Fjolla
An avalanche begins with a snowflake
LinkedIn will tell you that Fjolla is the founder of Brand Embassy and Dayholi. She’s well-connected in the luxury travel retail and holds a Master in marketing from Campus 02 in Graz. Yet none of the above really describe Fjolla.
As the cliche has it, some of us are born entrepreneurs. If you ask Fjolla whether she’s always been this way, she will giggle and ask back - which way is that?
Then the schoolyard stories will roll in. Like when she decided to sell all her stickers collection simply because she knew that kids (herself included) will outgrow them eventually. With the money from sales she bought all the miniature bib pendant accessories in the shops around her school. When the bib hype hit, at age 7, Fjolla held business monopoly at her school. So she sold the bibs. Double. Triple the price. Then put her money in the next big hype. And then the hype after that. Until she was old enough to own a business.
If you tell Fjolla there are no more €40K standing booths left to be hired for an expo, Fjolla will bring along a moving booth and do it for free. See full story.
If you tell Fjolla that Kevin Costner is in town with his band, she will find him, meet him, and her team will be serenaded by his band. See full story.
They say that to cause an avalanche you can shake a mountain or find the right place to drop a snowflake. Fjolla has been dropping snowflakes in the right places for a lot longer than she may care to admit. Did you know her name means snowflake in Albanian?
Yes, her avalanche is definitively coming!
Stories
Moving booth
Life belongs to the daring
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A few years back, Fjolla was planning on attending the Duty Free and Travel Retail Global Summit (TWFA) in Cannes to promote her agency. So she got tickets for her and her promoters. Then she gets a phone call by her client, Schlumberger wines, to ask whether she can promote them in Cannes. They wanted a booth, but all the booths were sold-out.
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Fjolla tries her contacts and indeed, the booths are sold out. For the next three years. While reading all the regulations on booking the booths, she stumbles upon a loophole. They charge, about €40K per standing booth fee. An idea hits her. What if it’s a moving booth? A trolley? So she mobilises her promoters and a Schlumberger moving trolley is designed in a week and delivered on site, a day before the summit.
A slight problem occurs. Brands with booths have special badges for set-up and the security won’t let her in. A participant badge won’t do. She tries with the security, they are strict. Then she spots a team leaving the site, after finishing setup. She asks them whether they can give her their badge, and they look at her in disbelief. Of course not.
Then they start chatting. Fjolla tells them what she does for a living and how she found this loophole in the contractsand built a trolley instead of a booth. As they hop in the taxi, one of them throws her a badge. ‘Good luck bold lady.’ She needed good luck. But most of all, she needed two extra pairs of strong hands to move the trolley inside. She sees two men bored after finishing their set-up.
‘Want to earn some quick cash?’ - Fjolla asks. She wants help to push the trolley inside. Piece of cake. They would have done it without cash. But for 200 euros they do it quicker.
Once inside, the security asks Fjolla where her spot is. So she calls a client of hers and asks whether her trolley can have a sleepover at their mega booth. Sure, no problem.
The next day, Fjolla and her promoters walk the summit with a moving Schlumberger trolley. The security caught up with them several times telling them to go back to their designated spot. Sure, promoters said. But they had no spot to go back to. By the second day, the security reported the moving trolley to the manager, who summoned Fjolla.
‘Please take your trolley to your standing booth’ - he demanded.
‘But I don’t have a standing booth, only a mobile one’ - Fjolla explained and told him the whole story of how they do not charge for moving booths only for standing ones. The manager bursts into hysterical laughter. Many years of organising the event, he had never encountered such a situation. And such a genius take on a loophole.
‘Go ahead’ - he tells Fjolla and informed the security that all is in order.
Fjolla didn’t just have guts to use the loophole to her advantage. Most booths count on footprint. With the trolley, Fjolla and her team moved with the crowds. Footprint was not a factor anymore. Whenever people gathered, there was the trolley, serving drinks.
Life belongs to the daring!
The Costner encounter
Determination pays off
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One cold winter in Schladming, Austria, Fjolla was promoting brands at the Alpine World Ski Championship. Her promoters spent most of the days in the cold snow giving flyers and drinks.
“Kevin Costner is in town!” - promoters tell Fjolla with excitement. Seeing them freezing in the cold, Fjolla announces that they will meet Kevin Costner tomorrow as a reward for their hard work.
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There was no meeting arranged, of course. Fjolla doesn’t know Kevin Costner. All she knew was that Kevin Costner & Modern West were performing at the Medal Plaza on Sunday night. It was Saturday afternoon. She had 24 hours to make it happen.
Waiting backstage with other fans for just a glimpse of Costner wouldn’t cut it. She needed to know which hotel Costner was staying. Circulating the VIP events doesn’t get her anywhere. But say she finds him. How do you get someone’s attention on a ski resort where everyone is in ski gear and warm layers? With prom dresses - of course!
Fjolla looks at her watch, it’s 5pm. She has an hour to get to Salzburg and get ten identical prom dresses. The shopping mall closes at 6pm. She speeds on the motorway high on adrenaline, arriving at the shopping centre at five minutes past 6pm. Peek & Cloppenburg has shutters half way down.
Damn, it’s closed! That’s how most people would have reacted.
To Fjolla, the shop is half-closed. She crawls underneath the shutters. When the shop assistant looks at her in disbelief Fjolla explains she is meeting Kevin Costner and urgently needs 10 prom dresses. Fifteen minutes later she crawls back out through the half closed shutters, 10 dresses in hand. Who would have thought that the shopping assistant was a huge fan of Kevin Costner?
Next day Fjolla circulates hotel receptions. They all say Costner was not staying there. So she decides on instinct that it has to be hotel Royer and tells her promoters to meet her in the lobby at 6pm. When they arrive she presents them each with a prom dress and asks them to change in the restroom of the lobby. Before you know it, the restroom is turned into a backstage fashion show. Jackets, jeans, snow boots, are everywhere. The sink counter is covered with make-up products. A lady walks in to use the restroom.
“Are you performers?” - she asks politely trying to get to a toilet via the mess.
“No. We are dressing up to meet Kevin Costner. But we can’t find him.” - Fjolla tells her.
“Oh, but I just saw him now at the bar with a journalist!” - the woman exclaims.
Led by Fjolla, who is also wearing one of the dresses, they march into the bar. As he is being interviewed, Costner sees ten beautiful girls in champagne pink prom dresses smiling at him. He smiles back. Everyone else was in après-ski gear.
“Why are you wearing these beautiful dresses?” - Costner asks.
“To meet you,” - Fjolla says beaming with excitement.
Of course Costner is used to such cliches He’s a star.
“It’s the truth. I swear by my daughter Lily.” - Fjolla assures him.
“My daughter Lily?” - Costner is confused.
Before you know it Fjolla and Costner are bonding over their daughters. And the story adds up. Which makes Costner and his band merry, and as they all sip mulled wine, one band member sits on the piano and the serenade begins.
Is this serenading encounter a one off? Who knows. Maybe Frank Sinatra will pop out of nowhere and serenade the guests at one of Fjolla’s events.
Wait, but Frank Sinatra is dead?
Well, in Fjolla’s terms, he is only half-dead.