VOYAGELA MAGAZINE INTERVIEWED GEORGE STROUMBOULIS ON HIS MANUFACTURING STARTUP

George Stroumboulis was interviewed by the editor at VoyageLa Magazine. Voyage Group of Magazines in Los Angeles has since grown to a handful of other cities with the help of friends, associates, local insiders and influencers, PR firms, local bloggers, artists, creatives, entrepreneurs and other professionals. To read the full article, see below.

Today we’d like to introduce you to George Stroumboulis.

Thanks for sharing your story with us George. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.

With a strong marketing background, international business experience and having lived in markets including Canada, Greece, Ireland, France, United Kingdom, and the USA – I developed a global outlook. Working for a firm in Ireland, they relocated me to NYC to open their office, from there, I got into the lighting world.

I was part of the founding team of a high-tech LED lighting startup based in Connecticut. After a few short years, we were acquired, and the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Following that, my now business partner, Chris Hartswick, and I decided to open up our new firm, focusing on the manufacturing of custom interiors – lighting, showcase pieces and furnishings. Chris and I have a tremendous working partnership together for nearly a decade and we are able to complement each other’s strengths and cover each other’s weaknesses. The perfect partnership to say the least.

As the Co-Founder and CEO of Ideoli Group, it is exciting to see our rapid growth. We now have offices in New York City, Newport Beach, Shanghai (China), Athens (Greece), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Guadalajara (Mexico) on the way. With major national-account clients in the retail, restaurant, hospitality and commercial arena, we are global and in all markets they operate in.

Our startup is built on the backs of our brilliant global employees that keeps us operating around the clock, on all time zones. We also have a client list of major global brands – Hilton, Aston Martin, American Girl to name a few. One of our clients we did a custom showcase LED-lighted fixture for in their flagship store in Rockefeller Center in NYC was so impressed, they asked us to grow with them internationally in their new locations across the Middle East – Bahrain, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi.

I personally fly over 200,000 miles a year and literally do day trips to New York from LA on a weekly basis, 2-day trips to China once a month and everywhere I need to be to help make this happen.

More info on ideoli and our videos: www.vimeo.com/ideoli.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?

Not at all. The first month I launched my startup, I went through the most intense case of identity fraud of my life where the Detective from a local police department said it was the worst case he has seen in his entire career. That consumed the first 8 months of my new startup’s life, being bombarded by dozens of fake “George Stroumboulis” around the country ruining my financial credibility and threatening my home safety. Not easy.

That aside, this venture has been 100% self-funded from day one – no outside investors. Both my business partner and I wanted the autonomy to run the business the way we want to without any outside influence.

“Our startup is built on the backs of our brilliant global employees that keeps us operating around the clock, on all time zones.”

— George Stroumboulis

Communication – we have over 25 employees, and most of them are based outside of the United States where we are based. It took some time to find a groove with the nature of business we do, but with consistent travel, the use of incredible tools and software, we have become a very connected unit that produce the most captivating designs for new products with a revolutionary approach to prototype fabrication and mass-production. Our clients and partners are constantly impressed.

Cash flow – one of our first major clients, was a global hotel brand that placed significant-sized orders of custom lighting fixtures with us early on, and this weighed heavy on the company to make it happen from all departments involved. With some leverage and favorable terms (and little sleep), we got through it and are now in an explosive growth stage.

Family – I have the most supportive wife with an entrepreneurial background that has allowed me to do what I do. With two beautiful daughters under the age of 4 at home, it is a challenge to balance the growth of your startup while making sure you be the best father you can be. Family first is what drives me. Early on in my career, I saw friends and owners of business be weekend parents and that scared me. I grew up in my parent’s business seeing them daily, learning my part early on and sharing in their passion. This is no different with my family. My 3.5 year old daughter always wants to work with me in my office, help where she can, and even travel with me to job sites when possible. I never say no. I feel like I am grooming my successor daily.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Ideoli Group story. Tell us more about the business.

What we do very well as a company is this – we meet with our clients and distribution partners – they can be a designer, architect, distributor or end user. They have a product vision in mind or on a sketch, and they want to make this, roll it out nationally and internationally to all their locations. Within days, our engineers, designers and sales/marketing experts collaborate for the best options, then roll into sample fabrication within weeks. We typically can take a sketch on a sheet of paper and roll into full production within weeks. Which is unheard of in the mass-production of products game.

I am proud of the latest and biggest success of the company – we just landed the largest account in my career with a global firm that is valued at $50B and will be using a custom LED lighting product we developed with their global design team over the course of a year. We will be growing with them across 20+ international countries starting in Q1 of 2019.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?

You have to be lucky to be successful… and successful to be lucky. Bad luck or good luck, we face it daily. We have had a hurricane in the south destroy containers worth of lighting products en route to a client in the south. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of product damaged. Bad luck.