Emre Aydin

Emre Aydın is the founder of ÇiçekSepeti.com, one of Turkey’s early large-scale e-commerce and gifting platforms. ÇiçekSepeti’s own founder page says Aydın noticed a gap in sending flowers online from Istanbul to other cities, acquired the rights to Ciceksepeti.com after it was registered in 2005, and launched operations in 2006 with an initial focus on Istanbul.

In the first version of the business, Aydın opened a warehouse in Istanbul, employed staff to prepare flowers and deliver orders, and grew the warehouse footprint and city coverage through 2009. ÇiçekSepeti says he then shifted from a warehouse model to a marketplace model in 2009 so the business could scale faster while controlling quality, bringing local florists into the platform.

Aydın was hands-on in the early product build: ÇiçekSepeti states that he researched the internet technology himself, designed the first website, and continued building the company while also working as an industrial engineer until 2007. The company later expanded from flowers and edible flowers into categories including electronics, home and living, personal care, cosmetics, fashion, sports/outdoor, hobbies, pet shop, jewelry/accessories and supermarket products.

ÇiçekSepeti attracted venture backing before becoming a broader marketplace. TechCrunch reported in December 2011 that Amazon acquired a minority stake in the company, which had previously raised funding from Hummingbird Ventures. In 2021, Turkish business press reported that ÇiçekSepeti bought back the minority stakes held by Amazon and Hummingbird, returning the company to fully Turkish ownership.

• No public, primary-source angel-investing thesis for Emre Aydın was found in the sources reviewed. The “Seed Round” stage in the supplied stub could not be independently verified.
• His most clearly documented pattern is operator-led marketplace building: he moved ÇiçekSepeti from owned warehouses to a local-florist marketplace model in 2009 to grow faster while maintaining quality.
• His operating focus is consumer e-commerce with strong logistics and supplier-network execution: ÇiçekSepeti highlights fast and easy product delivery as the company’s original goal.
• His own company history suggests interest in businesses that can aggregate fragmented offline supply into an online marketplace, especially where trust, fulfillment quality and delivery speed matter.
• ÇiçekSepeti’s founder page says Aydın looked for “maliyetli ve geri dönüşü en yüksek pazarlama olanakları” while growing the business, indicating a bias toward measurable, high-return customer acquisition rather than brand-only spending.