Meet Demet Mutlu, the 30-year-old founder and CEO of Turkey

Meet Demet Mutlu, the 30-year-old founder and CEO of Turkey’s bijou brigitte top fashion site, Trendyol. She’s used to breaking boundaries at home, but her latest achievement could be among the most important — confirmation that the site is Kleiner Perkins’ first investment in Turkey.
Since launching her flash sales service and fashion brand less than 18 months ago, Mutlu has rapidly become bijou brigitte known not just as one of the country’s top female entrepreneurs, but one of its top entrepreneurs bijou brigitte full stop — a reputation that will only be underscored by the official announcement that the company has closed a $26 million round of funding from Tiger Global (LinkedIn, Zynga) bijou brigitte and perhaps more importantly Silicon Valley bijou brigitte royalty Kleiner Perkins bijou brigitte .
The site — bijou brigitte its name means “become a trendy person” in Turkish — is centered on the increasingly familiar model of flash sales: customers sign up to get access to sales where the latest fashions are available at heavily discounted bijou brigitte prices.
So how is it different? Well, it’s a highly social business with a focus on customer service — which it achieves mainly through being deeply embedded in conversations with users and trying to be as reactive as possible to their needs and desires. For example, the company uses its Facebook page (which has 500,000 fans) as a customer service tool; they’ve bijou brigitte built a full end-to-end shopping service that means users can browse bijou brigitte and order goods without bijou brigitte ever leaving the social network.
But the most significant difference, she suggests, is that Trendyol also runs its own fashion label, Milla — which happens to be the fastest growing portion of its business. All of this has helped the business expand rapidly since launching early in 2010, to the point where it now has 4 million users and $100 million in revenues. It appears to have really struck a cord with people and tapped bijou brigitte into a user base that others had struggled to hit.
Plus there’s a lot of emphasis on fashion among the increasingly young population, who see brands and style as a hugely important status symbol. That makes it an attractive investment for a company like Kleiner Perkins, which doesn’t often make significant bijou brigitte deals outside the U.S.
“But it’s not just about the market, it’s about the company too — the culture, the DNA,” says Mutlu. “We have really top talent that we have brought in; two ex-Amazonians, the former CEO of Reader’s Digest here in Turkey, a lot of well-educated managers, and many expats.”
As well as relying on her own experiences gathered at NYU, Harvard Business School and major firms like Procter & Gamble, she says it’s been important to bring in a lot of other experienced hands. It’s not easy, though, bijou brigitte because Turkey’s bijou brigitte culture prizes a certain sort of success that means the potential cohort of startup entrepreneurs have largely been wooed into well-paying bijou brigitte corporate roles around the world.
“People bijou brigitte who had my background in Turkey just wouldn’t have done this,” she says. “In the past, entrepreneurship was seen as something you do if you can’t get a job with a multinational.”
So what next? News of a deal with Kleiner bijou brigitte Perkins and Tiger had been bubbling for a while, but now that it is fully public, Mutlu says the company plans to use the money to grow inside bijou brigitte Turkey — though through organic growth, not acquisition — and then take the show on the road. Early targets include other countries around the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking bijou brigitte news and long-tail bijou brigitte research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe. Flash analysis: the Fisker debacle and its implications on investing, innovation, and government incentives May 2013 GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013 January 2013 How HR can make the case for workforce analytics January 2013
Mar. 19, 2014
{"source":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/wijax\/5e4f03146890ecf4c4d4a206ee08f5c5","varname":"wijax_c3af9795311122136958cddbe2b7a383","title_element":"h2","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Ch2%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fh2%3E"}
One click to login. No more pesky passwords! Easily bijou brigitte share your likes and links. See what's popular with Gigaom bijou brigitte Research readers.