WOMEN HAVE THE POWER
Iliada-Evangelia Kothra, owner of the Living Postcards platform, is a young woman with a brilliant resume and international marketing collaborations. Recently, taking advantage of her success, she has decided to raise awareness about violence against women, launching the #dontacceptit campaign. On the occasion of the Greek #metoo, she talks to The CODE Magazine about the financial crisis, professional success and real-life opportunities that are found hidden in the most unlikely places.
the beginning
I studied marketing and sales, a subject that I have always loved and still do, and I have worked for many big companies. I love the process of giving birth to a product and placing it where it belongs, the communication with the people, the process of finding customers, partners and points of sale. I’m extremely competitive as a person, so I think I chose the right career path.
HOME
My family loved the theatre, my father was a drama school laureate. It went without saying that I would also take theatrical courses, which helped me to better understand myself and the people around me. I’m not usually prone to nostalgic thinking, but the years of drama school and seminars that followed in Paris were my favourites.
ThE CRISIS
In the summer of 2012, in the midst of the economic crisis, Greece was considered worldwide as a country of idle, lazy inhabitants. But, I would see other things around me. I would see people who, due to unemployment or financial insecurity, were looking for business opportunities and were unravelling personal wishes and things from deep inside of them they had been diligently hiding for years.
With the state practically collapsing, some remembered that they made nice jewellery, that they owned a piece of land somewhere out of town, where they could build an alternative boutique hotel, that the local products they loved as children, could, under the right strategy, be exported and produce money.
That is why I felt the need to showcase the “other side of Greece”: things were not as presented and portrayed by the international media and the press.
LIVING POSTCARDS
On a trip abroad, I saw Greek gourmet products being sold in very high prices, and there it struck me that the country is much more than fine olive oil and romantic sunsets. And that’s where the idea for the platform emerged:
A database that would bring together all these people and their efforts, which were not reminiscent of the old Greece but presented the new one, a platform that would bring together buyers from different places, generate collaborations, create opportunities for unknown brands -and there were many of them- to be discovered from buyers abroad, and thus overturn the not-so-popular image of the country.
In the summer of 2012, in the midst of the economic crisis, Greece was considered worldwide as a country of idle, lazy inhabitants. But, I would see other things around me. I would see people who, due to unemployment or financial insecurity, were looking for business opportunities and were unravelling personal wishes and things from deep inside of them they had been diligently hiding for years.
With the state practically collapsing, some remembered that they made nice jewellery, that they owned a piece of land somewhere out of town, where they could build an alternative boutique hotel, that the local products they loved as children, could, under the right strategy, be exported and produce money.
That is why I felt the need to showcase the “other side of Greece”: things were not as presented and portrayed by the international media and the press.