It is often said that Romania can be proud of its impressive "output" of engineers, but 99% of them choose careers or businesses utterly different from the one they have been trained for during college.
Mircea Ciurdar, one of the Facto Graph owners, is a very good example: born in Timisoara, the former Electro-energy engineer became Romania's "king of balloons."
"Australia was my chance," he recollects. "I was granted a fellowship to acquire an MBA by the Australian government in 1992. As I went there, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people and I learnt one very important thing: if you cannot do what you like, then you'd rather do nothing at all."
When he returned to Romania, Mircea Ciurdar became employed with Bond Group, where he opened the first chain of household appliances luxury stores called Bond Center, in 1993-1994.
Soon afterwards, in 1995, Ciurdar joined the "great Oriflame adventure" together with his former high-school deskmate Monica Tatoiu. "It was a fascinating experience, as I was dealing with thousands of distributors," he says. "Then the brilliant idea of balloons struck me."
Back in 1996, Oriflame organised a seaside tour of Pasarea Colibri Band and the company wanted hundreds of balloons to be launched in the air at a particular moment.
The idea seemed simple and easy-to-do, but the balloons proved difficult to find. "That was the moment when I remembered another thing I had learned in Australia, namely that finding a market niche and controlling it was the most important aspect, as you can afterwards count on a certain market segment. I felt that the balloon idea had a future," Ciurdar says.
The opportunity came in 1998, when the former engineer ended his collaboration with Oriflame. He could choose between the offers of several companies and the "crazy" idea of his own start-up.
"Like any young man of 42, I decided to follow the call of adventure and I turned into a private entrepreneur," Mircea Ciurdar says.
The beginning was just like in the movies, as he confesses. He borrowed 5,000 dollars from some friends and set out to print balloons by himself in the "traditional basement," where any business begins.
He did everything by himself for a year - he dealt with the business, the orders, and the process of printing the balloons that he carried by subway, buses and trains. After one year of activity, he could afford to buy a car.
He realised the business was faring better when he moved from the basement to the ground floor and then to the first floor of a building located downtown Bucharest, where he has plenty of space and equipment.
"I have to admit that I could not have done anything without my brother's contribution, as he is also my associate. He supports me morally, he deals with the graphics printed on the balloons and tempers me when I am too optimistic," Ciurdar says.
Pentru alte știri, analize, articole și informații din business în timp real urmărește Ziarul Financiar pe WhatsApp Channels
