Many small and large businesses in Türkiye have found ways to make shipments abroad, where technology ventures that have expanded online trade are playing an important role.
One of these, ShipEntegra, seeks to advance its efforts to help Turkish businesses expand their export capacities by leveraging technology and efficient logistics management, as it looks to maintain growth in 2023.
The tech company helps businesses with online sales to manage their logistics and order fulfillment processes. It provides a platform that enables e-commerce businesses to sell their products on multiple global marketplaces and manage their shipping and delivery operations efficiently.
ShipEntegra has developed a comprehensive system that integrates with more than 20 global marketplaces.
In this scope, even a small business owner or tradesperson with a fiber connection from Türk Telecom, one of Türkiye’s leading technology and communications companies, is only left with the task of preparing the right product and offering it to the global market.
Türk Telekom is known for its widespread fiber connection that constitutes one of the crucial segments of its increasing investments.
ShipEntegra CEO Ali Ceylan said they are the first company to have incorporated the integration processes in global marketplaces within their own structure, as he elaborated on the application they developed.
“While offering the opportunity to manage global marketplaces over a single platform, we have also developed a comprehensive system that will contribute to the operational part of the process. Even though we are an online platform, our biggest advantage is that we directly touch our manufacturers,” Ceylan noted.
When they first established the company, he said, alongside their marketing manager, they had started the process by introducing themselves to e-exporters in Istanbul’s 15th-century Grand Bazaar, known as Kapalıçarşı.
“Having started with explaining what we do to one person, at the end of the day, we found ourselves in a situation where all Kapalıçarşı tradespeople had entrusted all their e-export processes to us. We realized the first cargo process by going and buying a motorcycle,” Ceylan said.
Ceylan stated that the software they developed performs logistics, storage and product listing processes for companies selling on sites such as Amazon and eBay.
“We have opened our branches in six points in Türkiye. Thanks to our Kayseri, Ankara, Istanbul, Antalya, Izmir and Bursa branches, which we opened to be close to e-exporters and to keep the service quality at the highest level, we can carry out all cargo processes within ourselves with fulfillment support,” he noted.
“We can send packages to the U.S. in the same delivery time it would be shipped from Istanbul to Ankara. Thanks to our e-exporter company, we have created a system that can be managed online without the need for any logistics knowledge, without dealing with any documents (proforma, customs certificate, etc.), without any manual processing, and we continue to provide shipping services to more than 220 countries worldwide,” he explained.
Ceylan further said 90% of order and logistics management processes of the sales on Etsy, an e-commerce platform of which they are official partners, are carried out through ShipEntegra, stressing plans to launch similar cooperation with other prominent companies.
"In the near future, we will also start logistics and technology partnerships with Amazon, eBay and Walmart from global marketplaces. Having a partnership agreement with a marketplace means that e-exporters can use dozens of services with us,” he said.
“In this context, we want to strengthen the competitiveness of Turkish sellers by increasing our partnerships with global marketplaces. Despite the fact that we do not have any logistics vehicles worldwide, it is crucial that leading marketplaces in the sector recognize us as a 'technology-based logistics' company," he added.
In fact, Ceylan suggested more shipments are made through their company than through express cargo companies, which is something he said attracts the attention of global marketplaces.
“So much so that when we entered this sector, Türkiye ranked 15th in the Etsy sellers ranking. In the 2021 world ranking, Türkiye went on to rank seventh,” he added.
Ceylan stressed the fact that housewives, students and freelancers who were engaged or wanted to engage with e-exports did not know much about cargo or customs processes.
“When they were going to a global carrier, they could not get prices as individuals,” he said.
"We made e-export accessible to everyone by solving all these deficiencies. We enabled even 65-year-old Ayşe, who knits at home and sells her products with the help of her neighbor's child's computer support, to complete all these processes directly,” Ceylan added.
Instead of procedures that used to take weeks, he said they are now enabling shipping very easily and quickly.
“With our ShopiVerse subsidiary, through which we aim to enable more people to engage in e-exports, companies can easily open stores on marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart and eBay and can easily establish companies in America," Ceylan noted.
