Hakan Koçak, the founder of Sağlam Metal, explains the establishment process of Sağlam Metal.

www.saglammetal.com


-Can you tell us about the years when you built Sağlam Metal, Mr. Koçak?

After working at the steel company in Karaköy, which I mentioned, for 3 years,

for 6 years, for the Thyssen company, which I had visited for touristic purposes, with a German friend in Turkey, we built and developed an agency in Turkey.

He was my general manager. There have been some incidents within the company in our last year, which made me uneasy.

At the time, I planned something like this on my own, so the idea started crossing my mind.

It was September or October of '97. I left ona a Friday afternoon.

On Saturday morning, I went to Bayrampaşa to look for a place, to look for a shop.

-That fast.

That fast.

-The very next morning.

Yes, because I acted impulsively, there were injustices, there was unrest.

Since I have seen such situations, I always try to reconcile the resentful in the company.

If there's a glitch, I'll try to deal with them by communicating.

Because I saw such situations and it wasn't a good environment, so I decided to leave no matter what.

In fact, my general manager told me I was bluffing. I said “no, I am a son of a civil servant.” “I'm used to eating bread and cheese.”

There's an old saying, I like it a lot. “Care not for the quantity, care for the quality.”

I mean, it's a saying about looking at the behavior, not the numbers.

So I decided to open my own place in peace; I had already changed two companies and didn’t want to move on to a third one.

I found a shop in Bayrampaşa.

We founded Sağlam Metal that day at the Doğar business center, it was 60-70 square meters in total.

-So the seeds were planted in Bayrampaşa?

The seeds were planted in Bayrampaşa. Now, the point was this.

3 years there, 6 years there - that was a total of 9 and I loved my profession.

I went to my customers for a total of nine years, I developed solutions for them, I provided efficiency gains.

I replaced the old steels with new ones, taking into account the problem with heat treatment.

Heat treatment was more difficult at the time, I mean, there were not many vacuum ovens.

There was one, and it was in Paşabahçe. And their might accept you or might not.

Heat treatment was performed in atmosphere-controlled ovens and salt baths.

Let’s say you brought the best steel in the world from abroad, let’s say from Germany. The tool steel is put in an atmosphere-controlled oven.

Temperature control is not possible, you can not cool it at the desired speed, there were always problems in steel; slow cooling - there were always problems.

At the time, we brought the steel in spite of these and provided increase in productivity. That pleased me very much.

Especially the fact that large companies were accepting our products and they were asking for me by name.

Our books were already famous. At that time, there was effectively no information on the internet in regards to the heat treatment, grinding, processing tolerances, etc. of our steels.

At the time, I was walking around like a walking encyclopedia, constantly getting phone calls from my customers.

What I am trying to say is that I like my profession, I like to move forward, interacting with people like that, with companies, developing various projects.

So as Sağlam Metal, I wanted to start with customers who had certain problems with material, to start from somewhere.

That was our starting point.



Sağlam Metal San. Ve Tic. A.Ş
0 850 205 20 95
[email protected]