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Name: Miriam Mircea and Ioana Raluca Popescu

Business: Fort Knox PR, PR and Marketing company

Industry: Arts & Entertainment, Marketing & PR

Location: Romania

Reason for starting: We decided to fill a gap between normal fan-clubs and PR and Marketing. The more we got involved in the movies and fan’s world, we understood that our idea had big potential. In Romania it took us almost a year to get attention from the press, but we are to those people who believed in us, even if what we presented sounded like sheer madness. My business partner and friend, Ioana is a brilliant movie reviewer and I have always been good with communication; creating bridges and working with people, so becoming a publicist was a natural step for me. Our friendship showed us that it is also strong enough to support a business idea which was born in the late 2012. We started meeting people in the gaming and comic conventions area too and we built up fruitful working relationships, step by step.

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How do you define success? For us being known and having our work appreciated comes first and always will. We love to receive kind words from the members of our fan-clubs, our business collaborators and our partners. Then of course comes the financial part, which we hope will eventually reward all of our hard work, dedication and passion for our country and our business. The best mixture is when you love what you do and it loves you back.

Biggest Success: Till now we had several successes: meeting Tom Hiddleston, making our fan-clubs more well known, watching our member numbers grow everyday, having the acceptance of the Romanian blogger community, being asked to give some interviews which appeared in the Romanian and foreign press, and being a part of the staff of East European Comic Con, the first event of its genre in Romania and Eastern Europe for that matter. Additionally, all the appreciation we have received and continue to receive from the members of our clubs, the beautiful words and the respect. Becoming collaborators with important European artists (Cosplayers) who trust us and enjoy working with us, having our movie reviews recognized as professional quality, having a great relationship with some actors’ agents and many other beautiful victories.

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What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it? Our top challenge right now is making people understand how seriously we take what we do. This is not a game, nor are we just two girls having fun, we think we managed to find a winning combination between what started out as fan-club and worked its way into a real business. Therefore, we enjoy all the exposure we get in the press and media, as it is our main tool for now to show that we are women who work hard to set some standards and maybe overcome them.

Who is your most important role model? Our parents and families who lived an extremely hard life and still kept their heads high and made us understand how important education, work, respect and dedication is. Then, we would list the British actor Tom Hiddleston who is a wonderful giving person and who said :”Sky’s the limit. Your sky, your limit” and influenced us to push harder and not give up on ourselves or our idea. We also look up to successful men and women who went all the way to the top, against all odds, their stories encourage us and make us move further.

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