Lilia Koleva

The Kolevs’ family online business story started back in 2000, when Alexander Kolev began selling collectables on eBay to gain additional income to his college checkmate trainer salary. Lilia supported him during the long evening hours spent in Internet café on sending to customers e-mail replies, prepared in advance and uploaded on diskettes. After graduating French studies in Sofia University, she started working in tourism, where she was inspired by international tourists’ interest towards the local products based on the world famous Bulgarian Damascene rose. The amazing Bulgarian Rose known as "The Queen of the Flowers" became her passion - it can be collected only by hand, at only one specific time of the year, in very rare geographic conditions. After the birth of their first child Lilia took the initiative to combine her passion about roses with her husband’s know-how in online sales and marketing and created an eBay shop, which started offering Bulgarian rose oil and cosmetic products to local and international customers. Since then she never went back to her office job.

Lilia and Alexander invested efforts into upgrading their shop and added handmade items, traditional folklore instruments, music, and books to their portfolio. To increase customers’ satisfaction even further, they designed their own packaging and special decoration, that also helped raise the added value of the products. The online shop gives the family the opportunity not only to manage their working time in line with their desires and children needs, but also to create many long-lasting friendships with people around the world. Canadian, Russian, Japanese and even customers from Hong Kong come to visit Bulgaria and meet the family in person. The Kolevs also receive multiple invitations from partners and customers to travel abroad and scopes new business opportunities. Today they are proud to be one of the largest retailers of high quality rose products.