VIDEO Two people from Bucharest invested 1.5 million euros in a flower nursery in Sibiu. “We sell directly from the greenhouse, each buyer comes and chooses the plants he wants”

Nicoleta and Dan Vasile are two Bucharesters who left corporate careers behind to set up a flower business in Sibiu, after an investment of 1.5 million euros.

Their life story was told by Agrointel.

The Sibiu nursery, from Poplaca, manages to sell between 500,000 and 600,000 plants annually, becoming a basic supplier for the balconies and gardens of Sibiu, but also for all plant lovers who choose to order online.

“As a corporatist, I thought the business would be very simple. (…) When you come to your own company, things change completely”

The decision to start on his own path was made 10 years ago. Both Nicoleta and Dan had top careers in multinationals that were not active and had nothing in common with agriculture or flowers.

“We wanted to invest here near Sibiu with a friend from childhood to make a mushroom farm as I had dreamed of since I was 18 years old, but the project failed miserably. It was a financial disaster, I lost a lot of money. Later, our little girl Katia appeared and we wanted to sell the business here, we were still living in Bucharest and although we had invested a lot of money here, we received a price of nothing. That’s how we decided to change our lives, to do something beautiful, and the idea came to convert the investment here, into something beautiful, and I don’t know if there can be anything more beautiful than flowers. I was attracted to agriculture from a young age and that’s how the idea came. We started from a small greenhouse”, Dan Vasile remembers the beginnings of Serelor Sibiu.

Currently, the family business means 5,000 square meters of greenhouse and one hectare of plants grown outside. An important component of nurseries is represented by seasonality.

“We invested almost 1,500,000 euros, our money, that is, we did not access any European funds, we could not access any bank credit, nothing. Only now, a year ago, the banks opened up to this sector of ours. As a corporatist, I thought the business would be very simple. You leave the corporation, everything is provided by the parent company, they give you millions in cash, you are a very good salesman, you are the best management person, you are good at everything, but there you have secretaries, you have assistants, you have an infrastructure in back, a system that works. When you come to your own company, things change completely”, explains Dan Vasile.

“I see myself retiring from this business”

Accustomed in their corporate careers to change jobs and companies they work for, the nursery brought the Vasiles a stability and peace that the Capital could never have offered them. Instead of the hours lost in traffic, the two husbands now spend time with their family, with their daughter who turned 7 years old.

“I see myself retiring from this business. First of all I have not been constant in my life. Life didn’t give me the opportunity, in fact, I didn’t give myself the opportunity. I think he changed my job every two or three years. I changed the hierarchical position in the companies and the companies. This is what Bucharest and the corporation do. I never thought that I would be active in the same position, we have already been in this business for almost 10 years, I did not think that I was capable of having so much constancy in a certain position. But as I said, for me I’m living the most beautiful period of my life at this moment, it’s relaxing, it’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful business and I see myself, we’re retiring”, said Dan Vasile.

Photo source: Video capture

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