‘Women to Watch: Women Who Make a Difference’ ceremony was held at Swissotel The Bosphorus, Istanbul.
Alev Altınkılıç went from being a mother who looked after her kids to making the critical decision to take on the family’s retail business and create her own brand.
Alev Altınkılıç, Kahve Dünyası, Founder
Alev Altınkılıç is devoted to her family. In fact, when we ask about the people who shaped her career, she points to one person: her husband Birol Altınkılıç. As for the turning point of her career, it’s starting to work in her family’s company, the Altınmarka Group of Companies, as a foreign investment specialist in 1992. The sharpest bend in this turning point was her decision to switch from Altınmarka to Kahve Dünyası.
Around ten years ago, Turkey was introduced to international coffee chains. Until then, our well-rooted coffee culture consisted of Turkish coffee alone. With the introduction of chains, the imported coffees instantly became available on every street corner, addressing the long deprived curiosity of the aficionados. About a year later, in 2004 Kahve Dünyası was born in order to offer Turkish coffee as well as many other traditional and contemporary brews to consumers.
In a market dominated by global giants, Kahve Dünyası went head-to-head with its competitors and mastered not only in coffee but also in chocolate. Alev Altınkılıç lead the family brand grew to 104 stores, one of them being very special.
Altınkılıç describes this store and her feelings about it by saying, “Opening our store with our own name in the heart of London, next to world-renowned coffee chains, was the proudest achievement of my career.”
Alev Altınkılıç competed with foreign chains on the “away” field, as well. Six months ago she opened a store in London, in a complex belonging to the Royal Family in Piccadilly. With this move, she took the first step in introducing the complimentary hospitality of Turkish culture to the world with the brand she created herself.
“A mother who’s devoted to her children. A wife who supports her husband. I just can’t stop… I could think up many things at the same time and get to work immediately.” A woman who’s in charge of a business where there are many overlapping areas, from the management of 104 stores to hundreds of products – from coffee to chocolate, ice cream to pastries, cold drinks to accessories – as well as manufacturing, marketing, accounting, human resources, customer satisfaction, R&D efforts and business development. This is how Alev Altınkılıç describes her personal life.
Alev Altınkılıç took risks. She went from being a mother who took care of her children to making the critical decision to enter her family’s retail business manufacturing cocoa, chocolate and coffee. She then created her own brand and expanded it beyond national borders. So how did she do it? Here’s the answer, in her own words: “The most important factor is to be different. When dreaming, you also have to dream about being different. The tricks of the trade are to try to do your job well with courage and passion and excitement, and to focus.”
“The most important factor is to be different. When dreaming, you also have to dream about being different. The tricks of the trade are to try to do your job well with courage and passion and excitement, and to focus.”
