SNAPSHOT:
The manager: Ivan Mekushin
The job: Managing Director of Winslow Developments and Limex City EAD
In brief: Founded in 2001, Winslow Developments is among the market leaders in real estate development. A Bulgarian-registered company, with both English and Bulgarian shareholders, WB has its head office in Sofia. The company has permanent offices in Bansko and London. In 2006, Winslow Developments signed a joint venture partnership with RREEF, the real estate and investment management arm of Deutsche Asset Management, the global investment management business of Deutsche Bank, with the aim of becoming the leading developer in the Balkan region.

At first sight, this may seem a strange combination, but not for Ivan Mekushin, managing director of Winslow Development. For Mekushin the link can be expressed in one word: “changes”.

A graduate of the French Language School in Sofia, Mekushin followed the trend of the late 1980s and went to medical school.

“I spent one year working as a doctor after I graduated in 1991. Some time passed, and I realised that I was going to be more useful to myself and my family in a professional capacity other than being a doctor.”

The beginning
After leaving the medical profession, Mekushin started his first company, Limex Toys, which today continues to be a player.

He admits that the change was a major one, and a challenge for him, just two year after Bulgaria established democracy.

“The events of the times had to do a lot with my decision. Everything was changing.”

Mekushin’s venture into the private sector began by importing and distributing toys in Bulgaria.

“From today’s point of view, I think we did a pretty good job with the toy business. Of course, we are not the monopoly on the market and frankly, we do not want to be, but we have a pretty good share of the market,” he says with pride.

But why the toy business? It is clear that this is question that he has been asked before, and he appears to welcome it.

“The toy business for me carries with it a smile, and even today I see this happening when we enter the showroom. One simply feels nice among toys, because you see toys in different colours and sizes and what you actually see is children.”

This may not be a line one would expect to hear from a serious businessman such as Mekushin, but it is obvious he likes to talk about toys.

“At first sight it seems that we bring joy only to the children, which I cherish very much, but in fact we are also bring joy to the parents as well, and I see it in their faces.”

He knows this from personal experience. “I like showing the storeroom to my friends’ children because I see the looks on their faces when presented with the view. I like that.”

Joy is important, but in business it is results that matter, Mekushin agrees.

He makes it clear that holding on to one’s market niche is among the best things a business person can do in order to succeed.

“We do not have our own toyshops, because we only do wholesale. We import toys from China, Germany, Hungary, and England and sell them to the big toy stores in the country.”

It is well known that the toy market in Bulgaria is much bigger than it was 20 years ago, and Mekushin takes pride in adding to this change.

A major step forward when he set up Limex Toys was in establishing business relations with China, and subsequently beginning to import Chinese-made toys. The smile that comes so easily to him appears as he relates his dealings with China.

“I know that when you say ‘China’, most people think of low quality and cheap merchandise, and I understand that. We know that many large-scale international companies have assembly plants in China.”

At the same time, he acknowledges the statement that toys produced there are cheaper than those from other countries. “But this is not entirely true. Yes, you have cheap toys made in China, but on the other hand some global toy brands such as the Barbie doll or Action Man or the Disney toys are produced in China and are priced higher than non-brand toys. This goes to show that the quality of toys made in China does not necessarily have to be on the lowest level.”

It is simply a market with plenty of choices, and it seems that Mekushin has made his.

He smiles again when asked how it feels to do business with China.

“We in Bulgaria have certain stereotypes when talking about other countries and China is no exception.”

Having been to China twice, he knows what he is talking about.

“The thing with China is that it changes so rapidly with each and every year, so things are always different from where you left them previously. Indeed, China has its peculiarities, such as the fact that for them corporate culture, business planning and documentation are not top priorities, but generally the Chinese are warm people.”

A theme that has become very popular in Bulgaria, especially after Meglena Kouneva was appointed European Consumer Protection Commissioner, is the question of toys being certified as safe. Here, Mekushin becomes all business. “Long before Bulgaria joined the EU, we had regulations about toys not being risks to health, and I do not think that EU membership changed something crucial in this field for Bulgaria.”

Before Bulgaria joined the EU, all importers of toys in Bulgaria were subject to checks that toys were not health risks, even when a toy, which for example had been produced in China, had a certificate allowing to to be sold on the EU market.

“So we were ready for the EU and its regulations in terms of health control,” Mekushin says. “Now there are private laboratories that we hire to do the checks to ensure that there are no health risks, and I must tell you that this is not a cheap process, but we do it because it is our way of doing business.”

Change again
Going from medicine to the toy trade business did not stop Mekushin from making more changes in his professional life.

He moved into a business that has dynamics entirely different to that of the toy trade – and many others – especially when it comes to the trends on Bulgarian market in the past 10 years. In 2001, Mekushin headed to the more lucrative and fashionable real estate sector. However, he applied his sense of business opportunity, and did not go for the usual scenario of simply buying and selling properties, but rather entered a new niche in Bulgaria’s real estate sector: real estate development. In 2001 he formed Winslow Developments, inaugurated with a development in the resort of Bansko in the Pirin Mountain.

“We were lucky to be at the right place at the right time,” Mekushin says by way of explaining his subsequent success. “I tend to think that we were ready in our outlook about going into the real estate business,” Mekushin says. “Indeed, when it comes to professional training and company history, we might have looked a little bit unprepared in 2001, but I know that with our mindset, way of management, and most of all view of how the company would develop in the future, we were ready to take on this challenge in 2001.”

Predictably, the trend in Bansko was to sell most of the properties to foreign clients.

“At the beginning we had some sales to Bulgarian clients but after that most of our clients came from the UK and Ireland, among others.”

He admits that there were plenty of challenges they had to face.

“It was interesting for us, because in terms of management, this was something completely new, definitely not funny but interesting,” he laughs.

Among the problems they had was finding the right people, such as engineers and architects.

“In any other area, we were well prepared. We had good financial, legal and logistics experts, and of course we had secured the funding.

“I am very grateful to the people in Bansko because we really had someone to rely on there,” Mekushin says.

“We like to think of ourselves as investors and entrepreneurs. We don’t do the construction work, but rely on sub-contractors. What we do is to find and acquire a plot of land, obtain all the required licences from the authorities, and look for sub-contractors and sell the apartments to the customers.”

It may sound easy but Mekushin says that it is not.

“I think that the market in Bulgaria provides strong enough competition, a large part of which is Winslow Developments. There are plenty of Bulgarian companies that operate in the same field and lots of international investment funds who have entered the market. It is a busy place.”

The fast pace set by the market means only one thing: fast development.

“For example, our latest department, Winslow Property Management, was formed two years ago with one or two employees, and now it has close to 30 people.”
 
A combination of three things
“What interests us when hiring people is a combination of three things: the person’s professional training, work experience and personal qualities. We want people who are not only good professionals but people who want to develop within the company, people who want to prove themselves and people that are team players.”

He says that it is not easy to find people who meet the company’s requirements.

“There is an obvious need for motivated highly experienced workers in Bulgaria in all aspects of the business environment.

Some people think that motivation means only money but I have a different opinion. Of course the money is important but there is a difference in how this money has been earned.”

Atmosphere and working environment are also on Mekushin’s list.

“We do not like to play people off against each other. This is simply not my approach to motivating staff. It is the personal example that counts, and the way people act and behave can in a way ‘infect’ others.

“We do not believe in exploiting people to their limit. We try to give our employees plenty of recreation time, and most of all we try to create the feeling that they have a future with us. We are not hiring people for a single particular project. We look for people who will work not on a single project but people who will work for the company.”

Winslow Developments tries to have projects contracted in advance so that employees can feel secure.

“For me it is very important for people to know that the company has a future and that they will be part of it. This creates an environment of security which leads to productivity,” Mekushin says.

His way of handling office conflicts fits to his management ideas as well.

“I admit that we had cases when people simply do not fit within the company, which is inevitable. However, I can say that for top management, it is almost impossible to intervene on every level when there is a conflict situation. What we rely on is that the relevant heads of department will take action.”

For Mekushin, face-to-face conversations have limited potential, and “in most cases are conversations between people at different management levels, which is not exactly an open and frank conversation that produces results,” he smiles. “You need to have a dialogue which is achieved in most of the cases with many people. This is why we count on team spirit so that everything is clear to everyone.”

Winslow Gardens in Sofia’s Manastirski Livadi East neighbourhood is a major feature on Mekushin’s current agenda. Behind the project is Limex City EAD, a subsidiary of Prima Investments Ltd, a joint project by Winslow Development and RREEF, Deutsche Bank’s real estate investment arm. Mekushin takes pride in the fact that the complex was specifically designed to maximise the use of space between buildings, with two-level underground parking that will leave the complex free of motor vehicles. The project, which started just recently, is advertised as the first energy-independent residential complex in Bulgaria. The overall area on which construction will take place is about 42 000 sq m while the extended built-up area is 103 000 sq m and about 20 000 sq m. underground. The entire investment planned for the project amounts to 200 million leva.

Winslow Developments is currently looking at the agricultural sector. The company has acquired land in the areas of Plovdiv and Purvomai. The focus of the investment is bio fuels, more precisely bio diesel, as well as cultivation of grain crops and vegetables.