of textile products.
Emphasizing that the textile industry creates employment for thousands of people in the city, Vural said; “The Turkish textile industry is one of the leading fields of the economy. Kahramanmaras Turkish textile sector provides employment to thousands of people in Turkey and is one of the leaders in this field."
