Magic Outdoor: Exciting start with a baby in hand

Tell us about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur to the position of CEO of Magic Outdoor.

I have always grown up with the feeling that I would become an entrepreneur. My first job as an entrepreneur was with my father, with whom in the early nineties we sold dry perfumes and sewing machine needles at a small table at the first stop of tram number five at the Court House in Sofia.

After that, entrepreneurship continued as I sold flags and balloons at SDS rallies when I was just ten years old, again with my father. Later in high school, I helped my mother and father by selling in their cosmetics store at the “Rositsa” market in Krasna Polyana. During my time there, when there were no customers, I wrote my thesis on “Renewable Energy Sources” to complete my Professional High School in Ecology and Biotechnology “Prof. Dr. Asen Zlatarov”.  

I started working in my third year at the American University in Blagoevgrad, where I was accepted with a full scholarship, at a company that dealt with hosting services. After that, I became a media planner at the advertising agency “Leo Burnett”, which led me to the position of Advertising and Events Coordinator at AVON Cosmetics. At AVON I decided to start my own business and became the representative for Bulgaria of the English gift shop chain Hallmark. I opened stores in Plovdiv, Tarnovo, Sofia and in the meantime my husband decided to invest in a printing house, where I was supposed to help for only 6 months, but those 6 months turned into almost 20 years, during which I managed the printing house Magic Outdoor.

How did the idea for the printing house come about and what vision did you start with in 2007?

In 2007, many things happened. I got pregnant with my eldest daughter Raya, I started my stores under the Hallmark brand and began to help in the development of the printing house Magic Outdoor. In the printing house, I had to help until things got going and then continue to develop my Hallmark brand.However, after 6 months, when I went into labor, Rumen's partners in the printing house realized that the printing business, especially in partnership, is not so profitable and easy, and they left the company. I found myself alone, with a baby and a printing house. I had to quickly gather myself, organize, and get back to work to continue managing the printing house.

My vision was to print larger formats of outdoor advertising such as megaboards and building nets and to carry out more complex installations of advertisements on facades and malls, which was not so easy and many printing houses avoided dealing with. I needed to attract larger clients so that we could have reliable sources of constant work. Thus, our clients became Orgachim and one of the large PR agencies - All Channels, who entrusted us with the branding of Eko gas stations. We also became pioneers in branding malls and printing building nets that are packaged during renovations.

What were the biggest challenges in the early years of the company's development and how did you overcome them?

2008 and 2009 were very challenging years due to the global economic crisis and reduced advertising budgets, but I did not give up. I continued to go to meetings, make presentations, and acquire new clients with a growing baby at home. Without the help of my husband, my parents, and his parents, I would not have been able to manage everything.

Thanks to the contacts I had from the American University in Blagoevgrad, I managed to attract large clients and get through the difficult years of 2008 and 2009.

What key lessons did you learn from the most difficult moments in business?

One of the most important lessons was to never give up, no matter how difficult the situation is, there is always a way out.

Another lesson I learned is that I need to create a loyal team of professionals I can rely on at any moment.

I also learned that the services offered by Magic Outdoor need to be more comprehensive to attract and retain quality clients. Thus, I closed the loop of the services we offer, which now include design, prepress, printing, finishing operations, and installation of the advertising materials we produced in the printing house.

What difficulties continue to accompany your work today, despite the accumulated experience and the scale of the company?

A major problem is finding skilled people to handle the installation part of the advertisements with us. Most modern working-age people prefer to work at a desk, while we need people to install the advertisements we produce in the printing house. It is even harder to find people who understand electricity, welding, wallpapering, foiling, all things that are done by hand and require both knowledge and skill.

Another ongoing problem is the low prices maintained in our industry, which do not correspond to the efforts and investments made in the business. Now, in the last 2 years, with the increase in salaries for people working in our industry, prices will certainly start to rise, because otherwise we will not be able to retain our employees.

Which decisions you made over the years turned out to be the boldest and most effective?

One of my boldest decisions was during the COVID crisis to come up with a product that would save us from bankruptcy. I was at home with the kids and watching a report about taxi drivers who could not work because they were afraid of getting infected with COVID. Then I had the idea to create a barrier that would separate the driver from the passengers and thus protect them from infection. We created 5 types of barriers made of transparent materials that we started selling worldwide and even supplied the cars that transported football players during the UEFA Europe League in 2021 with such barriers.

What achievements and results of Magic Outdoor are you most proud of?

One of the biggest achievements I achieved with Magic Outdoor is our expertise in producing giant formats of outdoor advertising. We produced and installed the largest net in Europe in 2012 on the building of the current Grand Hotel Millenium in Sofia, which was 4000 square meters.

I am also proud that thanks to the protective transparent barriers for taxis, we provided over 40,000 drivers worldwide with a safer working environment, including many ambulance drivers.

During the COVID crisis, we donated over 1000 protective, transparent helmets for doctors in hospitals across Bulgaria.

I am also proud that Magic Outdoor is an exceptional school for training young people, whom we help apply the practical knowledge they have gained in school or university. We have very nice internship programs and many young people do their mandatory internships with us or work during their summer vacations.

How has the company evolved over time and what were the turning points in its growth?

When we created the company in 2007, it consisted of 5 people – me as a salesperson and manager, two printers, one seamstress, and one person for finishing operations. We did not offer installations and design. After successfully navigating the global economic crisis, in 2010 we began to develop in the direction of branding malls – bridges, escalators, elevators, facades, doors, flags.

In 2014, our team grew to 10 people and we closed the service cycle by adding design and installation. We started branding children's stores with the brands Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fischer Price, Monster High and thus became pioneers in this area as well.

2020 brought us the surprise of COVID and for 2 years we mainly made transparent barriers for taxis, hotels, cash registers in stores, and transparent helmets for hospitals.

For the last 10 years, we have served about 300 stores that are part of various Bulgarian and international clothing, toy, sports equipment, food, pharmacy, and restaurant chains. We have managed to build exceptional relationships throughout Bulgaria and currently have installation teams in all major and medium-sized cities. Today, our team consists of 16 people who are looking in one direction, namely entering international markets with the new direction we have taken – building, branding, and installing stands for stores and trade exhibitions.

Tell us about the key services and directions that Magic Outdoor offers today, and how they complement each other.

Magic Outdoor is a wide-format digital printing house for outdoor and indoor advertising. We offer a full range of services – from design or adaptation, through prepress and printing, to installation of the advertisements. We dress buildings with nets, produce advertising billboards, megaboards and billboards, city lights made of paper, flags and textiles, brand commercial objects, cars, vehicles and events, produce stands, illuminated advertisements, metal structures, print and cut foils and floor stickers, produce posters, invitations, flyers, certificates. 

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What is the role of the individual brands – Magic Outdoor and Magic Indoor?

Under the brand Magic Outdoor are the billboards, megaboards, nets that we print. This is the brand for our outdoor advertising, the so-called OOH or Out-Of-Home advertising. This includes branding commercial objects, cars, branding malls, producing illuminated advertisements, stands, posters, signs.

The brand Magic Indoor was started during the COVID crisis, when people stayed at home, focused on its shortcomings and began mass renovations.  This was a brand I had postponed for a long time. Under this brand are canvas paintings, wallpapers, pvc posters and cups for home, office, hotel.

What did the market and your work look like before COVID and what changed after that?

I still remember the day Friday the 13th, 2020. We had split into teams and were branding for our big client, the stores Sportvision in all the malls in the country. And suddenly everything stopped because the malls were closed. The feeling was very unpleasant because I was mainly worried about how I would pay my team’s salaries. My biggest fear was having to let them go. The European project we managed to win thanks to Galia Menova and Humanconsulting helped me a lot, which provided us with assistance of 50,000 leva in a really difficult time for all businesses.

The transparent protective barriers we invented for taxis saved us from bankruptcy and helped us successfully navigate the COVID crisis.

What is your personal opinion on the role of artificial intelligence and new technologies in advertising and printing?

I love new technologies and follow them with great interest. In 2025, we won a European project for new printing machines and soon we will be happy to have two new printing machines – UV machine Roland at 1.60 m, which can print on textiles, can print in white and selective gloss. This machine will help us print with extremely high quality. The other machine we expect soon is 3.20 m and is for our mega formats of outdoor advertising. This machine prints at very high speed and very good quality. These two machines will allow us to increase our productivity, speed, and quality of our production, which leads to more satisfied customers.

I want to buy a machine for gluing pieces of vinyl and nets to optimize production and make everything much faster so that I can free my colleagues to focus on installation activities that still require more human capacity.

I have almost implemented a new ERP system for tracking all inquiries, offers, and orders in the printing house because the increase in work requires much better tracking of all orders.

Regarding AI, I still do not use it fully integrated into business processes. But I increasingly receive designs and models generated with AI, which help us understand what the client wants and recreate it as closely as possible. I promised myself this year to start a doctoral degree that will include AI and its role in improving the work environment and the well-being of employees in the company.

How are customer expectations changing and how do you manage to offer them added value?

Customers have very high demands and everything is fine if they are also willing to pay a proper price for those high demands. Over these almost 20 years that we have been operating in the Bulgarian market, we have had to keep low prices to compete. But in the last 2 years, especially with the adoption of the euro, which led to a 40% increase in prices for almost all products and services, it has mainly necessitated an almost double update of salaries for employees in the printing and advertising sector. It is no longer possible to retain professionals with low pay, and we do not want to compromise on the quality of our work.

Clients always expect their projects to happen quickly, cheaply, and qualitatively, but this is almost impossible. We strive to be balanced. Teaching clients that quality production requires patience and human timelines is the work of all companies in our industry. Also, if we all unite that quality requires a normal price that the client must pay, all printing houses will develop and will work according to European standards.

We already have enough rich experience and can assess when to offer the client materials that are cheaper and used for short-term campaigns and when those that are of higher quality and should last longer. The same applies to the quality of printing – for ads that are viewed from afar and are large in size, we use our large machine, which prints cheaper, while for ads that are viewed up close, we use smaller machines with higher print resolution, which is also more expensive.

How do you see the development of the industry in the next five years?

The industry related to the printing of outdoor advertising and branding of commercial objects will increasingly digitalize. Digital screens are entering more and more, both in outdoor (outdoor advertising) and in branding shop windows of commercial objects.

Outdoor advertising, however, unlike print ads in magazines, will not die out, but rather will start working directly with digital media and online advertising. More and more often in advertising campaigns with billboards, they are combined with QR codes and internet applications, through which user experiences are transferred from the real to the virtual world. Artificial intelligence in outdoor advertising is the future of dynamic billboards. The goal of AI will be to manage and update the content displayed on the advertising panel depending on the context, target audience, and surrounding environment. This will ensure greater personalization and effectiveness.

To printed outdoor advertising such as billboards, megaboards, networks can also be added options for augmented reality (augmented reality). The audience can unlock interactive elements with their smartphones while the billboard remains static. This will bring an innovative element without changing the purpose and concept of the advertising facility. The combination of offline and online advertising will have a favorable effect on the brand's vision.

 Digital billboards will be used mainly for promotion and targeted messages, while traditional ones will provide consistency and reinforce the main calls of the business.

Where do you see Magic Outdoor in this future landscape and what is your long-term vision for the company?

My vision for the future of Magic Outdoor is to follow innovations and incorporate new technologies into our production, while simultaneously automating the processes for production, tracking and fulfilling orders, so that we can do more work with fewer people. I am increasingly looking beyond the borders of Bulgaria and seeking ways for Magic Outdoor to enter the international market for outdoor advertising. I see the company in the future working as part of an international holding or part of an international agency for outdoor advertising.

How important is the human factor for the success of Magic Outdoor?

The human factor is extremely important for any business. Building a cohesive team that works as a whole, shares the same values and vision for development, is extremely important for the success of any company.

For us, it is very important to have interchangeability and for team members to master more than one skill, so that they can help and replace each other. I sometimes help people who deal with finishing operations, make offers or deliver finished products when there are sick or absent employees. I work alongside designers to create the best graphic designs for our clients.

Our team is like one big family. Sometimes we have disputes, but always in tense and difficult moments we unite and help not only in work but also in personal endeavors and difficulties.

What is your role as a leader in building the team and motivating the employees?

My goal as a leader is to discover the talents and strengths of each team member and to develop them. My other goal is not to be the only leader, but to give the opportunity to people who have leadership qualities to develop and they can facilitate my work, because it is much easier to work with a team of leaders, rather than being the only leader.

There are different types of people who are motivated in different ways. For some, the only motivation is finances, for others praise, for others the variety of work and the opportunity for development. You need to discover what motivates each person to be a successful leader. Different generations also work in different ways and here as a leader, you must be very flexible. It is easiest to work with people who have internal motivation and dedication to the work process. When selecting staff, I look to surround myself with people who possess such motivation and values that are close to mine and those of the already established team, such as responsibility, dedication, organization, support, loyalty, and honesty.

What project or type of client have you not yet had, but would strongly like to realize?

For 20 years we have been operating as a wide-format digital printing house and have served clients from almost all industries. What we lack in the portfolio is a chain of grocery stores that work directly with us. We have served pharmaceutical companies directly and indirectly, but we would really like to realize projects for pharmaceutical companies that have OTC products that allow advertising.

The ads we create are already 3D, light up and blink. They are extremely attractive and interesting, but I would like us to start realizing outdoor advertising projects that combine interactivity through the use of AI.

I have a crazy idea for 3D Mapping at a unique place, but I won’t share it so that no one steals it from me.

What inspires you to continue developing Magic Outdoor with enthusiasm and dedication for so many years?

To become an entrepreneur, you need to be quite brave, a little gambling, and a bit crazy. I am a person who combines the analytical side of business with the creativity of advertising, and that’s why I lead the printing house Magic Outdoor with ease, enthusiasm, and dedication. I have a lot of fun with the projects we do. I no longer engage so much in daily operational actions, but rather in more strategic plans for business development.

I am the face of the company and I am responsible with my name and reputation for the actions of all, who work in Magic Outdoor. Maybe after 20 years I have already become a bit tired and even I want change and variety, which I find in business and lifestyle clubs, in which I am a member. My favorite lifestyle club is “The Magnificent Woman” with my mentor Yordanka Dimitrova, and the business club is BNI Bulgaria in the face of my company BNI Pro.