But first came Turkey.

So I decided to leave Casablanca (with pain in my hart) and to go to Turkey, because Jan was producing there in the meanwhile. Live was completely different. The Turks are much more serious people that the north African Maroccans. I landed in a small shirt factory called Vidal Textile ruled by a young couple Ibrahim and Yashim. They made 800 shirts a day of medium quality. But they were good learners and soon they achived a fine quality level. And like in the good old days I managed again a few sub contractors.

     
The workers at Vidal

 

One of them was ATF. A big brand new company of a "fils de papa" who had invested daddy's millions of dollars in a shirt / suit factory. He had a super modern machine park of Durrkoph machines for suite production of 1500 pieces a day and 2000 shirts a day. To get in the shirt department you had to walk over a long suspended corridor. At 3 meter above the sout production you had a magnificent view over the level below. But I never saw them really at speed producing. The shirt production was the same. Big scale, low productivity, bad management. One year later they went also belly up. What a shame for that superb factory.
Al that remains of ATF is a label in my suit.
While producing in Turkey I came also across the best shirt companies in Istanbul. They are: Abbate, Bise, Duffy, Provva and the Pierre Cardin factory. Beautiful shirts made in the finest tradition by man. I think that the best I have ever seen is BISE. The brothers Cafelly exist since the Ottoman empire and they have achieved a level of refinement that is the fruit of the skill of there workers.

I lived only 6 months in Turkey.