CEO ISKO Denim Fatih Konukoglu tells the secrets of the company’s success story in an interview with The CEO Magazine. ISKO has offices in 35 countries and is part of Sanko Tekstil, the textile division of Sanko Group, a family-owned conglomerate founded in 1904 that also has interests in construction, renewable energies, and finance. It is perhaps best known for inventing Jeggings, which are made to look like skin-tight jeans.
ISKO company has a wider global reach than any other denim manufacturer. It gives it unparalleled insights and feeds the type of creativity that makes market-defining innovations like Jeggings possible.
Fatih Konukoglu said, “We are a fast adapter.
I mean, we never say no to anything. When a customer comes and asks us, ‘Could you do this?
’ we avoid using the word ‘no’ as much as possible. This attitude has earned it a global reputation for being a company that does what others cannot.
“If someone cannot make a product, they will usually say, ‘Take it to ISKO.
They will manage.’ This is well understood in the industry,” he shares. “This gives us a big advantage because it means every new idea comes to us.”
ISKO does not just rely on external organizations to access cutting-edge innovations; it has its own research center, called ISKOTECA, in the Italian coastal town of San Benedetto del Tronto. Konukoglu explains that the center has scientists from a range of disciplines, including chemistry, physics, and biology, and experts on electronics and the technical details of manufacturing. “We are building a good community around circularity with this team, and these are all PhD-level team members,” he says.
He further said, “I would say we are maybe the only denim company that has worldwide coverage. We have customers in Japan, the US, Europe – the World of jeans is big. Furthermore, we can cover different parts of the world because of our capacity and product portfolio.
In jeans fashion, there are different dynamics, and there are major centers that drive trends, like Scandinavia and Japan.” However, in Pakistan, the trend is different. The utilization of highly skilled Ph.D. should not only be in academia, and Pakistan’s Industrial sectors should focus on hiring these like the example of ISKO to take their industry to the next level of performance and sustainability.
