Emel Gülbahar: MaviKalem supported me by looking at my life story, not my age or my documents!

“My dream is to open a boutique. A women’s café next to the boutique. I will plant flowers! Women will come to chat. Women can’t be comfortable everywhere, let them be comfortable in my coffee with flowers.”

Emel Gülbahar started working as a secretary at the age of 19. She worked at the same place until she got married and had her first child. Over the years, she was promoted in the company she worked for and when she left, she was the head of the accounting department. She always thought that women should improve themselves and not stand still. “I don’t like sitting, I love working! Apart from loving it, I want women to be more active.”

She had quit her job at the company, but she didn’t want to stop. One day, by chance, she learned about the sale of catalog products. She first bought some socks and underwear and started selling them. She sold to her close circle, friends and relatives. She went to coffee days. “I was going to sell with my bag in one hand and my child in the other, then with two children, then with two children and a stroller!” When the commuting became more difficult and the variety of products increased, she started to invite women to her house. She was making sales while chatting with the women. She did not stop, she moved her business from her home to a shop. She was getting closer to her dream step by step. When she opened her boutique, she diversified her products. A month later, the earthquake hit. She started living in a tent.

“Every morning I was thinking, ‘Will it be our turn today?’ ‘What are we going to do?’ I wanted to get out of that psychology. One day I said, ‘I have a job, I will hold on to it no matter what’”

After the earthquake, there were donations of clothes, but not everyone’s size underwear was available. Women were afraid to say they wanted a different size. Yet this was her job. With the money she received for rent assistance, she brought underwear and cosmetics (shampoo and toothpaste) from out of town. She also added the products she could get from her home. She stretched a rope in the tent, hung the laundry on the rope with hangers and started selling. She was selling, but rats were eating the products and the heat made it difficult. Emel moved her business to a container. (September 2023) She and her husband set up the container; they installed the windows and door of the house they lived in before the earthquake. “Now I look at life through that window every day.”

She knew that many women in her neighborhood made handicrafts. “I thought about what I could do to improve all of us and the idea of a bazaar came to my mind.” She organized women in Subaşı Neighborhood and started a bazaar in the park. (This bazaar is still going on.) She saw MaviKalem’s poster in the bazaar area and applied by explaining her business. “For a year, I knocked on every door for my dream. I tried to get a loan, but to no avail. MaviKalem didn’t look at my age or my documents, but at the life story I had written and called me.” She had a container, but her products were piled up on top of each other and she was having difficulty organizing them. With the support she received, she organized her products and improved her tracking system.

Emel Gülbahar selects and sells her products according to the needs of the region and the period. Although there is no women’s coffee shop next to her container boutique for now, she has planted flowers and goes to work every day with a smiling face.

Emel Gülbahar’s social media account: https://www.instagram.com/emel.butik4kozmetik/

Adress: Abdullah Can Cömert Caddesi No:3 Defne/Hatay