Expat In Romania

Much the same way in which politicians are not the only problem in Romania, because there are voters on the other side of that coin, the businesses that thrive despite their sub-par products or services tend to survive only because they continue to retain customers who, in their ignorance, sustain a sub-standard offering. Romanian businesses have come a long way over the past several years. Owners are now looking outwards and willing to invest (a bit) in branding and marketing, they make an attempt at differentiation beyond the price point, and they at least pretend to pay lip service to the notion of customer service. The resulting increase in competition has left the businesses who do not adapt in an an existential limbo, with an archaic business model focused on being everything to everyone but in reality being nothing to nobody. I say that these business are in a limbo because they continue to exist while, in developed markets, most would have died out long ago. We can credit t...

I was walking through the piata today when this amazing business plan came to mind. Here's what happened. As I stood at one of the fruit stalls, picking through a mound of plums, the lady in charge interrupted me. "Sir, I can't sell just a few plums." "Why not? I'll pay." "I'm prohibited" I loved this. It's not a business reason, it's simply a whim. That one sentence sums up a lot of the local business mentality. I imagined a boss who gave her the serving scoop and who told her, 'make sure you don't sell 'just a few plums, now, hear?' "How many do I need to get?" I asked. "Half a kilo." "Sorry, I really don't want half a kilo." Disappointed, I put the ones I'd picked up back on the display. "You can get some from the neighbour," she offered, motioning to the stand behind, "she'll sell them piecemeal" "Okay, will do, thanks." So, while the f...

No matter how much I try, I can't stay away from Politics and Economics. The basics have remained unchanged since time immemorial; amass personal wealth and trade it for influence, or vice-versa. We're still living that same old rat race, and to some extent humanity always will be. I'm not going to say that there's a utopian solution that will change things, but I do think that there are certain man-made mechanisms that level the playing field, even if only slightly. One such mechanism, alien to Romanian employees and employers alike, is remuneration in the form of an hourly wage.  I've looked through the Romanian Labour Code and as far as I was able to find, there is nothing stopping employers from offering salaries based on an hourly wage. What does make things complicated is that, in Romania, the minimum wage is defined in terms of a monthly salary. Whereas the minimum wage in Ontario is $10.25/hr, the Romanian 'minimum salary according to the economy' ...

In the West trust is taken for granted. The supermarket trusts that its customers are not there to shoplift (even if some do), the bank trusts that the customer is not there to conduct a fraudulent transaction, government institutions trust that the information they are provided by the citizens is accurate. If all these entities worked on the assumption that none of their patrons are trustworthy, the result would be an arduously slow bureaucracy and a society of people who are unable to trust others and who approach all situations expecting the worst. Basically, it would be like Romania. Here are questions I'd like some really good rational answers to: 1. Why do I have to show my ID every time I go to the bank? Why does it need to be the same ID I originally opened the account with? 2. Why can I only enter a supermarket at the designated entrance (in a mall)? What's wrong with going in through a cash register if nobody's in line and the entrance is far away? 3. Why d...

That's it. I've had it. I keep promoting Romania as a 'Land of Opportunity'. I write about the businesses that can flourish here . I keep saying, " Be the change " and, " Yes it can be done, even in Romania. " And, well, I'm not entirely wrong, but I'm more wrong than I'm right. Opportunity here is limited to an immature and uneducated market. You can have the best idea but once you put it in practice it'll likely come crashing down -you're just too early for this market, bub. You can be the change, but you'll be pretty lonely. Finally, even if you start a new business, it won't flourish. I know I sound bitter, wanna know why? I have a friend who's the co-founder of a promising startup. Over the weekend a client messaged him saying their bank was refusing to make transfers to a Romanian bank; too high risk, they said. He now has to scramble to add PayPal support to his product. I asked him what he's planni...

I thought I'd write a post about Romania and customer service. I don't even know where to start, so I'll write a story. A little over a year ago I opened a bank accoun t with Banca Transilvania. It's not a blood bank, by the way. The process took over an hour with all kinds of forms to fill out and was somewhat confusing in that the PIN is sent by mail, I had to go back and get the card the following week, and I had to make a special request for internet banking. Overall it was more of an ordeal than a run of the mill administrative affair. This is the norm with most banks in Romania, possibly in the rest of Europe, I can't say for sure, but what's clear is that it tends to constitute a lot of lost time and more anxiety than something that should be relatively simple and stress free. Long story short, as time went by I became less and less satisfied with the services at BT. The customer service experience depends largely on the person you get (as with almost...

A few days ago I came across an older Observer article that attempted to recap the twenty years following the fall of Communism in Romania. It said that "it was impossible to have a revolution in Romania. So it had to be staged. " The revolution was staged by the people who took power immediately afterwards, namely Ion Iliescu and the 'National Salvation Front' party, the predecessor to today's PSD (now one half of the PSD-PNL coalition called USL). This is the truth. But it makes a lot more sense when we look at the quote in its original form, as spoken by Iliescu himself, "In a country like Romania it was impossible to have a revolution. So it had to be staged." This is what I want to focus on today. Ed Vulliamy, the Observer journalist who wrote that article in 2009, may not have realized the importance of the syntax in that particular sentence, but I do. It's not just semantics that the sentence started with, " in a country like Romania ...

Romania's business laws are not exactly the most friendly on earth, but if you force yourself to go through the red tape, you can be the ' Administrator'  of your own business sooner than you think. Just make sure you sign every single page of every single document, back and front, even on the blank sides. Basically once you do that, you're in good shape. I recommend retaining the services of a good lawyer (I can recommend if you'd like), and smart accountants (I can also recommend one of those). You won't be dealing with them every day - or even every month - but you gotta have them in your corner. I don't want to go into too many technical details because I want to keep this post light and airy, like a brand new office with no furniture in it. Here's the only other detail you need to know. You can choose to open your business as a PFA ( Persoana Fizica Autorizata) , Romania's equivalent of a Sole Proprietorship, or a SRL ( Societate cu Raspundere...

There's this article I read a few days ago, and I just can't seem to shake it off. It weighs heavily on my mind because it's true and affects a large part of my life -work. Then I read this other article and thought, maybe all those bad things from the first article are actually good things in the long run . In truth, both of them make very valid points. In the first, the author dissects the ways in which Europe is bad for (new) business with almost surgical precision. I recommend it, it's a fine piece of analysis that also goes a long way towards explaining the mess in which Europe now finds herself. In the second article, we find a review about two books that basically say, 'Capitalism is bad, mmkay.' Well, not exactly, but it does discuss the negative impact on society by some of the by-products of capitalism, namely 'a love of money, markets and material things.'  If I may simplify the situation though, I'd put it like this: A love of mon...

Picture three little kids selling water on the beach. What kind of image does that title evoke? Most likely poverty, misery, dire straits. Some sort of child exploitation at best.  I came across this picture-story on Facebook. It's a friend's friend. This is the story of three siblings aged 4, 6, and 7. Donning identical red t-shirts and lugging a cooler, they have opened their first "company". Their dad is taking pictures as they walk all over the beach offering beach-goers and passers-by bottles of cold water. He takes pictures of them trying (and failing) to make a sale, and then captures the joy and excitement of their first sale after ten rejections. In the picture comment the dad writes, " the first 10 people said no and they learned that the road to 'yes' is paved with a lot of 'no's'. But persistence pays off because they sold $60 worth of water." Still feeling sorry for them? Despite the fact that these are American kids w...