Karim Rashid presents the Solen’s new Eternity

6 March 2009 | By Popsop Team

Solen, Turkey’s top chocolate maker, ramps up its image with a new product, created by one of the world’s most celebrated designers, and a clear drive to become a prominent brand on the scene of premium chocolate manufacturing.

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The new up market offering, created by Karim Rashid, a fashionable designer famous for his works for Prada, Kenzo, Armani and Yahoo, is bergamot and ginseng flavoured bitter chocolate Eternity. Eternity will be sold at a price around $30-35. The chocolate is made of the highest quality Venezuela-originated cocoa and blends a fascinating composition of up to 30 sophisticated aromas with notes of the blue desert grapes, smoked fruit, hazelnuts and dandelion leaves. Solen invested around EUR 5 – 6 mln in the design including equipment.

Revealing ambitions for the Solen brand, the firm presented Eternity at Mr Rashid’s swank Manhattan headquarters. Designer-made chocolate is to be first rolled out across New-York, Paris, Milan and London premium department stores and hotels, prior to its Istanbul launch.

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Karim Rashid had been thinking on the design for more than two years, creating around 20 variants among which the Turkey-based chocolate maker was able to choose. Solen agreed on the design reminiscent of the Seljuk-era art. Solen is a Turkish firm and it wants to communicate its brand to the consumer reflecting a strong feeling of Turkishness, which Great Seljuk Empire distinctly embodies. Today, the Seljuk dynasty are remembered as great patrons of Persian culture, art, literature, and language and are regarded by some as the cultural ancestors of the Western Turks.

“We have big ambitions for the market,” board member of family-owned Solen, that posted 25% growth last year, says. “We are the Turkey’s number one company in terms of exports turnover. Over 2009, the firm plans several new product launches; in March a new offering called Chocomilka will be released following by the launch of Elin, Solen’s new brand in the bakery sector. Above all, we have two more projects with Karim Rashid,” Mrs Coban adds.

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