»Our soap company 111 elies exists now for one year. Elies is called in Greek olive tree and because Dimitris parents have 111 olive trees on Halkidiki, we have named our business like this.
I worked for 13 years in a bank and I am very glad that I finished this work. It was not my dream job and when the bank offered us a redundancy payment during the crisis, I was one of the first, who resigned.
Everybody believed in the past that there is a right to make holiday trips or to have two cars, but I advised our clients not to take out a huge loan as I could see that they were not able to service the loans hence I got into some trouble with my bank.
It seemed to be so easy to live a life like on TV. In the past people rather tried to avoid the risk and new things here: The goal was to become a public servant and to own a house.
There was not so much pressure to decide and try what was best for yourself, but when the crisis broke out, we had to look for other ways in our lives and in our work. In former times, manual work had a strong tradition in Greece, but some time ago one tried to focus just everything on service and not on what we can produce.
Earlier I had started growing herbs as hobby and we wanted to do something with our hands, something which could be sourced from Greece, which is clean and is not produced industrially. The main components of our soaps come from the Greece, i.e. olive oil, honey and herbs are the key to our products.
If we have a good technology and a clever marketing strategy, then there are are great possibilities here. We figured the knowledge of soap making out with the help of the internet, that means learning by doing and of course there were a lot of mistakes at the beginning.
There is a great interest in our soaps and we sell them in an internet shop, in markets and we also try to collaborate with other businesses.
We have received no assistance by the state, but have only encountered obstacles. The funny thing is that the authority with whom we must work together, do not know what are the legal requirements for our business and this doesn't only apply to our case.
For example, when we visited the tax office before we started our business, they asked us why we want to start it Greece and not in Bulgaria, where it should be easier.
But we are stubborn, we love our country and believe that good things can happen here too. I am positive about our products and that we worked well and I have a special interest in customer satisfaction. At the last international trade fair there was a strong interest in our products from abroad.«

» One problem here is still the mentality, so that a large part of the Greeks think that the good old days will return automatically, once the current situation is stopped.
But this will not and should not happen.
And the second problem is that the system here is in favour of the ten richest families in Greece and these families are connected with the government. That's not fair.«