Hi people, if anyone reads this (I sound like sad Mirna from peaceful baboons) This is my very first blog post. I enter the 53rd minute of looking at the laptop screen in the hope that I will be illuminated by a pheneomenal vision of how to write i.e. open my first blog post. Now I'm sure that's not going to happen, so I'm going to start on the Good Old Fashion Handshake Way.
I'm Rene, nice to meet you. As lead designer and manager at Karat jewelry stores (read Katica for all) my blog posts will be related to jewelry (I will do my best not to stray into social political topics or those I work mother aka nemajka, because that when it starts goes like an avalanche). Blog post topics will be classified into three categories. Fashion jewelry where we will talk about seasonal trends in both fashion and jewelry. The second category I will write about will be related to weddings, namely engagement and wedding rings. I will try to answer your questions on how to choose an engagement ring, how to choose wedding rings, how to choose a diamond, which affects the price of the diamond how to determine the size of the ring, etc. The third category I will write about will be metal-technical in nature, i.e. I will devote myself to precious stones, precious metals and the way jewelry is made. It will be interesting #majkemi (given that the goldsmithing in my genetic code came through my dad's part of the family that has roots in Prizren, this hashtag is semantic in place).
Where have I been and what have I been doing?
Now that I've told nicely what I'm going to talk about (because that's how they teach us in schools), it would be my turn to tell you something about myself because I like to know something about the people I dedicate a little bit of my online time to. I am born from Osijek (and with my heart from Zagreb). A beautiful city in the east of Slavonia that wakes up again after a long time. I went back to my hometown after about 10 years. Where I've been and what I've done in those 10 years is relatively interesting, so I'm going to make sure anyone's interested in it and write a little bit about it.
I studied economics at EFZG in Zagreb, i.e. I was lucky enough to go through a unique experience of student life on ephemeral life that only efzg people can understand. After graduating with a degree in macroeconomics, I joined KPMG in audit. I know it doesn't sound tense, but it was. That 17th floor at Eurotower was my first real work experience and little did I know, perhaps the sweetest, as a 22-year-old kid, insecure and inexperienced. It's like yesterday, I walk through the door of the 17th floor and suitsstarts. I couldn't understand how an organization could bring together so many smart and so handsome people. I broke up with KPMG because (our Dalmatians would say) accepted me into King's College London. A year of the most intense learning ever, the craziest social life, overbearing young crazy and the best dinners, what in restaurants making home multicultural dinner parties. After managing to get a master's degree (MSc in International Management) and stay alive, I passed the own-initiative CISI exam (in order to be more employable in banking) and got a job on the trading floor at Barclays Capital among all those Old Essex big swinging trading floor dicks (I'm not obscene but they call themselves that). An invaluable experience in which I have been skipping, smartening up, growing up, seeing and returning to family business.
I had no idea that it was only with my return home that I would find myself and that my real passion and business realization in designing and branding jewelry in the family business founded by my grandfather would wake up. When I think back, I always secretly dreamed about it, but I thought I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't creative enough, that I wasn't fit enough to do business... I didn't have enough confidence. After enough fighting 'in the white world', I accepted myself and began to trust myself. And that's when the spell started :)
There, believe in yourself... nothing without self-confidence.
Xoxo,
Rene
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