Two Romanians in their 20s decided they want to mix image consulting and e-learning and to go big. Their story goes beyond borders, and even features a German style guru.

When Andrei Calagiu slipped into his suit early that morning he didn’t forget the tie. He never does. But now, in the cafe where we meet for the interview, his pink tie is temporarily hidden in the briefcase. It’s not because of a sudden change in the weather, no, a gentleman would not ditch his tie due to such reasons as heat. It’s a more practical matter of image. “You have to be careful about the message you want to convey.”

It takes some time until I actually notice the absence of the tie. My eyes are first caught by the perfect shoes, the elegant watch and the stylish suit on this tall and slim 25-year-old man. Only after his business partner Mihai Irimia comes in, a tiny bit shorter and one year older, with vigorous gestures and also wearing an exquisite suit, I do notice that...wait, he is wearing a tie, while Andrei isn’t.

They first met two years ago. “My brother was telling me, meet this guy, he is so much like you.” And they were indeed very much alike. Both of them had been passionate about style and clothes since high school, had been working as image consultants on their own, were active in sales and were captured by the idea of developing their own business.

“If we had worked really hard, we could have offered consulting to about ten people in one month,” Mihai explains. “That’s quite limited so we thought, why not go bigger and reach more people? The e-learning concept was the answer for them and the beginning of their MenStyleGuide.com online guide, a project they have developed together. It has also involved a marketing team in the United States, the know-how of the German style guru Bernhard Roetzel and a production team in Romania.

They put up a video course made up of seven 10-minute episodes which teach men not only how to dress, “that’s rather limited”, but rather how to develop their own style and not be totally reliant on an image consultant. “Many people have a sort of dependency on their consultants.”

The fact that now only one of them is wearing a tie is no coincidence. “I knew he would be wearing a tie, it was my turn to be slightly more casual. We sometimes meet men who don’t have an office style so in order to better communicate one of us gets more casual. Today is my sacrifice day,” Andrei says jokingly.

The good thing about being in your ‘20s and working as an image consultant is the good looks. Youth combined with elegance, well, you can’t beat that easily. Add to that self-confidence and strong motivation and you’ll get the whole picture. However, there are some downsides to being young in a profession based on a certain pedagogy. You are the teacher and your students are men of all ages you have to convince to change. And that’s anything but easy.

“At the beginning they all have a certain reluctance and lack of trust. How should I get advice from somebody that young? But then when you start talking a bit more, people begin to understand that you’re no pretence, that you’re for real and can actually help them,” Andrei says. “It’s even more complicated with older people, because they perceive any advice as identity-sabotaging. Who are you to tell me that I don’t know how to dress?” Mihai adds laughing.

That’s a legitimate question, but it has an answer. Andrei and Mihai are guys hooked on an idea and motivated enough to go and get it. They didn’t wake up this morning and decide, ‘wouldn’t it be nice to consult rich top-management guys about how to dress well?’

It’s also not a hobby – they practice every afternoon after they leave their day-time jobs. They started in high school, studied everything that was available at the time on the market, consulted friends and friends of friends and then moved beyond that. Things got serious because they were serious about it.

As for Bernhard Roetzel, a German author revered on style and fashion issues, whose book “Gentleman. A Timeless Guide to Fashion” was translated into 19 languages, became the invisible teacher guiding the two guys from their teenage years. “I invested a lot of time and attention in this. In high- school I bought many books on this topic and at some point I discovered Mr.Roetzel’s book. It was great, legendary, music was sounding in my head, you know that theme from Carmina Burana,” Mihai recounts laughing. “I felt like I had a very direct contact with a very intelligent person, who was telling me what really mattered.” And it was pretty much the same for Andrei.

Bernhard Roetzel was one of the things they talked about when they first met, two years ago. Business came a bit later. “We had so much in common and above all we shared a lot of values. And this helped massively later on because we are at an age when the ego is in blossom and if you don’t get along very well on a personal level things don’t last,” says Andrei.

When they finally decided to work together on an image-consulting related project they didn’t want to do it slowly, write on a blog, take some pictures. It didn’t fit their personalities and the pace they were accustomed to. When they met they were 23 and 24 and already earning pretty well for guys their age. They wanted to start with a big project and have the best know-how. So they gathered courage and wrote to their adolescence legend and guru, Mr. Roetzel, who was living in Berlin, and asked him to be part of their project.

“We met at Ritz Hotel, in Berlin and it was so interesting,” Mihai recounts. “He was at home, talking with the director of Ritz, so calm and relaxed, almost with a sovereign aura. He listened to me, liked our idea, the name, the logo and said he’d like to be part of it.”

“We have some friends who moved to the United States, who work on IT projects and said that they would offer the marketing support, Bernhard Roetzel would bring the expertise and we would produce and put up everything in Romania,” Andrei explains. In December last year they finished the Beta version of the project and they decided to launch it first on the Romanian market, even if the final product is aimed at the North-American market.

Today Mihai left the house at 7 am, while his kid was still sleeping and 13 hours later he is still with Andrei, doing this interview. “We spend a huge amount of time together, ” Andrei says. “We are so immersed in our business that we sometimes forget about the personal relationship between us. So we decided to meet every week, have a tea and talk stuff: ‘was it something that you didn’t like about me this week?’, ‘was there bad energy?’. Anything work related is totally prohibited.”

And it’s fine so far. They love the project they are working on, the business direction they are heading to, and the suits they are wearing.

“It only gets weird when we ride the metro together. Seeing one elegant guy is a bit strange, but seeing two guys dressed in suits and ties or bow-ties seems a bit suspect. People think we are from some strange religious cult.”

By Diana Mesesan, features writer, diana@romania-insider.com

(photo by Diana Mesesan)