Anca Vlad, owner of drugs distributor Fildas and drugstore chainCatena, set up firm no. 800 in the early days of capitalism on theRomanian market, while this year the group she controls has over200 million euros in turnover, and over 1,000 employees.
"Capitalism definitely gave me the ability to reach my fullpotential, it gave me economic freedom and enabled me to create. Itwould have been very sad for me to remain a head of office and dorepetitive work," Anca Vlad says.
She wanted to be a chemist, but got into the Academy of EconomicStudies (ASE) in Bucharest after a teacher told her she was giftedin economic matters, much to the distress of her parents, who wereboth engineers.
She started work back in high school, in a chemistry lab, andthen, as a seaside travel guide during her university studies.
"My faculty years were an intense time in my life. I was workingas a guide, as well as doing translations and interpreting work forthe Chamber of Commerce. It all explains the later connections."After being assigned to the current Silvarom producer (thenstate-held), she kept in touch with the Chamber of Commerce,working as an interpreter at conferences and symposiums. "(...) Asa result, in 1987, when one of the companies I had worked withwanted to open an office in Romania, I got the job as a nationalrepresentative," says Anca Vlad.
This company was Beecham, which has now become GlaxoSmithkline(GSK), one of the leading players on the local pharmaceuticalmarket.
In 1990 she established her own marketing firm, registered atno. 800. She recalls that the first clients were rather difficultto find, after several months of efforts. Then came the grain of"madness": The company acquired films from the BBC, which itoffered to the Romanian Television in exchange for a one-minute adper each episode. "That is how we started to make the firstprofits," she says. In 1993 Vlad set up Fildas Trading and, "as thenumber of clients rose, so did the number of suppliers." The firstdrugstores she worked with were the ones in the Fagarasi, Brasov,and then Tulcea area. "I handled import, paperwork and sales myselfuntil we grew to seven people. Then we got to 30, 50, and later 100employees," she says.
1999 saw the establishment of the Catena chain, now thesecond-largest drugstore chain after Sensiblu, a part of theA&D Pharma group.
The owner of Fildas says the difficult situation in 2009 wasovercome by suspending investments and by a restructuring conductedlast year, when she anticipated what would happen in light ofsignals from Germany. Fildas will also negotiate extending itsfinancing by around five years.
"We have a five-year plan, and, starting from this, we adjust iton a yearly basis and then on a quarterly basis."
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