Still, five Romanian female entrepreneurs built brands like Ivatherm, Musette and I.D. Sarrieri, which are now famous in various capitals of the world. Who are they and what are their stories?
Rucsandra Hurezeanu created Ivatherm seven years ago, the only Romanian dermo-cosmetics brand, competing with international giants like L’Oreal.
Before having her own company she had worked in the pharmaceutical industry, where she had started a little while after graduating from the Medical School. She decided to create her own business once she reached a point in her pharmaceutical career she could not progress from, as she herself confessed.
When she chose to become an entrepreneur, Rucsandra Hurezeanu followed in the footsteps of her mother, who had opened her own retail pharmacy in the early nineties. The business later expanded into distribution and manufacturing.
It was her mother that lent her financial support to get her started on her own path. The Ivatherm business now develops ‘Made in France’ dermo-cosmetic products using water from the Romanian spa town of Herculane (southwest of the country).
She began by studying the properties of the thermal water in Herculane, the oldest spa town in Europe. She then went to France where she got a team of researchers to study the Herculane water.
After they discovered the anti-inflammatory properties of the water, Ivatherm has gradually earned a place on drugstore shelves. It is currently available in more than 1,000 pharmacies in Romania and is exported to Ukraine, Egypt and Taiwan.
Cristina Batlan or the “Musette Lady” is one of the few Romanian entrepreneurs in the footwear business who took shoes made in a small town of her country, Husi, to New York and Paris.
She started her Musette business about two decades ago, when she was only 18 and going to Law School. Once the business developed she dropped out of the college to focus on the company, which has a presence in world fashion capitals and is generating almost EUR8 million revenue.
Cristina Batlan had initially begun a fabric business, which she developed as Musette for almost a decade. In 2000, the Batlan family decided to open a leather goods plant and move to a new development phase. Now Musette has two plants in Romania, where it makes more than 60,000 pairs of shoes and bags per collection.
The products made in Romania are sold both on the home market and abroad in US, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Israel, Lebanon, Mongolia and Bulgaria. The business expanded to Mongolia, Lebanon and France this year and Musette Lady’s plans will not stop here.
Iulia Dobrin, the creator of the I.D. Sarrieri, put a Romanian brand on the shelves of the most prestigious retailers in the world.
Moreover, the lingerie products she created were featured on the covers of Vogue or W along with famous foreign brands such as La Perla and Agent Provocateur.
She is also one of the first Romanians to have used the up-market multibrand concept, having opened The Place Concept Store on Calea Dorobanti in central Bucharest.
Iulia Dobrin thus brought Oscar de la Renta, Jil Sander, Marchesa and Alexander Wang products in Romania and took I.D. Sarrieri lingerie collections to multibrand stores in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. The lingerie made in Romania sells in Australia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and United States.
Her company has plants in Bucharest where it makes the products it then sells throughout the world. The products can also be purchased in the company’s online shop, with prices ranging from less than EUR10 to several hundred euros.
Irina Schrotter, a physician by trade, started her fashion business in 1990, right after the enactment of the privatization law. She then developed it both locally and abroad. The first foray abroad was in 1999, when the company tried its luck on the US market. It later expanded to 40 countries on four continents.
The latest project abroad of the fashion designer was the opening of her own store in Lugano, Switzerland. This is the first Irina Schrotter store outside Romania, as her collections used to sell only in multibrand and international online fashion stores.
She also has stores in Romania, in Bucharest, Iasi, Timisoara and Constanta (NE, W and SE Romania) and several production facilities in Iasi.
Irina Schrotter has been organizing the International Fashion Festival in Iasi as of 1999, which promotes young fashion designers just starting in their careers.
The latest Romanian fashion designer famous abroad is Maria Lucia Hohan. She is now designing for Hollywood stars and famous singers like Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria.
Actress Jennifer Hudson, who won an Oscar for her role in ‘Dreamgirls’, where she costarred along with Beyonce, wore a dress designed by Maria Lucia Hohan at an event organized for President Obama’s 50th birthday in Chicago. Her work became available abroad before she impressed Hollywood, when it was sold either online or in multibrand stores.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)