Hürriyet – Erdem Genç
Young people in İzmir missed an opportunity
Last week İzmir hosted a very interesting series of seminars giving young people lessons drawn from real life.
Those who managed to attend the meeting, organised by GençKal, the youth unit of the İzmir Quality Association, heard one fine success story after another that could light the way to their futures. Those who could not missed a great deal. Sadly, at a meeting where, had it been held in İstanbul, you would not have found a free seat, the hall was only a third full. The calibre of the event becomes clearer when you consider that the speakers included brand-new entrepreneurs behind ventures such as e-kapıcı, Hamsi Finger, Kobay A.Ş. and M3W; Haluk Okutur, who created Simit Sarayı; Fuat Sami, founder of the TV programme Bir Fikrin mi Var, familiar to us all from television; İhsan Elgin, Director of the Özyeğin University Entrepreneurship Factory; Hulusi Berik, owner of the Sir Winston Tea brand; Hugo Boss executive Kazım Saver; and architect Selçuk Alten, former general manager of Tepe and Mesa İnşaat.
Erdem Genç, one of the young entrepreneurs who have founded an events company, is, in the truest sense, the kind of entrepreneur whose organisational talent could rob Peter to pay Paul. His charm and his willingness to take risks have got a lot done. For instance, he photographed electronic goods at İstanbul’s Doğu Bank, famous for its low prices, and listed them for sale on sites such as gittigidiyor.com as if he already had them in hand. When orders came in, he bought the products and shipped them. He made very good money from this business without putting in any capital.
Another of his entrepreneurial stories made me laugh a lot. Although he had never built a website in his life, he bid for a website tender announced by a public institution in Zonguldak. First, though, he met a friend who knew how to build websites, told him he had won the job and, after some bargaining, agreed that the friend would build the site for 1,000 TL. Then he and two friends went to see the client in Zonguldak in person. The institution, which took a liking to the young men, said that by law it could pay at most 7,000 lira for the job. And so, thanks to his organisational skill, the young entrepreneur earned 7,000 lira from a business he knew nothing about. He gave 1,000 TL to the friend, who built a very nice site.
Erdem Genç, who later moved into the events business, now runs rhythm music training, a form of motivation that has become very common in workplaces in recent years. Naturally, he started this business knowing nothing about it either, but today, with his team of 17, he has become a name that well-known companies seek out.
As for the instructive examples from this excellent meeting — the story of Hamsi Finger, the Queen of Mice, Hugo Boss’s gold and the breathtaking story of Simit Sarayı, which is sure it will become one of the world’s top 500 companies — those will have to wait until tomorrow.
