Being Turkey’s leader company in electronic component distribution, Özdisan Elektronik keeps growing with its new
investments and global collaborations. The company’s headquarters is in İstanbul and it has opened a new office in Thessaloniki in the last months. We met Okan Abdi, Deputy General Manager of Özdisan Elektronik which is the distributor of many active and passive electronic components, and discussed the investments and works of the company.
How was Özdisan’s 2022, Mr. Abdi? Did you achieve your goals?
We have left behind a year and in the first half of last year, the effects of chip crisis added to the pandemic that started in 2020 remained, while lead times were normalized gradually in the second half.
While many companies distress its customers in providing microprocessors, Özdisan delivered products that were in the stock to many customers. Alongside our alternative solutions to the companies thanks to our collaboration with Nuvoton, our technical support helped our customers change processors used in the project faster and easier.
In pandemic and post-pandemic periods, we increased our stock levels highly. And we tried hard to meet the electronic component needs of our customer from our stocks as much as possible. The
lead times diminished and electronic components began to be provided at more affordable prices, which generated a kind of relief in the market. And this new situation caused postpones and cancellations in the orders of the companies. As Özdisan, we achieved our goals through working in harmony. If the companies had not postponed their orders in the second half, we would have made a turnover way above our targets. While achieving our goals, we also gained invaluable new brands to our company’s agencies.
Which sectors have you been active in recent years?
As Özdisan, we continue being solution partner of our customers from many sectors thanks to our wide range of products.
What makes Özdisan different? To your opinion?
Özdisan makes the whole difference in the market with its experience of 43 years and trustworthiness. Our company is not only a supplier but also a solution partner. Being a solution partner brings a tremendous responsibility, which differs us from the other companies. Working with components in stock is a matter of genetics for Özdisan. The companies can understand what I say more clearly when
it is difficult to acquire the material. As you know, it is impossible to produce a device without electronic components. So, we built a strategy based on working with stock to compensate the losses in shipping time of the products coming from foreign countries since these critical products cannot be manufactured in our own country. Özdisan is the leading company in its sector and being the first game-changer and innovator, which applies all changes to the products, and finding innovative solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s technology needed by the customers make Özdisan different than its competitiors.
What are your expectations from 2023 as a company?
Frequently, Turkey has economic fluctations. As you know, an election will be held in 2023 and the sector may experience some sort of decline in certain months. Even though we assume that decrease in demands that felt more towards the end of 2022 would have an impact, we have still set the goal to grow by above 20% on dollars in 2023. The perspective of many companies will depend on the conditions before and after the elections. Özdisan’s focus will be on offering the most accurate product stocks and advantageous prices to all our producer customers to maintain production. We will be following closely the innovative products needed by the sector and take firm steps towards bringing these products to Turkey.
To which exhibitions do you plan to participate in 2023?
The exhibitions are the most important facilities to be pioneer in the sector, bring new products and solutions and get into the foreign markets. We, as Özdisan, really care about the foreign exhibitions. Last year, we participated in Electronica Fair held in Munich. It was very successful. We commenced
significant collaborations and acquired new agencies. We hosted many customer from all around the world.
In 2023, we will be participants and visitors of many exhibitions in Europe, Middle East and Far East. Our main focuses will be loT, lightning, medical and automative exhibitions. We will also give importance to the exhibitions of embedded software and electrical vehicle solutions. We will also take interest in the exhibitions for power electronics and laser solutions production tools. Speaking of domestic market, we will be in IDEF.
Can you talk about your export activities?
Our export volume has been growing for the last 3 or 4 years. With an annual growth rate of 90-10% for each year, we accessed a turnover that is above 30 millions in 2022. Whereas a global decrease in Europe is expected for 2023, we desire to achieve similar goals of growth with the help of our collaborations.
With its electronic PCB solutions to foreign markets, Özdisan exports to both various European countries and U.S. In 2023, we have accelerated our export activities for new countries based on
support from Assan and EMS, our group companies.
Which markets do you aim at?
On October 2022, Özdisan Greece became officially active. The headquarters is in Thessaloniki. This city is very advantageous since you can go to both Greece and other Balkan countries over Thessaloniki by using airlines, sea and highways. Beginning with Thessaloniki, we will accelarate our works and activities to be solution partner of the whole Greece market and Balkan market. Özdisan Greece will be the most important electronic component supplier and solution partner with its new regional agencies and Özdisan’s wide range of products. Our colloborations with outstanding European countries have
started. We plan to make new moves in Middle East and Africa markets as well as Europe, U.K., Italy, Germany.
“Being local company which is able to analyse the working principle of Turkish companies gains us an upper hand among our both global and local competitiors.”
Do you plan to open new branches in other world cities?
Nothing is certain for now, but in Özdisan, things are fast. And we have some relevant ideas. Let’s see what happens. Our target countries include Italy, U.K. and U.S.
What do you want to say about your latest distributorship agreements?
2022 was actually a very fruitful year for Özdisan in these terms. We have just begun visiting some exhibitions, yet have built connections to many companies, even though they are remote. And we
have become the agency of Yageo company. Many Turkish companies are familiar with this company but they have difficulties in accessing and finding stock. Yageo products can now be supplied easily from Özdisan stocks. Additionally, we have Ignion for loT. Being one of the biggest antenna producers, Ignion is a European-based company with a capacity to dominate the whole sector. This company can offer antenna solutions for all sectors. And last year, we made an agreement with Honeywell, which is one of the world’s biggest electronics companies. We intensified our collaboration with Honeywell and we will focus on new projects in 2023. And we have also added Nichia, a Japanese sensor producer. Now, we are conducting a stock work about this company. And we are working for new brands that will complete our product range and bring us to a better level in the sector.
What do you want to say about the advantages and opportunuities Özdisan offers to the companies?
Özdisan is 43 years old. And as a manager, this is my 26th year in this company. I began working as a sales engineer. Within years, we worked with thousands of companies and carried out thosands of projects. The most important and valuable thing is the sense of trust created by Özdisan. Our company reflects its character on the companies it works with and the companies can easily and strongly feel the support of Özdisan. Being a local company which is able to analyse the working principle of Turkish
companies gains us an upper hand among both our global and local competititors. Whereas many companies had difficulties in finding materials, Özdisan delivered products from its stock. The companies that work with Özdisan experienced almost no crisis about the materials. Another reason behind being preferred is our approach to the companies as not only component distributor but also solution partner. Since Özdisan is the distributor, it offers fast access to the products from its primary source.
Now, retail products are on özdisan.com and seemingly, you are going under another transformation.Can you inform us about this?
We thought that we could improve our retailing services while supporting producer companies. Our students and designers may not have established firm, yet. And they also want to develop a project
after buying a product in small quantities. To this end, Özdisan had to improve its product range and be able to offer advantageous prices to the companies. The world is quickly developing and you can see the lenghts many sectors go with the help of quick development of e-commerce. It was impossible for us not to take action upon these developments.
You collaborated with many universities. What do you think of universities generally? And what do you want to say about your collaborations?
We are trying to increase our collaborations with both high-schools and universities. In the previous years, many university studens ranked in the competitions like Teknofest, to which we gave support. This makes us very happy and keeps us motivated. As you know, we held an invention festival in the last month of 2022, which was for secondary school students and hobbyists. This was an organization held by NASA for many years and its Turkish version was undertaken by Özdisan. We had a break for some time, but we again got our hands on it this year. Tomorrow’s R&D engineers, entrepreneurs,
CEO or finance director may come out of these events. We also work with Doğuş University and Özyeğin University. We want to give support to many universities, actually and offer oppprtunities for internship and part-time working for our future colleagues in our company. We will increase cooperations with universities in 2023.
