How to message a Turkish supplier so you actually get a reply
This is the question I get more than any other, and it is never phrased as a question. It arrives as a complaint: I messaged eleven suppliers and three answered. Almost always the contacts were fine. The message was the problem, and it is a fixable one.
The short answer
Four lines on WhatsApp, in Turkish, sent on a working morning: who you are and what you buy, one specific product code from their own feed, the quantity, and one question. Anything longer reads as work, and work gets postponed.
Who is actually reading it
Picture where your message lands. It is not an inbox. It is a phone in the back pocket of a man standing in a showroom in Merter with a customer in front of him, forty unread chats, and a delivery arriving. He will answer the messages he can clear in thirty seconds and come back to the rest later, which in practice means never.
Everything below follows from that one fact. You are not writing to persuade him. You are writing to be cheap to answer.
A message that takes him five minutes to answer will lose to a message that takes him thirty seconds, every single time, no matter how polite yours was.
WhatsApp, not Instagram
Find the supplier on Instagram. Contact them on WhatsApp.
Turkey is a WhatsApp country to a degree that surprises people. The national statistics office puts WhatsApp use among internet users at 88.6%, against 68.1% for Instagram. Instagram is where the catalogue lives; WhatsApp is where business is done. Most wholesale accounts put a wa.me link straight in their bio for exactly this reason.
Instagram DMs from an account the seller does not follow land in a requests folder that many of them check once a week, if that. Telegram is worth having, because some sellers run their whole stock feed as a channel, but it is not where you start a conversation.
When to send it
Istanbul runs on UTC+3 all year — Turkey abolished daylight saving in 2016 and never brought it back. If you are in the Baltics or Central Europe that means Istanbul is the same time as you from late March to late October, and one hour ahead of you through the winter. The winter hour catches people out: your 9am is their 10am.
Merter trades roughly 09:00 to 19:00 Monday to Friday and Saturday mornings until about 14:00, and is closed on Sunday. Other districts keep their own hours, so treat that as a guide rather than a timetable.
The best moment to arrive on someone's phone is mid-morning on a weekday, once the shutters are up and before the day gets busy. A message sent at midnight your time is read at midnight their time and is buried by breakfast.
Weeks when nobody will answer you
Late July to mid-August. Turkish manufacturing largely shuts for summer.
This is the biggest gap in the year.
Ramazan Bayramı, 8–13 March 2027, and
Kurban Bayramı, 15–21 May 2027, which runs straight into a
national holiday and becomes one long shutdown.
The last two weeks of December, when everyone is closing the year's books.
The message
Send it in Turkish. You do not need to speak Turkish — you need these four lines, and the replies will come back in a mixture of Turkish and English that a translator handles fine. Sending Turkish signals that you have done this before, which is most of the battle.
Copy this, change the bracketed parts
Merhaba, iyi günler. [Litvanya]'dan yazıyorum,
[kadın giyim] toptan alımı yapıyoruz.
Bu modelden [3] seri almak istiyorum (kod: [6308]).
Fiyatı ne kadar, bir seride kaç adet var?
[Litvanya]'ya kargo gönderiyor musunuz?
In English, so you know what you just sent:
What it says
Hello, good day. I am writing from [Lithuania], we buy [womenswear] wholesale.
I would like to buy [3] series of this model (code: [6308]).
How much is it, and how many pieces are in one series?
Do you send cargo to [Lithuania]?
Send it with a screenshot of the item from their own Instagram. That one image removes more ambiguity than any sentence you could write.
Why each line is there
Line one puts you in a category
Country and product, immediately. A wholesaler reading “Lithuania, womenswear” knows within two seconds which of his three price levels applies and whether he even sells what you want. Note the yapıyoruz — “we buy” rather than “I buy”. Turkish commercial writing defaults to the plural, and it reads as a business rather than a tourist.
Line two proves you have actually looked
The product code is the single highest-value thing in the message. It turns you from somebody browsing into somebody buying a specific thing, and it lets him answer without asking you a question first. Every question he has to ask you is a day lost.
Line three is the only question that matters first
Price and series size together, because in this market one is meaningless without the other. A quoted price of €7 means nothing until you know whether that is per piece or per five-piece pack — which is the mistake that turns a planned order into one four times the size.
Line four is the disqualifier
Plenty of excellent Merter suppliers sell only over the counter and have no interest in shipping abroad. Better to find that out in line four than after three days of pleasant conversation.
One word that matters
Kargo means a courier parcel — DHL, UPS, Yurtiçi. For pallets or a truck you want sevkiyat or nakliye. Asking about kargo on a five-hundred-piece order quietly tells the seller you are small.
Three versions you will need
You are coming to Istanbul
Say so in the first line. A buyer who is physically arriving is worth far more attention than one who might order remotely, and you will get it.
Merhaba, [15–18 Ekim] tarihlerinde İstanbul'da olacağım,
[kadın giyim] toptan alımı yapıyoruz.
Yarın mağazanıza uğrayabilir miyim?
Konum atabilir misiniz?
Hello, I will be in Istanbul on [15–18 October], we buy [womenswear] wholesale. May I drop by your shop tomorrow? Can you drop a location pin?
Ask for the pin, not the address. Merter and Osmanbey addresses are floor numbers inside business centres and are close to unusable in a map app; konum atabilir misiniz is what a Turkish buyer would send, and it gets you a dropped pin in ten seconds.
You want the whole catalogue, not one item
Katalog ve fiyat listesi gönderebilir misiniz?
Minimum sipariş adediniz nedir?
Can you send a catalogue and price list? What is your minimum order quantity?
Use this only once the conversation is alive. As an opening line it is the “send me everything” message, and it is the one that goes unanswered.
You want your own production, not their stock
Kendi üretiminiz mi?
Fason üretim yapıyor musunuz?
Minimum sipariş adediniz nedir?
Is it your own production? Do you do contract manufacturing? What is your minimum order quantity?
Worth knowing that üretici is the current everyday word for a manufacturer; imalatçı means the same but sounds a generation older. Both are understood. And which of the three kinds of business you are talking to changes what a fair price even looks like.
Six things not to send
- “What is your best price?” in the first message. There is no answer to it without a quantity, and it marks you as someone who will haggle over everything. Ask about the price of a specific thing at a specific quantity.
- “Do you speak English?” This asks him to admit something before he has sold you anything. Write in Turkish and let the reply sort itself out.
- A paragraph about yourself. Your shop's history is interesting to you. In this conversation it is three screens of scrolling before the question.
- Five questions at once. Each one added makes a reply less likely, not more complete. Ask one, get the conversation started, then ask the rest.
- “Hello” on its own, then waiting. He now has to ask what you want, which is exactly the work you were supposed to save him.
- Asking for kapıda ödeme — cash on delivery. It is a real thing, but it is a domestic Turkish courier service. Nobody is offering it on an export shipment to Lithuania, and asking tells the seller this is your first time.
Reading the reply
Expect it to be short, possibly a voice note, and possibly just a photo with a number on it. That is normal and not rudeness.
Three things to establish before you go any further:
- Is the price per piece or per series? If it is not explicit, ask: Bu fiyat adet mi, seri mi?
- What is in the series? Seride hangi bedenler var? — which sizes are in it. A pack weighted towards S and M is worth less to you than the same pack weighted to L and XL, depending entirely on who your customers are.
- Is it in stock or is it a photo? Bu model stokta var mı? A great many catalogue images are of things that were made last season and can be made again, given six weeks.
If you intend to import into the EU, ask early: A.TR belgesi düzenleyebiliyor musunuz? — can you issue an A.TR certificate. Without it you pay customs duty you did not budget for, which I went through in the Turkey and China comparison.
Words worth knowing
Not a language course. Twelve words that will appear in the replies you get.
| Turkish | What it means to you |
|---|---|
| toptan | Wholesale. On the sign, in the bio, in the account name. |
| seri | A pack of one model in a fixed size run. Your real minimum. |
| tekleme | Single pieces, one size at a time. Rarer, and priced higher. |
| asorti | A mixed assortment — sizes or colours combined in one pack. |
| adet | Piece, unit. Kaç adet = how many pieces. |
| beden | Size. Hangi bedenler = which sizes. |
| üretici | Manufacturer. Cheapest per piece, highest minimum. |
| toptancı | Wholesaler. Buys from factories and breaks it down for you. |
| fason | Contract manufacturing — they make your design. |
| peşin | Paid in advance. Kapora is a deposit. |
| havale / EFT | Bank transfer, the normal way to pay remotely. |
| konum | A location pin. Konum atar mısınız gets you one. |
When nobody answers
Follow up once, after two working days, and make the follow-up easier to answer than the original rather than more insistent. One line:
Merhaba, bu model hakkında bilgi alabilir miyim? — Hello, may I get information about this model? — with the same screenshot attached again.
If that draws nothing, move on. Silence here is rarely personal. It usually means he does not export, or does not want to, or is not the person who handles it, and none of those change because you asked a third time.
And the honest expectation to set: even with a good message, somewhere between half and two-thirds will reply. That is the normal hit rate in this market, not a sign that something went wrong. Message twelve suppliers, not three, and judge the message by the quality of the replies rather than the count.
The last thing, which matters more than any of the wording: the first order is an audition on both sides, and prices and attention move on the second and third. Four suppliers who know your name will out-earn forty who once answered a message.
Questions I get asked most
Should I message Turkish suppliers in Turkish or English?
Turkish, for the first message. You do not need to speak it — four prepared lines are enough, and replies come back in a mix of Turkish and English that translates fine. A short Turkish opener reads as a serious buyer; a long English one reads as work.
What is the best way to contact a Turkish clothing wholesaler?
WhatsApp. Turkey's statistics office puts WhatsApp use among internet users at 88.6%, against 68.1% for Instagram. Find them on Instagram, then message the number in their bio.
What time should I message an Istanbul supplier?
Mid-morning on a weekday, Turkish time. Istanbul is UTC+3 all year, which is the same as the Baltics in summer and one hour ahead in winter. Merter trades about 09:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and Saturday mornings, and is closed on Sunday.
What does seri mean in Turkish wholesale?
A series: a pack containing one model in a fixed run of sizes, for example one small, two medium, two large and one extra large. Prices are often quoted per series rather than per piece, so always ask bu fiyat adet mi, seri mi?
Why do Turkish suppliers not reply to my messages?
Usually because the message asks for more work than a reply is worth — no product code, no quantity, several questions at once, or a long introduction before the point. Some simply do not export. A reply rate of half to two-thirds is normal even when you get it right.
How many suppliers should I contact?
Ten to fifteen for a first trip, expecting six to ten replies and three or four relationships worth keeping. Contacting three and waiting is the most common way to conclude that the market is unresponsive when it is not.