Cem Boyner yeni mağaza 'Communite'yi anlattı | En büyük risk, hep aynı şeyi yapmak

Business context & leadership stance

• Cem Boyner frames “new business during uncertainty” as a deliberate counter-move to complacency:

  “When you become complacent and lean back, you’re already losing market share.”

• He positions the new concept as a serious format/philosophy invention rather than incremental improvement:

  • Retail must change.
  • Copying what’s already done is riskier than reinventing.

The “Community” retail concept (core value proposition)

• Brand/retail strategy: Community = “home + job + third place” (a “third-location” shopping experience).
• Target customer:
  • High taste
  • Income not limitless
  • Increasingly not willing to overpay for logos
• Shopping behavior shift in luxury/fashion:
  • “Luxury shame” (not wanting visible branded status) reduces demand for logo-driven luxury.
  • As perceived quality gaps shrink, customers shop more rationally: they may pay for design/material/story, not primarily the logo.

Market opportunity & why now

• Post-COVID retail/luxury dynamics:
  • COVID constrained supply → luxury prices rose.
  • When supply normalized, prices didn’t fall.
  • The elevated price environment plus logo-avoidance created instability.
• Competitive signals (brand-level, execution-relevant):
  • “Louis Vuitton lost strength in the last 56 quarters”
  • “Gucci is in trouble”
  • “Hermès seems to be doing well”
  • Takeaway: top brands are unstable and searching for new paths.

Strategy framework / playbook implied

Reinvent vs. steal market share

• Boyner contrasts:
  • “Steal the cake”: take share from incumbents
    • Can redistribute limited resources and reduce employment.
  • “Create a new pie”: invent something new
    • Expands abundance (wealth/jobs).

Experience-based transformation

• “300 years of experience” is not positioned as a reason to copy old execution.
• It’s used to know:
  • what to do, and
  • what not to do.
• Principle: use experience to redesign the system, not to optimize the old model.

Concrete operational metrics, targets, and KPIs

Store/experience

• Time spent in Boyner stores:
  • Current: 17 minutes
  • Goal/effort: 23 minutes
• Average purchases per customer:
  • Current: 4
  • Goal: 5.5

Footfall

• Weekend visitors: ~500,000 visitors (order-of-magnitude scale claim)

Assortment freshness

• Plan to discard ~15% of brands each year to keep the proposition continuously novel.
• Season launch freshness examples:
  • “Don’t recognize 65% of the brands/products” at launch
  • “75% will be sold in Türkiye for the first time”

Change management constraint

• Customer base scale claim: ~20 million customers.
• Brand replacement risk illustration:
  • If you replace 20 brands, customers may ask: “where is my brand?”
  • (Loyalty/churn risk.)

Regional expansion volume

• In Türkiye: 4 stores in first two years (possibly within first year).
• Specific Türkiye openings mentioned:
  • İstinyePark (first)
  • Galataport (about 1–1.5 months later)
  • A “Street” store next year (size/format noted below)

Store footprint & format design (execution details)

Format sizes

• İstinyap: 1,500 m²
• Galataspor: 5,500 m²
• Street location: 4,500 m²

Product categories beyond apparel

• Books, perfumes, home goods (broadening shopping reasons beyond clothing)

Assortment philosophy

• “Silent mode” approach:
  • Make fashion more accessible when it’s not tied to obvious logo visibility.
• “Buyer’s/curator’s revenge”:
  • Freedom to source better assortment than traditional department store buyers,
  • who are often constrained by showrooms/brand networks and quantity controls.

GTM (go-to-market) & international expansion plan

• International strategy: “Roots here, wings abroad”
  • Expanding internationally is described as the most important part.
• Bridgehead countries/cities mentioned:
  • London, Madrid, Athens, Milan, Dubai
  • Dubai referenced as “didn’t happen this year.”
• Europe sequence:
  • Focus on Athens/Madrid/Milan immediately after Türkiye.
• Localized versioning:
  • Global concept with local flavor per city
    • Example: “Milanese community in Milan”, “Athenian spirit in Athens”
  • Example allocation: for Milan store purchases, 25% bought by Milanese buyers.

Risk framing and change management

• Boyner explicitly reframes “risky”:

  Risk = doing the same thing every day and expecting results to rise. “Comfort zone = game over.”

• Portfolio risk control:

  • Replace brands carefully because of loyal customers and “seasonal obligations” to brands/customers.
  • Build from near-scratch rather than incremental replacement inside an existing customer/brand machine.

Concrete consumer experience goals (“community” as operations)

Desired store visitation cadence

• He contrasts:
  • customers could be fine with ~6 visits/year
  • aspiration: two visits per month
• Reason: interiors/experience will change over time.

Experience rationale

• People don’t want “shopping just to buy” anymore.
• They want experience zones (community-like engagement).

Innovation loop

• Repeat visits depend on:
  • inside changing, and
  • assortment constantly rotating (brand discards, new designers, exploration area).

Example: assortment/brand sourcing model

• High differentiation via discovery:
  • launch brands/products where they don’t recognize ~65%
  • customers experience discovery
• “Emerging brands / rising designers” need storefronts because they can’t access department-store key doors.
• Discovery value example:
  • A story from Spain: an “extraordinarily stylish” person wore no designer brands.
  • Reinforces the insight that customers value style without logos—mirroring the “community” customer.

Actionable recommendations implied by the talk

• Design for repeat visitation
  • Target ~23-minute dwell time
  • Raise purchases/customer
  • Rotate experience and assortment
• Continuously refresh assortment
  • Discard ~15% of brands annually
  • Aim for high first-time-in-country novelty (e.g., “~75%” new-to-Türkiye)
• Compete via discovery and format invention
  • Not via logo premiums
  • Not via copying existing department-store layouts
• Internationalize with localized merchandising
  • Not identical store replicas
• Use experience to avoid old mistakes
  • Don’t use “past expertise” to merely optimize the prior model

Presenters / sources

• Presenter/Guest: Cem Boyner (subtitle spelling: “Cem Boynar”)
• Host/Interviewer: Elif
• Mentioned (historical/industry): Kerim Kerimoğlu (referenced as “late Kerim Kerimoğlu”, sales manager)
• Mentioned (industry examples): Dyson, Nikon/Canon, Converse/Puma/Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hermès, Armani
• Mentioned (historical references): Ottomans, Portugal/Spain, Christopher Columbus, Strait of Magellan, Suez Canal