İstanbul’da Hazır Giyim İhracatına Yönelik Üretim Yapan İşletmelerin Covid-19 Pandemisi Nedeniyle Ortaya Çıkan Üretim ve Tedarik Sorunlarının İncelenmesi
Authors: TAŞTEKİN Ali 
Published: October 2021

The ready-to-wear sector, which is the most important and old industry branch for development in the world economy and still one of the important production and export branches of our country, has an important place in development since history. With the Covid-19 pandemic, which spread severely in the world between March and April 2020, broad layers of society were affected by health, and business life also reveals the consequences of the negative effects it has received in the medium and long term. The ready-made clothing sector, which is one of the labor-intensive sectors in our country, is also one of the affected production branches. In order to manage the risks arising from the restrictions of production branches that have a direct impact on the economy, a strategy that will be formed between the health of the employees and the demands of foreign buyer companies has arisen. The strategy to be developed in this direction is directly related to the ability of enterprises to adapt to new situations brought along by extraordinary conditions. All businesses, regardless of their size, faced serious difficulties, especially in this process. Low cost and quality, as well as standardizations, which are the two basic conditions of competing in the foreign market, are important in terms of coping with success and competition in international markets, especially due to the limited number of buyers, namely customers, and the infinite number of companies and products. Although the probability of occurrence is low, pandemics can reach millions of people depending on their impact and the rate of spread. Covid-19 has affected the flow of daily life, and demand-side distortions have also emerged with supply-side disruptions due to reasons such as employees' inability to go to work, disrupted and canceled raw material supply, and changes in consumer preferences. Production was quickly affected by the epidemic due to reduced working hours and job losses, and many manufacturers came to the point of bankruptcy. In the pandemic, the textile industry has reduced the production capacity of people due to the rapid decrease in demand by easily abandoning shopping and consumption, part-time production has been started or production has been stopped, but only a few have tried to go through this process by producing masks, overalls and bonnets. In this research, the difficulties faced by the enterprises that make production for ready-to-wear export in Istanbul and apply restrictions during the pandemic process will be examined. Difficulties encountered; production process, worker health, transportation and raw material supply. The data collection methods of the research, as well as the review of the relevant literature, will be analyzed by converting the data obtained from the twenty-question interviews and observations made with the company managers of 15 companies operating in Istanbul belonging to the sector, as a result of the descriptive analysis Nvivo program. Keywords: Ready-to-Wear, export, Istanbul, Covid 19, Production, Supply