Since 1966, tooth-friendly Difaş is ready to achieve its new goals with its renewed brand face and major investments... 26 Mar 2024

In the interview given to Beauty Turkey Special Issue, we talked about our company understanding and our new products.

"To become a world brand in domestic production"... I am sure that this is the biggest vision of every company engaged in domestic production. And successful companies take firm steps by developing effective strategies to realise this vision. One of the brands proudly representing our country in the world with its registered successes is Difaş... Yalçın Kaynak, Deputy General Manager of the brand, talked about the place and importance of Difaş in the sector, its vision and future strategies for our readers... Can we get to know Difaş, which has a history of more than fifty years, a little more closely?

Our honorary chairman Mr. Muammer Yüceler, who has pioneered the Turkish plastics industry to this day, made all the necessary investments for the production of toothbrushes in 1966 and continued on its way with the Difaş brand in this product group in 1970. Founded with 100% domestic capital, Difaş continued with the innovative vision of our Chairman of the Board of Directors Mr. Cevdet Yüceler, opened up to the world and became the priority choice of many national and international brands, especially in private label production. Difaş, which has successfully passed many national and international audit institutions, is now an organisation that has TS EN ISO 20126, ISO 22716, GMP, DIN EN ISO 9001: 2008, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certificates, especially CE certificate.

After combining these opportunities of Difaş with my 32 years of experience in the sector in mid-2019, under the leadership of Mr Cevdet, we first renewed our vision and mission, created our policies accordingly, and made all updates including our logo and corporate identity. In the same process, we have established a strong sales and distribution network by recruiting Turkey and regional sales managers, each more valuable than each other and with a high sense of belonging, and forming their teams. As Difaş family, we are currently delivering all our products to our consumers through our dealers in 42 provinces across Turkey.

Could you tell us about your product groups and prominent products?

With Difaş brand, we have three main product groups as Oral care, Personal care and Home care product groups. Each of our products in the oral care product group has its own special functionality and features. If I need to summarise a few of them, especially the packaging of our Pro-Clinic Slim Soft and Pro-Clinic Ultra Soft products, many of our environmentally friendly toothbrushes such as Biodent, Green Nature are produced with the first and only Difaş brand in Turkey, in addition, many different toothbrushes that smokers, mouth bracket users and people who have undergone intraoral operations will need are produced and offered for sale under the Difaş brand.

It must be very proud to stand out as a domestic manufacturer in the sector and especially to survive as a well-established and reliable company for years. What lies behind this success?

Behind this success, there are years of experience, corporate structure, a management approach that closely follows the latest technologies and innovations in the world and adopts the principle of incorporating these innovations in a timely manner, a strong team that has adopted the understanding of complete harmony and teamwork for years, and a strong vision that guides the realisation of all these. As Difaş, we have never compromised on our principles, we have developed and offered world-class products for sale in order to produce the highest quality products and provide the best quality service for our country and consumers. Fortunately, we have received and continue to receive the reward of these efforts both in our country and in many countries we export.

When it comes to Difaş, it is impossible not to talk about social responsibility awareness. Apart from your commercial activities, you also instil an excellent awareness in the society in social responsibility campaigns. Could you share these activities and your plans for the future?

As you have mentioned, social responsibility is as important for us as our commercial activities. In this context, we have carried out very important activities to protect oral and dental health and, most importantly, to ensure that children are not afraid of the dentist within the scope of the "I love my teeth, I go to the dentist" project for approximately 2,000 children of primary school age, especially in kindergarten classes. In addition, we provided stem cell therapy and implant training to university students studying in the department of dentistry. In a study we carried out together with the Dynamic Dentistry Association, we carried out Applied Basic Implantology Training and gave diplomas to the participants who successfully completed this training. In 2021, we will continue our social responsibility projects in a more comprehensive manner.

The biggest agenda of the last year has undoubtedly been the Covid-19 outbreak. What changes have occurred in Difaş's strategic planning in this process? What kind of differences have you experienced in your production and export activities?

As it is known, the coronavirus emerged for the first time in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and spread rapidly first to China and then to the whole world. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation in March 2020 due to its fatal effect and rapid spread. In order to prevent the spread of the virus, countries had to take extremely strict measures and almost completely stop economic and social life. Since the pandemic has caused many important effects and consequences in social, economic, political, economic, administrative, legal, military, religious and cultural fields in Turkey as in the world, radical decisions had to be taken in this context. In this pandemic process, economies have been adversely affected in terms of both supply and demand, and therefore, we have faced a crisis in both supply and demand. As a result of these, a serious shrinkage occurred on a global scale in the main sectors of the economy, especially in the manufacturing industry and trade in 2020, and this shrinkage is expected to continue in 2021. As Difaş, we have taken all kinds of measures in this direction on time and implemented them with great sensitivity, taking all the statements and instructions of our State, the Ministry of Health and the Scientific Committee as reference.

Could you give us some information about your projects? In this context, what is your future strategy?

In our short and medium-term projects, we will continue to produce innovative and environmentally friendly toothbrushes that will lead the sector with the mission of being a "tooth-friendly since 1966" brand. In addition to toothbrushes, we will add many new oral care products to this product group and offer them to the market. In this process, I would like to give the good news that we will introduce Difaş Bio Care "eco-friendly combs", "D-Neon" neon-coloured, antistatic combs and many new model hairbrushes with different designs and functionality, which are included in our personal care product group, to our consumers as soon as possible. In addition, we will continue to maintain our effectiveness with the synergy we will create by increasing our product range with Difaş home care products, which will again lead the sector in 2021. We have made our long-term plans and projects very comprehensive. I will share them with you when the time comes.

Regarding your export activities, which are your target markets in the medium and long term? Do you plan to reach wider geographies by expanding your production network and product range?

As I mentioned above, we produce at world standards. In particular, we export our innovative products such as Pro-Clinic, Green Nature, Bi0-dent and many similar products to many countries of the world with different income levels such as Sudan and England. In the medium and long term, we aim to increase the number of countries we export to over 100. We continue to create the necessary organisation and infrastructure to achieve these goals.