Alev Group: Double Branded Precure Strategy

Alev Group considers itself to be in an unique position within the Turkish retreading market. "Our company is the only distributor, which can deliver all the requirements of a precure retreader out of one hand", says Dr. Coskun Alev, founder and main shareholder of the Erenköy, Istanbul based group. "Alev Group works with 70% of the 200 or more cold retreaders in Turkey ", he adds. "Since 2007 we are one of top three suppliers to the market".

The Alev Group actually consists of two independent companies Alev Lastik Sanayi ve Ticaret Ltd and Alev Makina Kaucuk Sanayi ve Ticaret AS, both of which are wholly owned by the Alev family. Alev Lastik is an importer of retreading accessories, acting as a distributor for Vipal repair patches; MAE inner/outer envelopes and curing tubes, retreading accessories from Italmatic ,Salvadori and Myers. In addition the company markets a range of equipments and materials for conveyor belt systems manufactured by the German company NILOS GmbH&CO.KG. Alev Makina is specialised on the import of precure tread rubber. The company has been the exclusive distributor for Ellerbrock for over 15 years and is also marketing the Vipal range on an exclusive basis since 2003. Overall the company claims a 20% share of the total precure market in Turkey for the two brands it represents.

In recent years, the company has also manufactured its own range of retreading equipment, supplying the machinery for four complete precure shops in Turkey, the largest of which is the Turkish Army's own retreading factory in Ankara.

The Alev Group was founded in 1989 by Dr.Coskun Alev, who has had a long and distinguished career in the automotive industry including time spent with the Ford Motor Company in Germany and the UK. Alev was a member of the starting team of the largest Turkish tyre manufacturer Lassa when it was initially set up in 1974. Indeed between 1977-80 he served as General Manager of Lassa's marketing company,Lisa. After leaving the Sabanci Group, Alev, with the technical support of Ellerbrock, started a precure retreading shop in Istanbul, which was at the time one of the most modern of its kind in Europe. Since 1991 Dr Alev has devoted himself exclusively to the development of the Alev Group, initially operating as an agent selling Tech tyre repair products but eventually expanding to include other products.

The fact that Alev markets two brands of precured tread could perhaps be viewed as being somewhat unusual. However, Alev sees the two brands as being complementary for a number of reasons. Firstly, Vipal, being a Brazilian company is logistically located a long way away. Initially Vipal was introduced as a value line in order to satisfy the need of the Turkish market for a good quality product at a reasonable price. Also, when Alev first started importing Vipal products, the Brazilians' product mix was not able to satisfy the full range of profiles and widths requested in the local market. Therefore several wide treads and modern European profiles had to be sourced from Ellerbrock. In other words a double brand strategy was the only solution to offer a complete range of profiles and widths to the local market.

At present 60-70% of Alev's precure material sales are sourced from Vipal, the remainder from Ellerbrock, with the German brand being positioned slightly above Vipal in terms of price. Alev expresses that the composition of the company' sales between these two brands in the future will depend on the pricing policy of these two suppliers.

In order to maintain its position in the market Alev follows a transparent pricing policy to all its customers granting exactly the same price level to everyone independent of their geographical location in the country and size of their plant. In line with the company policy and in order to give a high service rate to customer orders, Alev keeps on average a mixed stock of 300 tonnes of Vipal and Ellerbrock precure materials (approx.4 months supply) at any one time.

Issue 2008/4