At Parla, we constantly aspire to honour and highlight our heritage by being dynamic, innovative and spearheaded. Our 115-year journey is a story of constant change plus never-ending ambition and recently we had an opportunity to share our story with a new audience.
Hakan Oztuncman, one of our managing directors, talked to two distinguished Turkish academics for a case study of Parla, where our company’s late history was put under the scope.
We were proud to have been discussed as a successful manufacturing company that has powered through Turkey’s mature economy by Yasemin Soylu and Ozlem Er’s research paper. The research paper they created was then presented at the Academic Design Management Conference in Delft, Netherlands where the audience engaged with the story of Parla’s humble success.
This was also a moment for us to celebrate and appreciate the efforts of Hakan and Burak, and their father and grandfather, who are the preceding generations of Parla.
Hakan and Burak’s journey to build an international company started in the Akaretler neighbourhood of Besiktas in central Istanbul. Their father, Erdogan, had just graduated high school and was eager to begin working with his father Yakup in his furniture workshop.
Yakup, who had been handed down his craft from his father Telat (our current owners’ great grandfather), was a knowledgeable and experienced craftsman, as he was once coworkers with one of Turkey’s greatest in the furniture industry, Mustafa Plevne. With over 76 years of experience in the industry, Plevne has designed over a hundred furniture pieces and is recognised worldwide for his craft. He specialised in metalwork, which later became the first speciality of Parla, then named Ersah under Yakup.
The first wrought iron chairs Yakup produced in 1996 for their client, a local bakery in Besiktas, are still there to this day. The metalwork was intended for outdoor use, which was the company’s forte back then. The metal swinging chair for outdoor use was the signature design at the time, which made the transition to more complicated pieces of furniture possible.
The decision to switch to indoor furniture widened Parla’s scope and opened doors for more exciting projects. An important milestone in Parla’s late history marked the biggest contract yet, with Burger King in 2006. Being the Turkish distributor of Burger King was a major contribution to the Turkish manufacturing industry and a boost to Parla. After overcoming the challenge of supplying for a huge client, an important question arose. Could Parla also manufacture for clients abroad?
However, this question brought many necessities with it: investing in bigger and better machines as well as hiring and training more craftsmen.
The collaboration between industrialization and craftsmanship is what brought Parla to the overseas market. As more staff were being trained to transition into mass production with the help of machines, more advanced projects arrived at Parla’s doorstep. A story that started with cafes and bakeries, was now progressing into restaurants and hotels, which remain two of Parla’s prominent project areas to this day.
To stay competitive in Turkey’s growing manufacturing industry, Parla had to strengthen its portfolio. This is where the idea of a Parla collection and an in-house design team was born. Younger team members were encouraged to lead on this, some of whom chose to taken on extra studying in design in Italy and other European countries.
Following from this, Parla’s Collection and Bespoke service became two areas that fed each other. Without one, the other couldn’t shine as bright. The then-junior designers of our first in-house design team, Betül, Aysel and Deniz, have now grown into being the decision-makers of today’s Parla. They pioneered Parla’s journey into creating their unique designs, which is now handled by a 15-person team of designers at our factory in Istanbul.
Parla, now baby steps into its first collection and growing bespoke service, ventured abroad firstly to Romania and Russia. The Baneasa Shopping Mall, in Bucharest, marked our biggest export project yet in the history of the company.
Coming on to 2008, the global economy was showing signs of distress. However, the financial crisis was a chance for emerging Middle Eastern cities like Dubai to shine. Parla took its chance to infiltrate the Middle Eastern market, and since then, has been a major supplier for projects in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. After showing a presence at the Index Fair and opening a showroom in Dubai, the prominent transition to restaurant and hotel projects was first realised.
We knew Parla was unique from very early on, but our consistency in delivering projects that have grown in size shows our dedication to our craft and entrepreneurial spirit. Parla has continued to expand its influence in the Middle East since then and has branched out to Europe and the US for the past 10 years. Even though our history spans 115 years, we are always evolving and having to adapt to the new challenges the industry brings, adding a sustainability team in-house and constantly looking to join new trade fairs to widen our scope even more are some of the examples of recent developments we have undertaken to evolve even more.
Looking back, our journey has been a rollercoaster of a ride with many ups and downs but the progress made isn’t something to underestimate. This is why being recognized in the global scene as an all-around case study is a real honour to our history and our craft. You can read the 20-page research paper here.
