History

Balkan-Babylon Consulting was registered with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Amsterdam by Irina Popova as a family business. Its aim was to develop awarenes about Macedonia among the Dutch public, businesses and government on one side and to intermediate between potentian investors and the authorities regulating the infrastructure of the Macedonian tourist industry on the other.

We were the first to publish a new Macedonian set of promotional brochures redisigned by Advic b.v. and invaluable support of Mr. Victor Smit in organizing and executing the first appearances of the new state on the VacantieBeurs and BT. It was a gargantuan effort and Igor Popov joined the team giving it an uplift.

This lead to the first contract based on our evaluation of the growth-potential of the various sectors of the Macedonian economy. It was the multinational Philips N.V. which invited us to sign a contract which defined our role in the projects related to airports, navigation and telecomunications for both the public and the security sectors. The EBRD sent us their experts to evaluate our projects and we completed the tests with flying colours.

DAF, Gist-Brocades (now acquired by the multinational DSM) and Royal Talens (now part of the Secura chain) followed either as customers or suppliers.

Our firm and Zito-Luks (a Greek-owned bakery, the largest in the 600,000 population capital of the land) are equal partners of a local joint-venture firm Rovako. The arrangement with Zito-Luks may develop thorns becfause of the local medling of aspiring businessmen with an eye on our pime location. We shall engage ecery last atom of resorces to keep on the show and continue along the retailing policy which brought us the official City of Skopje medal for as one of the top three shops in town. Rovako continues as a quite a remarkable trade and import-export firm which through the arrangements of Balkan-Babylon Consulting is the sole distributor of top UK brands of fine bone English China.

Among those brands Nr.1 had been Wedgwood PLC of which Rovako had featured one of absolutely the largest full-range cash-and-carry selections in all of Europe. But then we have the Royal Worcester PLC, treated as house selection mainly because of their Prince Regent and Howard Blue designs which were our best sellers and of which we are trying to produce a very special commemorative plate on occasion of the 101 anniversary of the Ilinden uprising. Furthermore we have mainly earthenware producer Churchil with its full range of design on stock, but also the specialist in fine mugs Dunoon, remnants of Sadlers and Royal Albert.

French, Dutch and German producers Limoges, Royal Mosa, Gloria and Villeroy&Boch have been represented in the porcelain segment of the retail business. The local showroom of Rovako was a trend-setter in tableware, imported under exclusive dealership Shefield sterling-silver cuttlery, established itself as "The Shop" and delivered top quality porcelain, crystal and silverware for the Residence of the EU representative in Macedonia.

Present

Still family owned Balkan-Babylon Consulting at present is primarily engaged in production of a network of web-portals. Though the idea may appear a late bloomer since everything seams fixed and frozen on the world wide web, we have concluded that thewe was a last-moment fast-closing tiny gap in the domain-name sector. And we used it.

The aim is relatively simple and is based on the expected growth of Internet surfers among the 250 million Slavs. Most of them do not reffer to Greece as "Greece" but as "Grcija". Thus, since www.greece.com or, for that matter the first substitute www.greece.net and so forth were sold out internet lightyears ago, we have bought www.grcija.com. Irrelevant whether those who surf need to know English, the fact remains that in some near future there will be others who will be more than happy to gather information or interact with a portal about Greece but in their own language.

The same goes for Turkey. Or Turkiye. Slovens and Russian and Macedonians and Bulgarians refer to Turkey as "Turcija" and although they may call it or write it slightly differently - that is how they have to type it to open a sight in their own language.

So we bought turcija.net and turcija.biz, we also have germanija.com and avstralija.com supported with egipet.com, francija.net, britanija.com, albanija.com, bugarija.com and so forth. Thus prior to developing a detailed concept of every portal or site, our firm had first bought and secured domain-names for the network.