For almost half a century the CMS Group has endeavoured to improve its service to global markets. The company continues to strive for constant innovation and set higher goals in every field.
“At CMS, our basic philosophy is to do our part in setting an example of excellence and contributing our knowledge and expertise to society”, says Mr. Tonguç Ösen; the founder who created the CMS brand in a small workshop. “We manufacture light alloy wheels for man’s great passion: The automobile. The wheel is integral to the performance of the automobile; therefore it must be flawlessly produced. Thanks to our principle of “technological excellence”, we create customer satisfaction by transforming new designs into technical realities that reflect consumer tastes and meet their needs and today’s demand for high-performance products. We are the technological leader for light alloy wheel production and service in Turkey.” In fact, today the CMS brand successfully competes in the global allow wheels market.
In addition to accomplishing its goal of global technological growth through the application of the concept of continuous improvement to both the production and the sales process, CMS is also fulfilling its responsibilities by providing expertise, excellence and reliability.
CMS began the production of light alloy wheels in 1985, in order to create an international brand. Over the next 10 years, CMS supplied wheels to the Turkish market, as well as to major automotive manufacturers throughout the world. At present, CMS is certainly the Turkish market leader. They are now working steadily to become an even greater recognised brand in the global market. Having produced 1,500,000 wheels in 2000 (80% export), CMS increased its production capacity to 2,000,000 in 2001, and will be increasing it to 3,500,000 in 2004.
With its outstanding production quality, CMS today is the first choice and primary partner of several major automotive manufacturers. The firm supplies several automotive manufacturers such as Renault France, Fiat Auto SpA and Alfa Romeo Italy. Furthermore, they export to countries such as Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Greece, Portugal, Egypt, Denmark, Holland and Russia.
One of the obstacles of selling into export markets was their customers’ reluctance to work on letters of credit. Determined to overcome this problem, in 2000, CMS began to use the factoring services to Koç Faktoring and Yapi Kredi Faktoring, two Turkish FCI members. Factoring not only allowed the company to sell on open account terms without the fear of bad debts, but also provided them with immediate cash flow against their export sales. By being able to offer more attractive buying terms to their customers, their export volumes grew even faster and by the end of 2000 the firm had reached USD 53 million in sales, a very impressive growth rate indeed!
In 2001 the firm’s sales continued to increase as they achieved gross sales of USD 55 million. Since the beginning of the contract, Koç Faktoring and Yapi Kredi Faktoring have provided the company with credit protection, collection services and the necessary funding to provide the working capital required for growth. As a result, according to Mr. Ösen, “The cooperation with the two factors has allowed us to increase our exports with confidence and focus our work on the improvement of the production quality and sales and services, as opposed to risk management, collection and cash flow concerns. Overall, the export factoring facility allows us to focus on our core business as well as our philosophy that requires dedication to “continuous improvement”.