Founding Story

Founded in 1988 by three partners of French origin, LC Waikiki started its commercial life as a wholesale brand. Established and registered in Paris, LC Waikiki first drew attention with its t-shirt and sweatshirt designs. In time, with the departure of the two founding partners of the brand, LC Waikiki passed to George Amouyal as the sole shareholder. Tema Tekstil, a subsidiary of Taha group, which is the producer of LC Waikiki and also the licensor in Turkey, acquired the worldwide rights of the LC Waikiki brand in 1997.

The name of Tema Tekstil, owned by Taha Group, was changed to "LC Waikiki Merchandising Services" after all the rights of the brand were purchased. 7 percent of the Group shares were transferred to George Amouyal, from whom all the naming rights of LC Waikiki were purchased. After the transfer of the brand name, French origin George Amouyal still holds approximately 7 percent of our company, although he did not take an active role in the management of LC Waikiki.

Founded in 1988, Taha Group bought LC Waikiki, which was born in Paris but grew up in Istanbul, and brought it to its current level. The adventure of our brand started with Taha Tekstil, a start-up where Mustafa Küçük assumed responsibility as the founding/managing partner and with the capital support of Taha Dış Ticaret partners, which carried out import-export operations in the iron and steel industry of the period. Taha Tekstil, located in a small area of ​​approximately 150 square meters on the ground floor of an apartment building in Zeytinburnu, was established as a sample sewing and cutting workshop. Taha Tekstil, which exports garments based on contract manufacturing, met with LC Waikiki through an intermediary marketer.

Upon receiving an order for approximately ten thousand pieces of LC Waikiki's monkey t-shirt models, which were very popular at that time and mostly produced in countries such as India, Korea and Greece, Taha Tekstil started to organize the contract manufacturing of the brand in Turkey. Taha Tekstil has turned to production investments over time in order to meet the increasing orders, printing, embroidery, label, quality and short-term production demands of LC Waikiki. These investments were made by establishing separate profit-centered companies as start-ups and managed by different founding/managing partners.

Established between 1990-1994 as printing, embroidery, label, knit fabric, knit dyeing and different apparel workshops, the companies were gathered under the roof of Taha Holding in 1994, the General Coordinator of which was Mustafa Küçük. Taha Tekstil, and later Taha Holding, was established by Şefik Yılmaz Dizdar as a shareholder and Mustafa Küçük, a founding/managing partner with a 50 percent partnership each. In the following period, 10 percent of the shares of the parent company Taha Tekstil were transferred to İsmail Hakkı Kısacık, the production manager at that time, and the number of shareholders of the parent company Taha Tekstil and Taha Holding increased to three.

Although the founding/managing partners responsible for the management of each company established within Taha Holding are not shareholders in the parent company, they joined the Taha Group family due to the partnership shares of the companies under their management. Following Taha Tekstil's production of LC Waikiki for export purposes, the Turkish license of LC Waikiki was acquired by Tema Tekstil, which was founded by Taha Holding in 1991, as the famous monkey t-shirt models of that period were also in great demand in the domestic market. Afterwards, the Turkish domestic market was entered through wholesale and corner dealership methods.

Mustafa Küçük's older brother Vahap Küçük was appointed as the founding/managing partner of Tema Tekstil, which was established by Taha Holding to manage the wholesale organization of LC Waikiki in the domestic market. Our first retail LC Waikiki store was opened on Şişli Halaskargazi Caddesi. Although this store was followed by our retail stores opened in different cities, due to the financial crisis in 2000, our retail stores could not achieve the intended profitability and growth. During the financial crisis in 2000, the difficulties brought by the crisis in Taha Group companies, which had difficulties in maintaining the cash flow balance and had to sell some production companies to meet their cash needs, prompted the corporate management to take radical decisions.
During this period, it was decided to completely separate the production group and the retail group from each other and to leave the wholesale dealership system and focus entirely on retail merchandising. In line with these radical decisions, the production companies under the roof of Taha Holding, with İsmail Kısacık, who is in charge of production, heading towards export as the Group Coordinator, and Tema Holding, where the Chairman of the Board of Directors is undertaken by Vahap Küçük, and the CEO/Group Coordinator is undertaken by Mustafa Küçük, and its subordinates. It was decided that Tema Mağazacılık companies should focus entirely on the retail sector.

With Tema Holding and Tema Mağazacılık united under LC Waikiki, we act in line with our vision of being one of the three most successful clothing brands in Europe by 2023. With our mission of "Everyone has the right to dress well", we continue to grow mainly with our own stores in the country and abroad, and with our franchise partners in countries where there are legal obligations. With the factories established in various cities of Anatolia, we continue to work on the production and export of the world's leading brands. We are proud of reaching 34.1 billion TL net sales, 54 thousand employments, 950 million USD exports and approximately 1200 stores by the end of 2021.